Front Row

Polish director Agnieszka Holland, best-known for her Oscar nominated feature films about the Holocaust, discusses her new film Mr Jones, starring James Norton as the Welsh journalist Gareth Jones. Jones exposed the truth about Stalin’s genocidal famine which killed millions in Ukraine in the early 1930s and his reporting of the story inspired George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Continuing Front Row’s risk season, theatre critic Michael Billington talks about when risks fail to pay off. Failure in the arts can be a taboo subject and Doctor Leila Jancovich from Leeds University has been exploring histories of failure and why it seems the arts find it difficult to learn from their mistakes.

Timur Vermes' first novel Look Who's Back was a satire imagining the return of Hitler in the present day and sold over 3 million copies. The German novelist's new book, The Hungry and the Fat, translated by Jamie Bulloch, considers what would happen if thousands of refugees walked to the German border.

Presenter: Tom Shakespeare

Main image: James Norton in Mr Jones

Robert Pattinson talks to Samira about his new Oscar nominated film The Lighthouse, a gothic thriller in black and white from Robert Eggers (The Witch), in which Robert and Willem Dafoe play two lighthouse keepers who start to lose their sanity when a storm strands them on a remote island.

Continuing Front Row's Risk season, two film-makers who have exposed themselves to personal danger. Oscar winning director Orlando von Einsiedel (The White Helmets, Virunga) discusses filming in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in DR Congo as civil war broke out. Hassan Akkad discusses filming his journey from Damascus to the UK via the Calais ‘Jungle’, including a dangerous boat crossing from Turkey to Greece as the boat began to sink, footage which featured in the BBC series Exodus.

In the run up to this year's BAFTAs and Academy Awards, the all-male Best Director shortlists have attracted criticism, with many lamenting the omission of Greta Gerwig, whose Little Women has been a critical and commercial success and picked up other nominations including Best Film, Actress and Screenplay. Greta gives her take on all this and discusses her reworking of Louisa May Alcott's novel.

Main image: Robert Pattinson in The Lighthouse

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Director Melina Matsoukas talks about her first feature film Queen and Slim, which follows a black couple on a lackluster date pulled over for a minor traffic infraction. The situation escalates, with sudden and tragic results and the erstwhile couple decide to go on the run. Known primarily as a director of music videos for megastars like Beyoncé, Matsoukas discusses her transition between mediums and the film’s political message.

Grayson Perry: The Pre-Therapy Years is the first exhibition to survey the artist’s earliest works - pots, plates and sculptures - which he made between 1982 and 1994. Critic Jacky Klein reviews the exhibition at the Holburne Museum in Bath which includes pottery that addresses his regular themes of gender, identity and social class.

The life of Faust, an itinerant alchemist and astrologer in 15th century Germany, has inspired great writers through the centuries, most notably Christopher Marlowe. Now Chris Bush reinvents the story again; Faustus is a woman and, instead of using the powers of Mephistopheles for self-gratificiation she seeks the kinds of knowledge denied women through the ages, traveling through time to attain it. Stig talks to Chris Bush about her ambitious, ideas-laden new play, Faustus: That Damned Woman.

As we continue to explore risk in the arts, actor Richard Armitage speaks to us about the physical and reputational risk of being waterboarded for the filming of Spooks.

Presenter: Stig Abell

Samira talks to Sir Patrick Stewart about what tempted him back to Star Trek to play Jean-Luc Picard for the first time in 18 years. Star Trek: Picard finds the legendary Starfleet officer in retirement but still deeply affected by the loss of Lieutenant Commander Data and the destruction of Romulus that ended his career. Stewart also discusses the parallels between the world of Star Trek: Picard and politics today.

The overall winner of the Costa Book of the Year is announced on Front Row, live from the ceremony. Contenders this year include debut novelist Sara Collins, novelist Jonathan Coe, biographer Jack Fairweather, poet Mary Jean Chan and children’s novelist Jasbinder Bilan.

Continuing our Risk Season, Sharmaine Lovegrove tells us about the risks involved in setting up Dialogue Books, an imprint that publishes authors from under-represented communities, including writers from BAME, LGBTQI+ and working class backgrounds.

Arts Council England’s Chief Executive Darren Henley and Amanda Parker, Editor of arts industry journal, Arts Professional, discuss “Let’s Create” - the Arts Council’s new 10-year Strategy which seeks to expand our nation’s creative opportunities.

Image: Sir Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: Picard

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Martin Scorsese has the most Oscar nominations of any living director though he has only won once, for his 2006 film The Departed. Nominated again this year for The Irishman, he talks about the film’s themes of ageing, guilt and redemption – and about how it would feel to win.

As part of our season looking at risk in the arts, we consider when risk is disproportionately apportioned to working with diverse talent like women or black artists. The result is that white male practitioners are seen as a safe pair of hands and women and BAME talent are ignored even if they have proven their success in the past. We investigate the scale of the problem and what can be done to change it with Dawn Walton, Head of Revolution Mix theatre group and Clare Binns Joint Managing Director, Picturehouse.

Artist, engineer, architect and poet, Naum Gabo was a leading spirit in the radical arts flourishing after the Russian Revolution. When the Soviet authorities cracked down on avant-garde art, Gabo worked at the Bauhaus in Germany, collaborated with Diaghilev in Paris, and energised London's art scene. During the war Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson persuaded him to come to St Ives. His work was startlingly spare and made beautiful use of industrial materials. Tate St Ives presents the first major exhibition of Gabo’s work for more than 30 years. Michael Bird, who lives in St Ives and has written about Gabo, reviews the show.

Presenter: John Wilson

Main image: Martin Scorsese

In a career spanning half a century, Martin Scorsese has told stories about masculinity, music, violence, guilt and redemption – in films including Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino and many more. Despite nine best director Oscar nominations in that time, Scorsese only has one win to his name, for The Departed. But that tally could rise if his latest movie The Irishman wins him another Oscar. For Front Row, he talks to John Wilson from New York about his hopes of winning, representation on screen, and the themes that have permeated all his work.

The Pet Shop Boys talk about their highly anticipated new studio album Hotspot, which is released today. Hotspot is the duo’s final release with producer Stuart Price who ushered in a period of ‘electronic purism’ in their work. Recorded using a large amount of analogue equipment, Hotspot is a departure from the Pet Shop Boy’s recent hyper dance pop sound.

Front Row's series examining risk in the arts focuses today on emotional risk. What is it like for writers and performers to explore their own personal backgrounds and issues and then to go public with their revelations and confessions, and how much has that changed in recent years? Louise Allen addresses the challenge of putting her experiences of an abusive childhood in foster care onto the page in her memoir Thrown Away Child, and stand-up Ahir Shah discusses drawing on his own personal mental health issues in his stage act.

Next Monday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. We are all familiar with images of victims of the Holocaust. Most of these, though, were actually taken by the Nazis for propaganda purposes and to create a historical record. The Eye as Witness , a new touring exhibition organised by The National Holocaust Centre and Museum, challenges these views. Professor Maiken Umbach explains how, using virtual reality technology, viewers can enter into a photograph to experience how it was framed and, crucially, what is not shown, including the photographer taking the picture. The exhibition focuses, too, on photographs taken, at enormous risk, by the inmates of the ghettoes and camps. Some of these images were buried and retrieved once the war was over. They reveal, amidst degradation and evil, a zest for life, humanity and love.

Presenter: Stig Abell

As the BBC Three hit comedy Man Like Mobeen returns for a third series, its creator and star, Guz Khan, discusses the development of his on screen persona, Mobeen Deen, and why his show has something for everyone.

Front Row's Risk Season continues with filmmaker Penny Woolcock and Richard Mantle, General Director of Opera North. Both have faced big creative challenges and join Front Row to discuss how to decide if a risk is worth taking.

The Portico Prize, the UK’s biennial award for outstanding literature that best evokes the spirit of the North, is awarded on Thursday 23 January. Portico Prize judge, poet, and novelist Zahid Hussain and Claire Malcolm, founding CEO of the regional writing development agency, New Writing North, discuss what constitutes writing that reflects the North and the hurdles such writing faces.

Presenter: Katie Popperwell

Michael Palin remembers his friend and fellow Python, Terry Jones - writer, director, actor and historian - whose death at the age of 77 was announced today.

Hugh Laurie discusses his new role in Armando Iannucci’s new TV comedy drama Avenue 5, which is set on a galactic cruise liner. When a mishap turns the eight-week pleasure jaunt among the stars into a voyage lasting three-and-a-half years it’s not just the spacecraft that begins to breakdown – it’s civilisation itself. And masks begin to slip. Laurie stars as the urbane, silver-haired Ryan Clark, the confidence inspiring Captain. But Clark is not what he seems.

Mental health, the pressures of social media and a feeling of freedom all feature in Gabrielle Aplin’s upbeat pop album Dear Happy. The singer-songwriter talks to Samira about making the album on her own record label and performs live in the studio.

As Front Row continues to explore risk in the arts, author Kerry Hudson speaks about the emotional risk involved in writing her memoir Lowborn: Growing Up, Getting Away and Returning to Britain’s Poorest Towns.

Presenter Samira Ahmed

It's taken 25 years and several false starts but Terry Gilliam has at last succeeded in bringing his version of Don Quixote to the big screen. The director discusses his jinxed project, now that he has completed The Man who Killed Don Quixote, which stars Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce.

Samantha Strauss, creator of the hit Australian teen drama series Dance Academy, talks to John Wilson about her new drama series The End starring Harriet Walter and Francis O’Connor which uses dark humour to tell the story of a family’s struggle with assisted dying and the nature of choice.

Front Row's Risk season continues. We’re talking to figures across the arts about their greatest career risks. Tonight, artist Jeremy Deller tells us about the risks involved in creating The Battle of Orgreave, his 2001 re-enactment of the violent confrontation between miners and police in 1984.

Picasso and Paper: Throughout his career, which spanned eight decades, Pablo Picasso worked with paper – not just drawing and painting on it but manipulating it. He used several printmaking techniques, made collages by cutting and pasting and created sculptures by burning and tearing paper. The Royal Academy’s new exhibition brings together 300 works in a variety of forms, from different periods of the artist’s life, but all created with this single medium. Morgan Quaintance reviews.

Presenter: John Wilson