Saturday Review

Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino's Oscar-nominated, Spaghetti Western-inspired take on slavery and the antebellum Southern states starring Jamie Foxx and Samuel L Jackson, has aroused praise and controversy in almost equal measure.

As The View from The Shard is about to open to the public, reviewers Philip Hensher, Louise Doughty and Pat Kane ask why we feel the need to build - and go - high. Les Miserables moves from the stage to the big screen in Tom Hooper's new film, famously asking of its stellar cast including Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway that they sing live on set - has the decision paid off? In the Old Vic tunnels under Waterloo Station, the actress Fiona Shaw and dancer Daniel Hay-Gordon perform The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. There are literary tricks and questions about identity in First Novel by Nicholas Royle (it's not his first novel, for starters). And Dennis Kelly, one of the writers of the musical Matilda, has created a new drama for Channel 4, Utopia. Does its blend of mystery, suspense, humour and violence come off? Presented by Tom Sutcliffe. Producer: Sarah Johnson.

2012 saw some extraordinary television comedy highs, especially in returning series. Some looked at the state of the nation: The Thick of It, Getting On and Twenty Twelve. Some, like Peep Show and Fresh Meat, simply made people laugh. Saturday Review celebrates the best of the comedy year just gone, highlighting performances by Peter Capaldi, Jessica Hynes and Joanna Scanlan. And what's next for comedy? Is there still room for the family sitcom? New, celebrated comedy from Sky has included Hunderby and Moone Boy - are they leading the way on commissioning? One of the creators and stars of Getting On, Vicki Pepperdine, joins Tom Sutcliffe, along with Peep Show and Fresh Meat co-writer Sam Bain, David Quantick and Natalie Haynes.

Producer: Sarah Johnson.

Life of Pi, Yann Martel's 2002 Booker winner, was reputed to be unfilmable. But now Ang Lee has attempted to prove everyone wrong with an extraordinary 3D and CGI display that brings not just a boy and a tiger to life, but a whole ocean. How effective is it in telling the story?

There are two television offerings: The Girl is a film starring Toby Jones and Sienna Miller as Alfred Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren which will go out on BBC 2 on Boxing Day. It focuses on their relationship during the making of The Birds, when Hedren had to endure days of live birds being thrown at her as well as Hitchcock's unwanted attentions. Restless, beginning on BBC1 on December 27, is an adaptation of a novel by William Boyd, starring Hayley Atwell, Charlotte Rampling, Rufus Sewell and Michelle Dockery, well known for her role as Lady Mary in Downton Abbey. It is based on the reality of how Britain spied during the Second World War.

At the Trafalgar Studios in London a new version by Conor McPherson of Strindberg's The Dance of Death, a depiction of a claustrophobic marriage starring Kevin McNally, Indira Varma and Daniel Lapaine, provides an antidote to Christmas fare.

Finally, Tenth of December, a collection of short stories from George Saunders, of whom Zadie Smith has said, "Not since Twain has America produced a satirist this funny with a prose style this fine".

With Tom Sutcliffe and reviewers Kathryn Hughes, Misha Glenny and Sarah Hall.

Sarfraz Manzoor and his guests, writers Aminatta Forna and David Benedict and actor Kerry Shale, review the week's cultural highlights.

The latest Peter Jackson film is the first in a three part adaptation of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit. Set in Middle Earth 60 years before "The Lord of the Rings", the story follows Bilbo Baggins (Martin Friedman) as he sets out on an epic quest to reclaim stolen dwarf treasure from the dragon Smaug. On the way he clashes swords with Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers not to mentioned Gollum.

There's a new exhibition of drawings and prints by renowned artist and illustrator Quentin Blake, who turns eighty this month. None of the work on display here will have been seen before, and none are illustrations of books, but are entirely derived from the artist's imagination and observations.

The play In the Republic of Happiness, by Martin Crimp, is a violent satire on contemporary obsessions that follows the unexpected return of a long-lost uncle one family Christmas. This event provides an opportunity to explore the dark underside of the contemporary demand for happiness.

Flight Behaviour, the new novel by Orange Prize winner Barbara Kingsolver, tells the story of a woman attempting to escape her empty marriage and the drudgery of life on a rundown Appalachian farm. En route to a tryst with a lover, Dellarobia Turnbow stumbles on a hillside covered with swathes of orange monarch butterflies that appear like fire on the landscape, an event that will transform her life.

In a BBC documentary Michael Grade explores the rich history of the very British Pantomime Dame. From the extravagant productions in Drury Lane in the 19th Century to the vintage performances by Terry Scott and Arthur Askey, the Pantomime Dame has always been anarchic, witty, vulgar, affectionate and good box office.

Producer: Anne-Marie Cole.

Martin McDonagh's latest film Seven Psychopaths is his follow-up to the hit In Bruges. It's just as blood-soaked, but it's left Belgium behind for the more traditional movie settings of LA and the American desert, as screenwriter Marty, played by Colin Farrell, struggles to write a script for his film that has only a name: Seven Psychopaths. Do a star-studded cast and some fabulous lines add up to another great film?

A highly-anticipated all-women production by Phyllida Lloyd of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at the Donmar Warehouse includes cast members from the prison theatre group Clean Break, along with stars Harriet Walter, Frances Barber and the increasingly acclaimed Cush Jumbo.

Herta Muller is the Romanian-born German novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009. Her latest book, "The Hunger Angel", is a powerful account of life in the labour camps to which thousands of the German population in Romania were sent after 1945. To write it she spoke at length to a poet, Oskar Pastior, who was himself deported to such a life - as was Muller's own mother.

There's a new exhibition at the Royal Academy: Constable, Turner, Gainsborough and the Making of Landscape. Does the rise of British landscape painting in the 18th century have any resonance with our own attitudes towards the land?

And "Loving Miss Hatto", a new film for television written by Victoria Wood, is her version of an extraordinary story about the relationship between the pianist Joyce Hatto and her adoring husband Barry. It led him to carry out what has been called "the greatest music fraud ever".

Joining Tom Sutcliffe this week to review are the journalist Miranda Sawyer, writer Gillian Slovo and poet Cahal Dallat

Producer: Sarah Johnson.

Sharp, critical discussion of the week's cultural events with Tom Sutcliffe and guests Patrick Gale, John Mullan and Bidisha.

They'll be talking about the new dark caravaning comedy film Sightseers written by and starring Alice Lowe and Steve Oram and directed by Ben Wheatley, who made his name with Kill List.

Does Alexander Pushkin's Boris Godunov, Michael Boyd's last production for the RSC as artistic director, bear comparison with Shakespeare?

There's a new TV documentary behind the scenes of the luxury hotel Claridge's, made by the acclaimed filmmaker Jane Treays: "Inside Claridge's". It's the first time cameras have been allowed behind their doors, so how revealing is it?

A new permanent furniture gallery at London's Victoria and Albert Museum showcases many of the items that have previously only been in storage.

And books from Susie Boyt - "The Small Hours" - and Emma Tennant - "The Beautiful Child" - share a debt to Henry James.

Producer: Sarah Johnson.

Tom Sutcliffe and guests Lionel Shriver, Alex Preston and Jim White discuss the week's cultural highlights including Pinero's farce The Magistrate. This production marks the first time that American actor John Lithgow has appeared at the National Theatre - he is best known to English audiences for his role in the US sitcom Third Rock From The Sun.

David Ayer's cop flick "End of Watch" is a fast-paced action thriller, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena with the aim of presenting Los Angeles Police Department as it "really is".

In Michael Kimball's novel "Big Ray" a middle aged man comes to terms with his father's death. Told in five hundred brief entries, it's written in the form of a memoir, detailing the narrator's abuse at the hands of a father who was defined by his obesity and his violence.

"Gaiety is the Most Outstanding Feature of the Soviet Union" is the title of one of two exhibitions opening at the Saatchi Gallery in London. It takes its name from a quote by Joseph Stalin and highlights work by an exciting group of 20 artists who have recently emerged in Russia. The second exhibition "Breaking The Ice: Moscow Art, 1960s-80s" features leading underground artists who lived and worked in Moscow during a period described as a "golden renaissance" in Russian art.

The Fear is a new mini-series on Channel 4, starring Peter Mullan as Brighton crime boss turned entrepreneur and Anastasia Hille as his wife. Pursuing his dream of rebuilding Brighton's derelict West Pier, Richie Beckett's hard-earned respectability is threatened by two new enemies: an invading Albanian mafia and an aggressive form of early onset dementia. It's written by Richard Cottan (Wallander, Hancock & Joan) and also stars Richard E Grant.

Producer: Hilary Dunn.

Tom Sutcliffe and guests Boyd Tonkin, Kevin Jackson and Monique Roffey discuss the cultural highlights of the week including The Effect by Lucy Prebble which opens at London's National Theatre with Billie Piper in the leading role. Lucy Prebble is the award winning writer of Enron,which explored financial malpractice in one of America's largest corporations. In "The Effect" Prebble takes on more major themes: how society treats the mentally ill, what we understand about the brain and what are the effect of drugs upon our emotions, particularly on love.

Amour - or Love - is the title of Austrian director Michael Haneke's new film and won him his second Palme D'Or at Cannes this year, the first being for "The White Ribbon" in 2008. Starring octogenarians Jean-Louis Trintignant, for whom the film was written, and Emmanuelle Riva, the film explores the effect on the couple's relationship when Anne, played by Riva, suffers a series of incapacitating strokes. Isabelle Hupert plays their daughter Eva.

Internationally renowned author of "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" Oliver Sack's new book "Hallucinations" explores a phenomenon many people assume are only suffered by the insane. Sack's account reveals that hallucinations are linked to a variety of causes in people with no mental illness, including sensory deprivation, intoxication, fever, injury and migraine. Dr Sacks weaves together the stories of his patients and his own mind altering experiences to tell us more about the structure and organisation of our brains.

The Richard Harris Collection "Death A Self Portrait" opens at the Wellcome Institute in London and includes over 300 treasures from a unique collection devoted to our complex and contradictory attitudes towards death. Rare artists' prints are displayed together with anatomical illustrations and sentimental postcards, human remains join Renaissance vanitas paintings and Mexican papier-mache sculptures celebrating the Day of the Dead showing that death remains a source of powerful inspiration for many artists today.

And BBC Storyville, working with more than 70 broadcasters round the world, is hosting a debate about contemporary poverty with Why Poverty? A series of 8 ground breaking international documentaries screened in 180 countries to explore why, in the 21st century, a billion people still live in poverty.

Producer: Hilary Dunn.

Tom Sutcliffe and guests - the novelist Tracy Chevalier, critic Sarfraz Manzoor and director of the Serpentine Gallery Julia Peyton-Jones - discuss the cultural highlights of the week, including Alan Bennett's new play "People" starring Frances de la Tour and Linda Bassett which opens at the National Theatre this week. The play explores the theme of heritage Britain and the price we put on privacy - through the prism of analysing available options for elderly sisters occupying a grand stately home in an advanced state of decay.

Ben Affleck directs and stars in Argo, a feature film which manages to be both political thriller and hilarious satire on the movie business itself. It's based on a real story in which the CIA funds a fake science fiction movie in order to rescue six fugitive Americans holed up in the Canadian Ambassador's house as the Iranian revolution reaches boiling point in November 1979. Can a fake bad film make a real good one?

The Taj Mahal is one of the Wonders of the World - but how much do we know about the culture that created it? Mughal India, Art Culture and Empire at the British Library is the first exhibition to document the entire historical period of the Mughals - one of the greatest dynasties of world history - from the 16th to the 19th century, through more than 200 exquisite manuscripts and the finest paintings drawn almost exclusively from the British Library's extensive heritage collection. At its peak the empire encompassed India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

Michael Winterbottom has made 17 films in 15 years - his latest, Everyday, was made for Channel 4 and shot over a period of five years. Starring Shirley Henderson and John Simm, with four children from the same North Norfolk family - it's shot in their home and at their school - the film explores the effect a long term prison sentence has on the wife and children of the offender.

The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vasquez won Spain's top literary prize 2011 - the Alfaguara is also one of the richest prizes in the world, with prize money at over £100,000. The author was born in 1973 and says that the relationship his country has with the drug trade has shaped his life. The book is set in the 1990s when the war between drug baron Pablo Escobar and the government who were trying to stop his illegal activities was at its height.

Producer: Hilary Dunn.