The husband-and-wife team of Charles and Ray Eames are widely regarded as America's most important designers, perhaps best remembered for their mid-century plywood and fiberglass furniture. Critic Corinne Julius joins Samira at a new exhibition at the Barbican in London where they explore their enduring appeal.

From A Streetcar named Desire and The Godfather, to Last Tango in Paris and Apocalypse Now, Marlon Brando is hailed by many as one of the great actors. Now 300 hours of audio tapes have revealed the painful childhood and dysfunctional adulthood that he drew on for his art. Listen to Me Marlon sets out to document his life and work in his own words. Producer John Battsek describes the process and the actor Kerry Shale offers his reaction.

Darryl Collis from See Saw Media explains how film studios are using fees from product placement to beef up their budgets.

Conductor Jane Glover discusses her new production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro featuring students from The Royal Academy of Music, alongside stage actor and director Dame Janet Suzman who is turning her hand to directing opera for the first time.

Presenter : Samira Ahmed

Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

Kirsty Lang talks to director Jonathan Kent and the rising star Olivia Vinall about Chichester Festival Theatre's Young Chekhov season. Instead of the familiar, and great, later plays - Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard - Jonathan Kent has assembled an ensemble of 23 actors to perform three of his earliest works, Ivanov, The Seagull and Platonov, in new versions by David Hare. Kent argues that Chekhov was a radical new voice, and Vinall, who is in all the plays, talks about tackling three different roles, all on the same day.

Mississippi Grind is a new gambling, road trip movie starring Ben Mendelsohn and Ryan Reynolds as two down-and-out, inveterate gamblers. The two men bring out the worst in each other but also find redemption in their friendship as they make their way round the casinos of the Southern States. Sophia McDougall reviews. Mississippi Grind opens on general release Friday 23 October cert 15.

The creator of E4 teen drama Skins, Bryan Elsley, debates the lack of diversity in UK television drama and how a new TV Writers Development scheme aims to address the imbalance.

Austrian novelist Robert Seethaler's sparse new book A Whole Life tells the story of Andreas Egger, who lives a quiet life in the mountains, touched by tragedy but at peace with his intimate knowledge of the landscape and his place in it. Robert discusses how our lives find meaning in the key moments, and how he conveys this in his writing.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Producer: Elaine Lester.

In Front Row tonight: The Last Kingdom, the BBC's epic new drama series about the Vikings' invasion of Anglo-Saxon England. Nina Ramirez reviews.

Kirsty Lang visits a huge exhibition at the British Library of literature and music from West Africa - from the great African empires of the Middle Ages to the cultural dynamism of the region today.

The director Guillermo del Toro, who has made films in many genres - fairy tale, horror, monsters - embraces the Gothic in his latest, Crimson Peak, and tells Kirsty how, for a Mexican such as he, ghosts are an every day reality.

More than 200 poems by the great 18th century haiku author and painter Yosa Buson have just been discovered in a library near Kyoto. Stephen Gill, a poet and translator who lives nearby reports on the significance of this find.

Kirsty speaks to Robert Seethaler whose A Whole Life describes the world of a man of few words in the Austrian Alps. A slim novel, it condenses the story of Andreas Egger into the episodes that shaped his life, amid the magnificent and dangerous mountains that take the lives of those he loves. His novel is part of the Radio 4 series, Reading Europe and can be heard next week every night at 22.45pm.

Hugh Jackman stars as Blackbeard in Pan, a new adaptation of J.M. Barrie's story of the boy who never grew up. Mark Eccleston reviews the film which also features Cara Delevingne and Rooney Mara.

A new exhibition Titian to Canaletto: Drawing in Venice focuses on the overlooked element of Venetian art from 1500 to 1750 which opens today at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at Oxford University, assesses the works on display.

Lisa Genova, a trained neuroscientist and author of Still Alice which explored early-onset Alzheimer's, discusses her new novel Inside The O'Briens, in which the head of the family discovers he has Huntington's Disease. The writer reveals why she believes she can achieve more in that field by writing novels than she did in the lab.

A Wolf in Snakeskin Shoes is a theatrical reworking of Moliere's satire Tartuffe, transplanted to present-day Atlanta, Georgia. It's a comedy set in a world of guns, fast-food tycoons and black churches. The dramatist Marcus Gardley, whose father was a pastor and whose uncle a founder of the Black Panthers, discusses his adaptation.

Presenter Samira Ahmed

Producer Jerome Weatherald.

Author James Shapiro describes how the Gunpowder Plot and King James' desire to unite England and Scotland inspired Shakespeare's great plays King Lear and Macbeth.

In India 40 writers have returned their literary awards in protest against what they consider a 'rising intolerance of free speech' which has seen some writers attacked and murdered. Historian Zareer Masani considers the significance of their action and its political and historical context.

Giacometti: Pure Presence at the National Portrait Gallery in London is the first major exhibition to focus on his portraiture and includes his paintings, sculptures and drawings. Art critic Charlotte Mullins reviews.

Ben Folds discusses his new album So There, which sees him collaborating with New York sextet, yMusic. The resulting eight 'chamber rock' songs are followed by his first piano concerto and he reveals why he enjoys blurring the lines between classical and pop.

Presenter Samira Ahmed

Producer Angie Nehring.

Marlon James is the first Jamaican novelist to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His nominated novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, is a portrait of Jamaica in the '70s when gang warfare and reggae reigned, and is based on the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1976. The winner of the 2015 Prize will be announced later this evening.

James Daunt, founder of Daunt Books and Managing Director of Waterstones, discusses how the publishing industry responds to the Booker shortlist and winner, and the impact it has upon sales.

Stephen Frears' new feature film The Program delves into the doping scandal surrounding seven-times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong. Michael Carlson reviews the film starring Ben Foster as the disgraced cyclist.

Artist Fiona Banner discusses her new exhibition Scroll Down and Keep Scrolling, the most comprehensive exhibition of her work to date, at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.

Presenter John Wilson

Producer Rebecca Armstrong.

John Wilson talks to Sir Tom Jones, as he publishes his first autobiography (Over the Top and Back) and a new album (Long Lost Suitcase).

Antonia Quirke reviews The Lobster, a new film starring Colin Farrell and Olivia Coleman.

Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas turns the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern into a giant allotment.

And why are the films Spectre and Suffragette being released on a Monday?

Bafta-winning screenwriter Abi Morgan - best known for The Hour, a 2011 cold war espionage drama set in a 1956 television newsroom - discusses her new TV crime drama River, starring Stellan Skarsgård (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) as John River, a brilliant police officer whose genius and fault-line is the fragility of his mind.

Every five years, the British Art Show tours the UK to showcase the work of artists who are making an important contribution to the British art scene. This year, British Art Show 8 opens at Leeds Art Gallery and features the works of forty-two artists. Art critic Richard Cork takes a look at this year's show.

Rita Dove, the first African American Poet Laureate of America, talks to Kirsty ahead of delivering the Annual Poetry Society Lecture, and explains how poetry can bring hidden histories to light, using the case of the mixed race violinist George Bridgetower, to whom Beethoven first dedicated what we now call The Kreutzer Sonata.

Polish author Zygmunt Miloszewski, who regards crime fiction as the best literary form of exploring his society. His thriller 'Entanglement', is now available in English, and has been dramatized for Radio 4's 'Reading Europe' Season.

Presenter Kirsty Lang

Producer Ella-mai Robey.

Ted Hughes, The Unauthorised Life, a new biography by Jonathan Bate, has attracted attention because of its scandalous revelations about the poet's adulterous relationships; including the fact he was in bed with another woman the night Sylvia Path took her life. Jonathan Bate talks about the connection between the poet's life and work.

For more than 60 years Frank Auerbach has lived and worked in the same place, painting almost every day of his life. Tomorrow a major retrospective, of more than 70 of his portraits and landscapes, made almost abstract by his bold brushwork, opens at Tate Britain. The writer and art critic Sue Hubbard reviews.

Director Sarah Gavron on the film Suffragette, starring Carey Mulligan as a working class foot soldier of the feminist movement and Meryl Streep as Emmeline Pankhurst.

Beasts of No Nation, starring Idris Elba, is based on the novel by Nigerian author Uzodinma Iweala. The film follows the story of a child soldier trapped in the civil war of an unspecified African country. Elba, who made his name in The Wire and Luther, plays the warlord who leads the band of child soldiers into battle. The film, the first feature film acquired by Netflix, marks a new strategy in film distribution with a brief, limited cinema release before appearing on Netflix's home subscription service a week later. Briony Hanson reviews the film and discusses the changing landscape of feature film distribution.

John Wilson hosts the BBC National Short Story Award live from the BBC Radio Theatre. With special guests William Boyd and Ian Rankin.

This year's shortlisted authors are Hilary Mantel, Jeremy Page, Frances Leviston, Jonathan Buckley and Mark Haddon.

The winner of the £15000 prize will be announced by Chair of Judges, Allan Little.

The BBC National Short Story Award is presented in conjunction with BookTrust.

William Boyd's latest novel is Sweet Caress.