Front Row

The fourth in the Netflix series of The Crown, written by Peter Morgan and starring Olivia Coleman as the Queen, has raised questions about its historical accuracy, including from Britain’s Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden. Award winning novelist Naomi Alderman and journalist Simon Jenkins discuss the controversy in the context of the number of recent dramas set in the very recent past about real people.

The Royal Academy in London has reopened its doors and is preparing to show Tracey Emin/Edvard Munch: The Loneliness of the Soul, in which 25 of Emin’s works sit alongside a series of oils and watercolours by the Norwegian artist Emin has been in love with since she was 18, in a shared exploration of grief, loss and longing.

Described as somewhere between Mad Men and Agatha Christie, ‘The Announcer’ launched on All 4 this week. TV presenter Christine Beauval crashes against the glass ceiling in 1960s France, as she tries to outrun sinister threats on her life. Hannah McGill reviews.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Seventeen years after achieving global success with her debut album, Katie Melua talks about her latest record Album No.8, and how she took a course in short fiction writing before embarking on the lyrics. Plus she performs a special acoustic performance for Front Row.

British-Ghanaian artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye paints 'figments': portraits of fictitious people constructed from memory and fantasy. As Tate Britain re-opens, her Covid-postponed show Fly in League With the Night surveys her body of work from 2003 to the present day with a distinctive sense of mystery. Art critic Asana Greenstreet reviews the exhibition and gives us a sense of Yiadom-Boakye’s importance to British art now.

Husband and wife team Feargus Woods Dunlop and Heather Westwell from the New Old Friends Theatre company have come up with a novel way of beating Covid restrictions on live performances by turning their traditional Christmas show into an online advent calendar podcast – Crimes Against Christmas, which is loosely based on Agatha Christie’s Then There Were None. Feargus Woods Dunlop talks to Elle Osili-Wood about how and why they did it.

Presenter Elle Osili-Wood

Main image: Katie Melua

Yazz Ahmed, trumpeter and composer, and winner of the Innovation Award at tonight’s Ivors Awards, joins us in the studio. Yazz’s music blends jazz, arabic scales and rhythms, electronics, and the music of Bahrain, where she spent her childhood.

Francis Ford Coppola's first two Godfather films are considered cinematic masterpieces, but The Godfather Part III never received such acclaim. Thirty years after its release, Coppola has recut the film and renamed it The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. Film critic Tim Robey gives his verdict.

When Oleanna was first staged in 1992 it prompted intense responses. “People used to get into fistfights in the lobby,” David Mamet said. In his play a student visits a professor for help, but then lodges a complaint of sexual harassment that will ruin his career. How will a new production fare today, after Me Too and Harvey Weinstein's conviction? Samira Ahmed hears from the director, Lucy Bailey.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

As museums and galleries in tiers one and two prepare to reopen on Wednesday, we consider what the future might look like for these much loved institutions. Has the pandemic changed their fundamental purpose or merely accelerated shifts that had already begun? What might museums and galleries look like as physical and social entities in ten years’ time? To explore these questions, Kirsty is joined by Jenny Waldman, Director of Art Fund, an organisation currently working to assist organisations in innovating to meet the challenges COVID 19 presents, and museum and gallery designer Dinah Casson, whose new book Closed on Mondays: Behind the Scenes at the Museum is released tomorrow.

Screenwriter and director Henry Blake talks about his forthcoming film, County Lines. Inspired by the stories Blake heard while mentoring young people at an East London pupil referral unit, County Lines follows Tyler, a 14-year-old boy who is groomed into a criminal network trafficking drugs between communities.

John Mullen has been making the case for re-reading Jane Austen throughout lockdown. Today, it's the turn of Emma.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Main image: Conrad Khan in Henry Blake's film County Lines

Avi Avital., the world's leading mandolin player, on his new album The Art of the Mandolin, in which he performs music specially written for the instrument by Vivaldi, Beethoven and Scarlatti through to contemporary composers David Bruce and Giovanni Sollima.

Yesterday the Government announced which areas of England will be in Tiers 1, 2 or 3. For theatres and live performance venues in Tier 3 it's disappointing news as they will have to remain closed. What will be possible in Tier 2? Matt Hemley of The Stage joins us to look at the picture across the nation including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and we hear from Chris Stafford of the Curve Theatre in Leicester.

Marina Abramović, the celebrated performance artist, discusses her takeover of a whole evening of Sky Arts next weekend. The five-hour series of programmes she’s curating and directing will delve into a hundred years of performance art, and guest Jarvis Cocker will explore meditation according to the ‘Abramović Method’.

Possessor is a sci-fi psychological horror film written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg, son of visionary film-maker David Cronenberg, starring Andrea Riseborough. Film critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and crime novelist Abir Mukherjee review.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Main image: Avi Avital

The actress Amy Adams is one of Hollywood’s brightest stars with multiple Oscar nominations and a roster of unforgettable roles to her name from the adorable pregnant teenager in Junebug, to the lovable Disney Princess in Enchanted, to full on 1970s disco in American Hustle. Now she’s taken on the distinctly un-glamorous role of a drug addicted mother in the movie version of the best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, a book that aimed to explain Trump’s appeal to white working class America. Nick Ahad talks to Amy Adams about poverty, Trump and what happens next.

When ITV’s Coronation Street began in 1960 a columnist in a national newspaper predicted it wouldn't last more than three weeks. Now, as it prepares to celebrate 60 years on air next month, it’s the longest running TV soap opera in the world. Nick discusses the enduring charm of Weatherfield with former writer and archivist Daran Little and superfan BBC 6 Music DJ Chris Hawkins, who chose Coronation Street as his topic when invited on celebrity Mastermind.

Jake Blount is black, queer and used to play guitar in punk-rock bands. He's also the first black musician to reach the finals at the prestigious Appalachian String Band Festival. He tells Nick Ahad about discovering the African-Americans roots of bluegrass and old time Appalachian fiddle and banjo songs, and repossess them. And he has recorded one of those songs, from his acclaimed new album, Spider Tales, especially for Front Row.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

Roy Williams joins Samira Ahmed to talk about Death of England: Delroy. Just before Lockdown 2, this play’s opening night became its closing night. The understudy Michael Balogun had just stepped into the role. Luckily the press and audience loved it, and the film of that performance will be available on the National Theatre’s youtube channel this Friday. Directed by Clint Dyer, and written by Roy Williams and Clint Dyer, this powerful monologue explores the experiences of a working class Black British man who has been told by his best friend that he ‘will never be one of us’.

Fred D’Aguiar spent his childhood in Guyana, his teens in South London and now lives in California. All this experience is distilled in his novels, plays and, especially, his many books of poetry. We talk to him about his new collection, Letters to America which addresses his adopted country in poems such as ‘Burning Paradise’ and ‘Downtown L.A’, but also Britain and the Caribbean, with work influenced by Philip Larkin, Derek Walcott and Calypso.

Digga D is a twenty year old star of the UK Drill music scene on the brink of global fame and fortune. He has also been convicted and imprisoned for planning a knife attack. A new BBC Three documentary follows him as he leaves prison and attempts to return to his recording career. Can he rehabilitate himself in spite of being saddled with a Criminal Behaviour Order that means the police vet his lyrics line by line? And can Drill music escape its connection to gangs and violence? We’ll ask the journalist Andre Johnson, presenter and director of Terms and Conditions, a YouTube commissioned documentary about the UK Drill scene.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

We exclusively reveal and analyse the 2020 Costa Book Prize shortlists. Critics Alex Clark and Jade Cuttle discuss the books chosen in the five categories: Novel, First Novel, Poetry, Biography and Children's fiction. Category winners will appear on the programme in January and Front Row will announce the overall prize-winner on 26 January 2021.

Guy Garvey from Elbow reports on what he said to MPs earlier today during the DCMS inquiry into the rise of music streaming services and the effect on musicians themselves. Are artists being fairly re-numerated or does the business model of streaming need an urgent overhaul?

Simon Russell Beale, always a busy actor, gives his voice to Scrooge in a new dance-film version of A Christmas Carol directed by Jacqui and David Morris and will be giving his voice, and the rest of him, playing the epitome of meanness in Nicholas Hytner’s new production – with just three actors – at the Bridge Theatre. He talks to Irenosen about performing the role in the film and in the theatre, navigating the arc from misanthropy to philanthropy – and how to say ‘Bah, humbug’ as if no one has ever said that before.

Presenter: Irenosen Okojie

On Front Row last week, Douglas Stuart was awarded the 2020 Booker Prize for Fiction for Shuggie Bain, his debut novel about a boy in 1980s Glasgow who supports his mother as she struggles with addiction.

Tonight Douglas Stuart talks in-depth with John Wilson about his extraordinary journey from Glasgow to becoming a fashion designer in New York and now a best-selling novelist, after being rejected by more than 30 publishers.

Plus we announce the winner of this year’s George Devine Award – the £15,000 prize for an original stage play.

Presenter: John Wilson

main image: Douglas Stuart

Tim Minchin - the Australian actor, comedian, performer, musician, and composer and lyricist of the Olivier Award-winning RSC stage show Matilda The Musical – discusses his first solo album Apart Together, the themes he chooses to reflect on, and his approach to composition.

Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 are in the shops. The much-anticipated new generation of gaming consoles has arrived seven years after the previous iteration. We review both consoles as well as new games Spiderman: Miles Morales and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla with video games broadcaster and writer Aoife Wilson.

Travel writer and journalist Jan Morris, whose death was announced today at the age of 94, is remembered by fellow travel writer Horatio Clare.

British actor Nicholas Pinnock on his leading role in the American TV drama series For Life, in which he plays a prisoner who trains to become a lawyer whilst incarcerated.

Presenter Tom Sutcliffe