Front Row: Archive 2013

With Mark Lawson.

The Hunger Games : Catching Fire is the second adaptation of Suzanne Collins' runaway bestselling trilogy of novels. Jennifer Lawrence is Katniss Everdeen in the post-apocalyptic state of Panem, where the Hunger Games are a televised fight to the death between teenagers. Rosie Swash gives her verdict.

The realities of the modern political world come under scrutiny in Michael Ignatieff's new book Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics. The Canadian academic, writer and broadcaster shelved his university career to enter politics, becoming leader of the country's Liberal Party in 2008. On the line from Toronto - where the city's controversial mayor is fighting for political survival - Ignatieff reflects on his bruising electoral defeat and what he learnt on the front line of 21st century politics.

Adrian Lester, Rory Kinnear and Lucy Kirkwood were among the winners at last night's Evening Standard Theatre Awards. Mark spoke to the night's winners as they reflected on the past year on stage.

Tate Britain re-opens today after a major refurbishment. The Duveen galleries are hosting works by Alison Wilding, one of Britain's foremost sculptors known for her inventive approach to form and materials. She tells Mark about making a model of one of her pieces - Harbour - from a piece of cheese before working it in alabaster, and how she'll stop schoolchildren touching her work if she spots them.

Following the announcement of the death of Doris Lessing on 17 November we pay tribute with an excerpt from a Front Row interview in 2008, where she talks about the effect of winning the Nobel Prize for literature on the sales of her books.

Producer: Dymphna Flynn.

With Kirsty Lang.

Borgen is the Danish political drama that became an unexpected hit for the BBC when the first series aired in 2012. Now back on our screens with the third and potentially final series, creator Adam Price discusses why it was so important for the central character of the Prime Minister to be female and why Danish television has taken the world by storm in recent years.

Jason Manford's career has taken him from stand-up to prime time presenter to singer, after winning TV talent show Born to Shine. Currently touring a new comedy show, Manford discusses entertaining the troops in Afghanistan, his scientific evaluation of his performances and, following his departure from The One Show, reflects on the roller coaster nature of fame.

Collider, a new exhibition at The Science Museum, takes visitors into the heart of the biggest scientific experiment of our time, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Through the use of performance, music and video installations, the exhibition explains the discovery of the Higgs boson. Kirsty Lang takes a first look inside Collider and meets the curator, designer and particle physicists who have worked out how to convey the complex scientific concepts involved.

Jude Law plays the title role in Dom Hemingway, a film about a London gangster looking to get compensation for spending twelve years in prison. Richard E. Grant co-stars as Hemingway's devoted best friend and side kick Dickie. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh reviews.

Producer: Olivia Skinner.

With Mark Lawson

Author Donna Tartt discusses her long-awaited third novel, The Goldfinch. Like her previous books, The Secret History and The Little Friend, The Goldfinch has taken Tartt a decade to write. The plot centres around the theft of a priceless painting, the goldfinch of the title, which is stolen from a museum after a horrific bombing in the opening chapters. Donna Tartt talks about the long gestation period for her novels, and how studying Greek tragedy informed the book's structure.

Actor Forest Whitaker discusses his starring role in The Butler, a film inspired by the real-life story of a White House butler who served during seven presidential administrations. Through the eyes of the butler and his family, the film follows the changing tides in American politics and race relations - from the assassinations of John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King, to the Black Panthers, and Watergate.

The Pet Shop Boys' latest single is called Thursday. David Quantick considers which days of the week are the least-loved, by songwriters.

Producer Rebecca Nicholson.

John Wilson talks to the fashion designer Paul Smith, on the eve of a major exhibition of his work and influences at the Design Museum, London.

Natalie Haynes reviews The Counsellor, a film about drug dealers on the US / Mexico border, starring Cameron Diaz, Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt and Penelope Cruz, with an original screenplay by Cormac McCarthy.

As the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Richard II, starring David Tennant, is streamed live to cinemas across the UK tonight, Lorne Campbell, artistic director of Northern Stage in Newcastle and Tom Morris from Bristol Old Vic debate the effect that live screening has on regional theatre.

Johnny Cash biographer Robert Hilburn was the only journalist to witness the Folsom Prison Concert in 1968. He talks to John Wilson about Cash's troubled life and career.

Producer Timothy Prosser.

With Mark Lawson,

The composer Sir John Tavener died today. Famous for his choral pieces The Lamb and Song for Athene - which was sung at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales - and for The Protecting Veil, for cello and orchestra. Nicholas Kenyon discusses his life and work. Plus a recent Front Row interview with Tavener himself.

Curtain: Poirot's Last Case will see David Suchet making his final appearance as Agatha Christie's iconic Belgian detective. Crime writers Dreda Say Mitchell and Natasha Cooper, with crime fiction specialist Jeff Park, discuss the TV drama alongside a new translation of Pietr the Latvian: the first novel in Georges Simenon's Maigret series.

Don Juan is given a modern day treatment in Don Jon, written, directed and staring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Also starring Scarlett Johansson and Julianne Moore, the comedy explores how films can lead to unrealistic expectations when it comes to finding love and a lasting relationship. Bel Mooney reviews.

Producer Claire Bartleet.

With Mark Lawson.

Bryan Adams - best known as a musician and singer songwriter - also works as a professional photographer. For the past five years, Adams has been taking photographs of British war veterans who have suffered life changing injuries. The series of photographs has been published in a new book "Wounded: The Legacy of War". Bryan Adams discusses working with injured soldiers and his aim to show the effects of war.

Mark interviews the Chinese pianist Lang Lang, as he releases a new disc of music by Prokofiev and Bartok, with conductor Sir Simon Rattle.

As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, two new films revisit the 22nd November 1963. Parkland, staring Zac Efron, Paul Giamatti and Marcia Gay Harden, focuses on people who were unexpectedly caught up in events - including hospital staff and the brother of Lee Harvey Oswald. In the TV documentary The Day Kennedy Died, key witnesses, including the doctor who tried to save Kennedy's life, offer their version of events. Michael Goldfarb and Diane Roberts review both films.

Producer Timothy Prosser.

With John Wilson.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch survived Auschwitz by playing the cello in the Auschwitz Women's Orchestra. After the war she joined the English Chamber Orchestra and her son is the renowned cellist Raphael Wallfisch. On Sunday they both take part in a concert in Vienna marking the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch's reflects on her time in the prison camp, described in her memoir Inherit the Truth, which is republished this week.

Gary Barlow discusses why it has taken him 14 years to produce a new solo record, how it felt to be dropped from his record label after Take That split, and what he thinks of criticism of The X Factor.

A new British Library exhibition, Georgians Revealed: Life, Style and the Making of Modern Britain makes the case that the Georgians were the architects of modern Britain, introducing many of the interests and pursuits that endure today. Historian Amanda Vickery reviews.

Producer Ellie Bury.

With Kirsty Lang

Kirsty talks to actors Matthew Macfadyen and Stephen Mangan as they play the roles of Jeeves and Wooster in a new stage version of one of P G Wodehouse's much-loved books.

The architect Frank Gehry, whose Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles feature the undulating metallic curves for which he has become known, opens a new exhibition of his work this week. Frank Gehry discusses his new sculptures, a series of artworks based on fish, a recurrent motif in his art and architecture, as well as his designs for the new development at Battersea Power station in London.

Stanley Spencer's masterpiece is a series of murals he painted in a small chapel in the Hampshire countryside. The paintings depict his life on the Salonika front during World War I, but concentrate on the domestic rather than the combat, on doing the laundry and eating jam sandwiches. The murals have now been removed while the chapel is undergoing restoration and is on show in London and then Chichester. The artist's biographer, Fiona MacCarthy, tells Kirsty about the story behind the paintings.

This week a Swedish cinema announced that it was going to rate movies according to the Bechdel Test, in which movies get an A rating for gender equality if they have at least two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man. Melissa Silverstein, the founder of the influential Women And Hollywood website, tells Kirsty why she thinks this is just the start of a conversation we need to have about in women in film.

Producer Stephen Hughes.

With Mark Lawson.

Zadie Smith discusses her new story The Embassy of Cambodia which is 69 pages long, and focuses on Fatou, a young African immigrant in Willesden, north-west London, who flees hardship in her own country only to face a different set of challenges in her new life.

Lady Gaga's third album Artpop is released in the UK next week. Gaga's recent performance on The X Factor to promote the album attracted hundreds of complaints about its explicit nature. Meanwhile Lorde, a 16-year-old from New Zealand, has topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic singing about the glamorous world of pop that at once attracts and alienates teens. Kitty Empire discusses both singers' albums.

nut is the new play by Olivier award-winning playwright debbie tucker green, whose previous plays include born bad and random. It follows a character called Elayne and those closest to her over one day in contemporary London. Shahidha Bari reviews.

And with news that the actor David Morrissey will voice the audiobook of the singer Morrissey's Autobiography, Front Row reports on an expanding market and wonders why certain actors are cast for certain books, and what part consumer preference plays.

Producer Jerome Weatherald.

With Mark Lawson.

Seduced and Abandoned is a new documentary made by the actor Alec Baldwin and the writer/director James Toback. The film was shot in Cannes and depicts the difficulties faced by filmmakers trying to find funding for their projects, with contributions from Ryan Gosling and Diane Kruger. Ryan Gilbey reviews this movie about the movie business.

In Doctor Who's 50th anniversary year 11 authors have been commissioned to write short stories about the 11 Doctors. It was announced today that the final author in the series is Neil Gaiman who has written a story about Matt Smith's Doctor, called Nothing O'Clock. He talks to Mark about creating his own villain and why Margaret Thatcher makes a cameo appearance.

As Channel Four receives complaints about the latest joke about Prince Harry's social life, we ask media lawyer Duncan Lamont about the use of irony as a defence - when is a joke not a joke, in terms of fictional wisecracks about real people.

Californian soprano Angel Blue, a former model, is an award-winning opera singer, recently performing at the Wigmore Hall in London. Angel Blue discusses singing with Plácido Domingo, how she prepares for a performance, and her former life as a beauty queen.

Today the world of academia reports that translators of Beowulf have misinterpreted the opening line of the epic poem for at least 200 years. Translator Amanda Hopkinson looks at accidental and deliberate mistranslations as well as untranslatable phrases in literature.

Producer Dymphna Flynn.