Front Row

We review The Dig, starring Carey Mulligan, Ralph Fiennes and the Suffolk landscape, a film about the excavation of the Anglo-Saxon burial site at Sutton Hoo. It's also a revealing excavation of class and prejudice in 1930s England. The great ship was discovered, uncovered and conserved by Basil Brown, an autodidact who left school aged 12, He described himself as an excavator and he and his work were brushed aside by incoming university trained archaeologists. The film also tells stories of love and grief in the tense days as war approaches. Our reviewers are Roberta Gilchrist, Professor of Medieval Archaeology and film critic Hannah McGill.

Tanoa Sasraku is one of five artists to receive this year’s Arts Foundation Futures Awards worth £10,000, awarded on the basis of past work and to enable future development. She talks about her art practice which uses video performance and flag making to explore her identity as a young, gay woman with British and Ghanaian heritage. And about her plans to use the Fellowship to produce the second film in a canon of Black horror fairytales: a queer re-telling of the Selkie legend.

Max Porter, best known for his novel Grief is the Thing With Feathers - a meditation on Ted Hughes and loss - discusses his new 75-page book The Death of Francis Bacon, in which he imagines himself into the mind of the artist in his final days in Madrid in 1992 facing approaching death in a convent hospital.

As part of our ongoing series of Moments of Joy, poet and winner of the 2018 TS Eliot prize Hannah Sullivan explores a poem– the final section of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself in his collection Leaves of Grass, read for us by Kerry Shale.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

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The ceramicist, artist and writer Edmund de Waal today launches the #FrontRowGetCreative project, where artists will be encouraging you, our listeners, to try their hand at creating an artwork with easily-available materials. In his studio he talks us through the creation of a palimpsest, where letters and characters overlap in layers of clay – or domestic filler in this case – to memorialise words that are special to him.

We'd love to see what you create. Show us what you've made by sharing on social media channels using the hashtag Front Row Get Creative and we'll show those that catch our eye on the BBC Arts and Front Row websites. Check out the BBC's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Hafsa Zayyan was the winner of the inaugural Merky Books New Writers' Prize - part of Stormzy’s ongoing partnership publishing new books with William Heinemann. We speak to her about her novel We Are All Birds Of Uganda. It’s a fascinating story about intergenerational trauma, racism and displacement set between Uganda in the 1960s and now.

Les Enfants Terribles have a reputation for innovating in the world of immersive theatre. Their face-to-face shows included the Olivier-nominated Alice’s Adventures Underground performed literally underground, the prosecution of punk collective in Inside Pussy Riot, and United Queendom, telling the stories of some of Kensington Palace’s lesser known royals in the Palace itself. But can you do immersive theatre online? Oliver Lansley, founder and co-artistic director, discusses Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Hung Parliament described as a combination of theatre, gaming, escape room and board game - .

Presenter: Elle Osili-Wood

Celeste talks to Front Row about her career from making tracks on a laptop in her bedroom to successes at the Brit and BBC Music Awards, composing and performing the music for last year's John Lewis advert, A Little Love, and the release of her debut album 'Not Your Muse'.

She blew her fusilli,

And Ryan Gilbey gives his verdict on new film Palmer starring Justin Timberlake. Former high school football star Eddie Palmer went from hometown hero to convicted felon. He returns home to Louisiana and the grandmother who raised him but things become more complicated when Vivian’s hard-living neighbour Shelly (Juno Temple) disappears on a prolonged bender, leaving her precocious and unique 7-year-old son Sam (Ryder Allen), often the target of bullying for his gender non-conforming behaviour, in Palmer’s reluctant care.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Main image: Celeste

Can you use craft to help make the world a better place, one stitch at a time? In her new BBC Four documentary, Craftivism: Making a Difference, writer, comedian and art lover Jenny Eclair meets people doing extraordinary things with knitting, cross-stitch, banners and felt to change hearts and minds. She tells us all about it.

Tom talks to Jon Brown, BAFTA award-winning show-runner and screenwriter about his gaming sitcom Dead Pixels which returns to E4 for a new series.

And we've an interview featuring the winner of the Costa Book of the Year Award, which has just been announced.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Choreographer Jonzi D has created a new work for Dancing Nation, the all-day digital festival of dance which is streamed on BBC iPlayer this Thursday. Jonzi discusses the state of Black dance with Pawlet Brookes, who runs Serendipity in Leicester and has edited the collection of essays My Voice, My Practice: Black Dance.

In the light of the announcement that Kenneth Branagh has been cast to play Boris Johnson in a new TV drama about the Covid-19 crisis, critic, journalist and former political researcher Sam Delaney joins Samira to talk about the impact of dramatisations of contemporary political moments on the public imagination.

Last night Bhanu Kapil won the TS Eliot Prize for her collection How to Wash a Heart. She talks to Samira about and reads from her book which, in the voice of an immigrant guest in the house of a citizen host, explores the idea, and limits, of hospitality, and the experiences of diaspora people.

For his Moment of Joy, the writer Darran Anderson chooses a scene from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, an exploration of mortality that is nonetheless deeply life-affirming.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Main image above: Jonzi D

The White Tiger is a new Netflix film based on Aravind Adiga’s 2008 Booker Prize-winning novel, directed by Ramin Bahrani. It explores Indian society and how hard it can be to climb the social ladder, as Balram, played by Adarsh Gourav, struggles to advance even when he has found rich employers. For our Friday review, writer Abir Mukherjee and film critic and host of the Girls on Film podcast Anna Smith give their verdict, and reflect on the week that saw 22-year-old poet Amanda Gorman perform The Hill We Climb at President Biden’s inauguration.

Every year one of the first literary events is the T. S. Eliot Prize readings, when each of the 10 shortlisted poets performs to a packed Royal Festival Hall. But this year the The South Bank Centre is streaming the poets' readings instead. The winner will be announced immediately afterwards. Chair of the judges Lavinia Greenlaw discusses this year's shortlist.

Denise Dutton discusses her commission to sculpt the statue of Mary Anning, the 19th-century fossil hunter from Lyme Regis. The statue of the pioneer of palaeontology was crowdfunded by a campaign started by 13-year-old Evie Swire. Denise, who has also made statues of suffragettes and the Women's Land Army, considers the role played by statues in bringing overlooked women to public attention.

Presenter Kirsty Lang

After weeks of speculation, we heard today that the 2021 Glastonbury festival is to be cancelled amidst uncertainly due to Covid. Tom talks to the Chairman of the Department of Culture Media and Sport parliamentary select committee, the Conservative MP Julian Knight, who today issued a strong statement condemning the government for not stepping in to assist the industry.

Russell T Davies' hotly anticipated new Channel 4 series It’s A Sin begins tomorrow night. Set in the 1980s, it follows the story of the Aids crisis and charts the joy and heartbreak of a group of friends over 10 years in which everything changed. Critic David Benedict reviews.

We’ll also be exploring depictions of the Aids crisis and its impact across the decades on stage, screen and other artforms with David and journalist Juliet Jacques.

The London International Mime Festival started this week, online only this year, and as part of that they’ve commissioned five original short films – between three and 10 minutes each – which are available to view free. Critic Sarah Crompton reviews the five very different works.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Singers Roderick Williams and David Webb discuss Schubert’s celebrated 1827 song-cycle Winterreise, about a man dealing with rejection and loneliness who journeys through the winter snow. Roderick has recorded a new CD of Winterreise and David is about to perform it at the Wigmore Hall in London, having cycled 500 miles to raise money for mental health charities.

More than 100 music stars including Elton John, Sting, Ed Sheeran Brian May, Nicola Benedetti and Roger Daltrey have signed a letter saying performers have been “shamefully failed” by the post-Brexit travel rules and that there is a “gaping hole where the promised free movement for musicians should be”. Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has been meeting today with music industry representatives and we speak to Jamie Njoku Goodwin of UK Music about what he told them.

Anya, diligently studying for a doctorate and Luke, a committed environmental scientist, get engaged on holiday in Provence. They begin to plan their wedding in Cornwall. Anya escaped from Sarajevo as a child during the Balkan War and when she takes Luke to meet her family there her carefully contained uncertainties surface. Relationships and identities begin to unravel. Olivia Sudjic talks to Samira Ahmed about her new novel Asylum Road.

As Joe Biden becomes the next President of the United States, Front Row asks what the new administration will mean for arts and culture, with the help of critic Matt Wolf.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Main image above: Franz Schubert portrait

John is joined by composer, vocalist, violinist and producer Caroline Shaw – the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music, winner of a Grammy in 2018 for her album Orange with Attaca Quartet. Caroline Shaw talks about her new album Narrow Sea featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw, Sō Percussion ensemble and the pianist Gilbert Kalish, as well as writing for unusual instruments, unconventional approaches to composing, and the difference between writing for an orchestra and collaborating with Kanye.

Today (19 Jan) is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Patricia Highsmith, author of the classic thrillers The Talented Mr Ripley and Strangers on a Train and of The Price of Salt, later published as Carol. Several of her books have been made into successful films and continue to be adapted: Deep Water starring Ben Affleck is expected later this year and the making of a new TV series based on Ripley starring Andrew Scott has been announced. To mark the anniversary, a new collection of her short stories has been published, Under a Dark Angel’s Eye, and a new biography, Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia Highsmith by Richard Bradford. Bradford and the writer Joanna Briscoe discuss Highsmith’s compelling, dark writing and the troubled – and troubling - life behind it.

Comedian Rose Matafeo stars in New Zealand comedy film Baby Done as a woman who finding herself unexpectedly pregnant attempts to fulfil a bucket list of adventures before the baby arrives. The film is exec produced by Taika Waititi and co-stars Matthew Lewis, best known for playing Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter franchise. Critic Hannah McGill reviews.

Presenter: John Wilson

English rapper, songwriter and actor Ashley Walters has now turned his hand to directing with a short film called BOYS. Shot in London it follows Noah, who – whilst trying to fulfil a request from his brother who’s in prison – has to decide which way he wants his own life to turn out.

To lift our spirits in difficult times Front Row brings you Moments of Joy – a celebration of those intense moments when watching a film or a play, reading a book or poem, listening to music or looking at a picture makes your heart soar. Today, writer and critic Erica Wagner on the opening of Star Wars – a film she saw first in 1977 as a 10-year-old.

American writer Torrey Peters joins us to talk about her ground breaking new novel, Detransition Baby. It charts the complex relationship between two trans women, Reese and Amy as the latter detransitions and renames himself Ames, then gets his boss Katrina pregnant. The trio ends up trying to figure out whether it’s possible for them to form a family together.

Phil Spector, the pop producer who was convicted of murder, has died aged 81. Music journalist and biographer Richard Williams discusses Spector’s distinctive “Wall of Sound” recordings with artists such as The Ronettes, The Righteous Brothers and John Lennon.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe