Front Row

The Mischief Theatre team – Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields have had an amazing year with their Play That Goes Wrong theatre franchise – three productions on at the West End, one touring the UK, and now a new six-part television series on BBC One called The Goes Wrong Show. They join Front Row to discuss how things have gone right since they started going wrong.

Slow Art Days, where viewers are encouraged to spend more time looking at artworks, have been gaining popularity in museums and galleries around the world. Now, there’s an exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery called Slow Painting. Exhibition organiser Gilly Fox discusses the show that explores the many aspects of what slowness might mean in relation to contemporary painting.

As Historic England prepares to fund regeneration initiatives in 69 towns around the country, Catherine Dewar, their North West Regional Director, and David Jenkins, Managing Director of The Old Courts Arts Centre in Wigan, discuss Historic England’s plans to revive the British high street.

Presenter: Katie Popperwell

JJ Abrams on overcoming his initial qualms about directing The Rise of Skywalker, the epic conclusion of the 42 year Star Wars saga. A huge juggling act, the film must satisfy fans, financiers and critics while tying up the many themes and plotlines of its eight predecessors. How did he do it?

The long awaited film of Cats starring national treasures Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen has been slammed by the critics, even getting zero stars in The Telegraph. Cats is a musical that has strayed from stage to screen; others wander off in the opposite direction. The critics Matt Wolff and Sarah Crompton tease out what works in the theatre but not on screen, and on film but not live on stage.

Writer, poet and podcaster Derek Owusu talks about his coming of age debut novel That Reminds Me, one of the first books to be published by Merky Books, the publishing house launched by Stormzy in partnership with Penguin Random House.

Presenter: John Wilson

Robert De Niro discusses reuniting with Martin Scorsese after nearly 25 years for The Irishman, the big-budget epic Netflix saga about organised crime over five decades, also starring those classic mob actors Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel.

After inspiring a popular video game, The Witcher Saga, the dark and fantastical novels of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski have now been adapted for TV. Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, the showrunner for the new Netflix series, talks about the art of genre fiction adaptation.

Fairview is Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Pulitzer Prize winning play that challenges the audience to consider how their race affects their interpretation of the drama they are watching. We've paired Nadia Latif , the director of the Young Vic's production, with celebrated portraitist Lorna May Wadsworth to talk about “the gaze” in their contrasting art forms. What is it, why is it so important, how do different arts subvert it and to what end?

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Saoirse Ronan stars as Jo March in Greta Gerwig’s new film adaptation of Little Women. The Irish actress, who’s tipped for an Oscar for the role, discusses how the film draws out the connection between Jo and her creator Louisa May Alcott, if Jo and Laurie would work as couple today and her frustration at Greta’s lack of Golden Globe nominations for the film.

The Book People, the online and pop-up bookseller, went into administration yesterday just a week before Christmas, putting almost 400 jobs at risk. One of its suppliers, Galley Beggar, the small publisher responsible for the careers of Eimear McBride and Booker short-listed Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann, is now also threatened because the publisher had advanced 8000 copies of it to the retailer, for which it has not yet been paid. Today Galley Beggar launched a crowdfunding campaign to help raise £40,000 to enable it to continue trading. Galley Beggar publisher Sam Jordison tells us more.

As preparations to celebrate Christmas gather pace, art critic Louisa Buck, art dealer Jana Manuelpillai and portrait artist Caroline de Peyrecave look at the depiction of babies in art from medieval times and ask why so many artists seem to get it wrong.

And we pay tribute Kenny Lynch, the entertainer who was one of the few black British pop singers to find fame in the '60s. His death was announced today at the age of 81.

Presenter Stig Abell

Taron Egerton, whose performance as Elton John in the film Rocketman has already earned him Golden Globe and SAG nominations for Best Actor, talks about channelling the flamboyant performer on screen and capturing his distinctive voice in hits such as Your Song and Tiny Dancer. Rocketman is available on DVD.

There have been scores of actors who have played Scrooge from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, from Alastair Sim and Basil Rathbone to Albert Finney and Michael Caine. This season it is the turn of Guy Pearce who appears as the misanthrope in a BBC One television adaptation by Steven Knight. How will the the creator of Peaky Blinders interpret the festive perennial? Raifa Rafiq reviews.

What are the ingredients of a Christmas hit song? Singer, pianist and songwriter Joe Stilgoe dissects some classics and performs from his Christmas album.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Stories from Mark Gatiss will dominate the small screen once again this festive season. Gatiss joins Kirsty to talk about his new adaptation of Dracula, in 3 hour and a half episodes, starring John Heffernan as Jonathan Harker and Danish actor Claes Bang as the tall, dark, handsome vampire. They also discuss Gatiss’s new version of the M R James Christmas story, Martin’s Close, with Peter Capaldi as a lawyer facing the infamous ‘hanging judge’, George Jeffreys. Martin’s Close is on BBC 4 on Christmas Eve at 10pm and Dracula begins on New Year’s Day at 9pm on BBC 1.

Every Christmas folk singer Kate Rusby tours the country playing Christmas songs, old, new and, especially, from Sheffield's carol tradition. She has now released five albums of Christmas music (but nothing like Slade's or Wizzard's) and she performs from her latest, Holly Head.

As Brighton prepares for its annual winter solstice celebration – Burning The Clocks - Professor Martin Johnes, author of Christmas and the British: A Modern History, and Mark Norman, creator and host of The Folklore Podcast, join Kirsty to explore the way new traditions are created.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

The Two Popes is a based on true events, the resignation of Pope Benedict and the election of his successor, Francis. It's also a double act by two great Welsh actors, Jonathan Pryce, Francis, and Anthony Hopkins, Benedict. Jonathan Pryce discusses his role, the story of their unlikely friendship and what the film is really exploring - the nature of forgiveness.

300 years after the publication of Robinson Crusoe, which some claim is the first novel ever written, novelists Katherine Rundell and Katie Hale consider the continuing allure of its narrative of survival against the odds and how its complex post-colonial racist narrative reads in 21st century Britain.

Presenter Stig Abell

Ballet star Francesca Hayward on the Royal Ballet's Romeo and Juliet: Beyond Words, filmed on location, and her lead role as Victoria The White Cat in the new film musical Cats.

The Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir discusses her scores for the film Joker, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe this week, and the hit TV series Chernobyl, for which she won an Emmy.

This Saturday will be exactly 40 years since The Clash released their classic LP London Calling, featuring songs such as Brand New Cadillac, Jimmy Jazz and The Guns of Brixton. Music writer Andy Kershaw celebrates the monumental double album.

Presenter: John Wilson

The work of the playwright and screenwriter Mike Bartlett has become a staple of the theatre and television landscape with his plays, such as Bull, winning prizes, his television dramas, such as Dr Foster, tantalising viewers, and productions such as King Charles III having a life on both stage and small screen. Now he’s written a new ITV drama serial - Sticks & Stones - about workplace bullying. He joins Kirsty to discuss the dark side of office banter.

Looking at art is very popular. Last year 5.9 million people visited Tate Modern, that’s more than those who went to the British Museum. But a visit to a gallery, especially to one of the blockbuster exhibitions such as Tate Britain’s William Blake show or the Leonardo da Vinci at the Louvre in Paris is not always a comfortable experience. Sometimes they are so crowded that you can’t actually see the art. We discusses this dilemma and explore how exhibitions are staged and visitors managed. Sirin Kale, who has written about being elbowed in the ribs at the William Blake exhibition sets out the difficulties and Jennifer Scott, co-curator of the ‘mindful’ Rembrandt’s Light show at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which includes a room with just a single painting, explains changing approaches to make going to exhibitions more enjoyable.

Any One Thing is an immersive theatre company with a difference. Plot and prop details of their shows are tailored to individual audience members through use of software and technology more usually used for marketing and advert personalisation. Paul Farnell and Justin Fyles, the tech entrepreneurs behind the company explain their unique blend of fringe theatre and personal data.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Controversy surrounds this year's Nobel Prize for Literature; unusually there are two winners, Polish Olga Tokarczuk and Austrian Peter Handke. Handke has been vocally supportive of the Serbs during the 1990s Yugoslav war including accusing the Bosnian Muslims of staging attacks. Jonas Eklöf, Editor in Chief of Swedish literary magazine Vi Läser, reports on the presentation ceremony in Stockholm today.

Traces is a forensic crime thriller set in Dundee based on an idea by Val McDermid and written by Amelia Bullmore. Molly Windsor (who starred in Three Girls) heads the cast as a technician in a forensic laboratory who is still coming to terms with a traumatic event in her past. Critic Stephanie Merritt reviews the six-part UKTV drama series.

Mike Lew’s darkly comic take on Shakespeare’s Richard III - “Teenage Dick” - has its UK debut at the Donmar Warehouse in London. Samira talks to Michael Longhurst about his vision for the theatre after becoming Artistic Director earlier this year and to actor Daniel Monks about playing this canonical disabled character.

After a century and a half the Vienna State Opera has this week staged its first work by a female composer. Olga Neuwirth's opera, Orlando, is based on Virginia Woolf’s novel about an Elizabethan poet who lives for centuries, never ages and switches gender. The director, the librettist and the costume designer are also all women and the star is a queer cabaret artist. Olga Neuwirth talks to Samira Ahmed about her opera, and its wider cultural significance.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed