Front Row: Archive 2013

With John Wilson.Wilko Johnson, one of Britain's most charismatic guitarists, has terminal cancer, with doctors suggesting that he has less than a year to live. As he prepares for farewell UK concerts in March, he reflects on how his diagnosis has made him feel "vividly alive". And, guitar in hand, he demonstrates the distinctive terse sound which powered the band Dr Feelgood in the 1970s, when they became one of the UK's most influential live acts.To mark the centenary of the birth of painter William Scott, the Tate St Ives is celebrating his life and art with an exhibition of his most important work. John talks to William Scott's son about his father's life and legacy, and how he influenced Rothko's decision to bequeath his paintings to the Tate.Henry James' classic horror story The Turn Of The Screw has been adapted by Benjamin Britten into an opera, produced as a ballet by William Tuckett, turned into a film starring Deborah Kerr and become several TV dramas. Now playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz has created

With Kirsty Lang.Alexei Sayle, often described as the godfather of alternative comedy, is returning to solo stand-up shows after a break of more than 16 years. Sayle, who was known throughout the 1980s for his politically charged rants, reflects on the reasons for his stage come-back, and gives his views on the current generation of comedians.Anna Maxwell Martin, Tamzin Outhwaite and Gina McKee star in Di And Viv And Rose, a play written by Amelia Bullmore, well-known to TV audiences for her own roles in Twenty Twelve and Scott and Bailey. The play examines the relationship between three women, from a university house-share in 1983 to the traumas of middle age. Novelist Naomi Alderman reviews.Violinist Vanessa-Mae is taking a year's sabbatical from performing, in order to try to qualify as a skier in the Thai Winter Olympics team. She explains her motives and talks about why she's prepared to risk - through possible injury - her musical career.The Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh celebrates its 50th birthday thi

With Mark Lawson.Steven Spielberg's film Lincoln has been nominated for 12 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. Daniel Day-Lewis is favourite to win Best Actor for his portrayal of the 16th American president Abraham Lincoln, as he fights to abolish slavery. Elaine Showalter reviews.Northern Irish crime novelist Adrian McKinty has just published the second book in his Sean Duffy trilogy. I Hear the Sirens in the Street features Duffy, a Catholic detective inspector in the RUC at the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. McKinty now lives in the US and Australia, and discusses his latest novel and his recent return to his home town of Carrickfergus, County Antrim, to discover that violence and demonstrations are still a potential feature of daily life.In the latest of Front Row's interviews with the winners of the Costa Book Awards, Hilary Mantel reflects on the continuing success of her novel Bring Up The Bodies, which also won the Man Booker Prize. She also discusses the forthcoming TV and

With Mark Lawson.Denzel Washington has won an Oscar nomination for his role in the film Flight. He plays an airline pilot who miraculously lands a stricken plane. At first he's hailed as a hero, but then questions start to arise about what actually happened. Denzel Washington reflects on the role, and his long Hollywood career.Manet: Portraying Life is the first major British exhibition of Edouard Manet's portraits - including 50 paintings as well as pastels and photographs from private and public collections from around the world. Novelist A S Byatt reviews.Bryan and Mary Talbot have won the biography category of this year's Costa Book Awards for their graphic memoir Dotter of her Father's Eyes. They discuss working as a husband and wife team and whether talking about work is banned at the dinner table.Producer Claire Bartleet.

With Mark Lawson. Jessica Chastain is nominated for an Oscar for her role in Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow's film about an elite military and intelligence team hunting for Osama Bin Laden. She discusses the demands of her role in a film which has generated controversy about the role of torture in the story. The death of film-maker Michael Winner was announced today. Barry Norman, who followed Winner's movie career from the 1960s onwards, and Andrew Neil, who first employed him as a restaurant reviewer on The Sunday Times, reflect on the life of a director and writer who readily re-invented himself, and was never afraid to say what he thought. Adam Ant today releases his first album for 18 years, and David Bowie recently issued his first new track in a decade. Alex Clark, Mark Eccleston and Kate Mossman discuss the authors, film-makers and musicians who leave long gaps between one work and the next. Producer Nicki Paxman.

With Kirsty Lang.The TV drama series Call the Midwife follows the working and personal lives of a team of midwives working in east London in the 1950s and is based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth. The second series starts on Sunday on BBC One. Writer and reviewer Dreda Say Mitchell reflects on its appeal, and whether it can sustain its success.Ruthie Henshall is an actress, singer and dancer and has starred in many popular musicals - including Les Miserables, Cats and Cabaret. She's about to begin a UK tour - where her show will include many of the greatest musical hits of the past 20 years. She discusses her career, and the demands made on musical theatre performers.What does an artist see in an election campaign? Nicola Green, whose silkscreen prints reflecting on Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign go on show today at the Walker Art Gallery, and photographer Simon Roberts, the official Artist for the UK's 2010 General Election, discuss their experiences of following politicians on the campaign trail

With Mark Lawson Kathleen Jamie won the 2012 Costa Poetry award for her collection The Overhaul. She translates some of the Scots dialect in the collection and explains why writing a poem is like washing the dishes. John Bramwell of I Am Kloot discusses the making of their new album Let It All In, which was produced by Elbow's Guy Garvey. John Berry, artistic director of the English National Opera discusses the company's financial woes, in the light of its recently-announced loss of more than £2m in the last financial year. Jo Blair, Senior Programmer for Picturehouse Cinemas, reveals the reasons why so many Oscar nominated films are being released late in the UK.

With John WilsonDame Liz Forgan is the outgoing Chair of Arts Council England. Last night in her final speech in the role, she said that culture was a deep necessity for human beings, and appealed to politicians not to cut the arts budget. Dame Liz will be in the Front Row studio for a live interview.Actor Brian Cox reveals what it was like working in his hometown of Dundee for the first time in the television adaptation of the Radio 4 comedy series Bob Servant. And the star of Manhunter explains why, whenever he meets Anthony Hopkins, they never discuss Hannibal Lecter, a role they both played to great acclaim on the big screen.Vikings have a reputation as marauders and invaders. A new exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh aims to show who they really were and how they lived a thousand years ago. Author Janice Galloway has been to the exhibition.David Bowie's new single Where are We Now? caused a sensation when it was released online last Tuesday. The song was accompanied by a video by N

With Mark Lawson.Columnist Bel Mooney reviews The Sessions, a film based on the true story of poet and journalist Mark O'Brien. O'Brien was paralysed by polio as a boy and at the age of 38 set out to finally lose his virginity with the help of a sex-worker. The Sessions is directed by Ben Lewin who himself is a survivor of childhood polio.The Kennedy dynasty is the focus of a new documentary Ethel, in which Ethel Skakel gives a candid interview about life with her late husband Robert Kennedy. The couple married in 1950, and the film charts their married life together and beyond, including the McCarthy hearings, Vietnam, John F Kennedy's election as president and his assassination, and Bobby own's assassination in 1963. Mark Damazer reviews the HBO documentary.Francesca Segal, who won the Costa First Novel Award for The Innocents, inspired by Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, discusses her novel which tells the story of the relationship between Adam and Rachel who live in the Jewish community of north-west

With Mark Lawson. In Quentin Tarantino's latest film Django Unchained, starring Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio, a slave-turned-bounty hunter sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner. Jacqueline Springer reviews. Jonathan Lynn was the co-writer behind the British satirical sitcoms Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister in the 1980s. As a new series of Yes, Prime Minister returns to our screens with a new cast including David Haig as Jim Hacker and Henry Goodman as Sir Humphrey, Jonathan Lynn looks back over more than 30 years of the political satire. And as he celebrates his 60th birthday, the actor and comedian John Sessions discusses his wide-ranging film, TV and stage career. Sessions, also an impressionist, recalls reactions from his subjects and what he's learnt from over 30 years in show business. Producer Jerome Weatherald.

With Kirsty Lang. A Mormon community in Lancashire provides the setting for The Friday Gospels, a novel by Betty Trask Prize-winner Jenn Ashworth. She was raised as a Mormon until she was a teenager, and she reflects on why she wanted to write about her experience as a British Mormon, when most literature focuses on American Mormon communities. My Mad Fat Diary is a new TV comedy drama series, based on the real life journals of Rae Earl, who recorded her teenage life in Lincolnshire. Stand-up comic Sharon Rooney stars as an overweight 16 year-old, recently released from a psychiatric hospital, and attempting to find a new circle of friends. Writer Grace Dent reviews. Cellist Matthew Barley is celebrating Benjamin Britten's centenary year with 100 concerts and workshops, with a focus on the composer's Third Suite For Cello - written for Rostropovich in 1971. Barley's tour, Around Britten, visits castles, hospices, lighthouses and a cave in the Peak District - as well as concert halls from Orkney to Devon. He t

With Mark Lawson. Nominations for the 2013 Oscars were announced this afternoon. Steven Spielberg's Lincoln heads the field with 12 nominations, followed by Life of Pi with 11. Film reviewers Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Chris Tookey discuss the contenders live in the studio. Cameron Mackintosh reflects on possible British success as one of the producers of the musical film Les Miserables, which has eight nominations. Animation directors Peter Lord and Sam Fell reveal stories behind their nominated films The Pirates! Band of Misfits and ParaNorman. Mark also talks to director David O Russell, whose Silver Linings Playbook has eight nominations and is the first film to be nominated in all four acting categories since 1981, and to Michael Haneke, whose Amour is shortlisted in five categories including Best Film and Best Director. Producer Nicki Paxman.

With John Wilson.David Cameron, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton and David Attenborough are among 135 people each reading a chapter a day of Herman Melville's epic novel Moby Dick, on a website curated by writer and whale enthusiast Philip Hoare. He talks about choosing an appropriate reading for the Prime Minister, and pairing chapters with works by artists such as Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor and Tony Oursler - director of the video for David Bowie's new single - who created today's image of a whale's eye.To mark the 150th birthday of the London Underground tomorrow, John and author Iain Sinclair go down the escalators to discuss the Tube's contribution to our culture, from the graphic-design, murals and architecture at the stations themselves, to the ways the Tube has cropped up in art, books and films - from Henry Moore's wartime drawings to American werewolves chasing hapless commuters.Utopia is a new TV thriller which focuses on a mysterious graphic novel and the sinister events that befall a group o

With Mark Lawson.Tom Hooper, director of the King's Speech, has now taken on one of the most successful musicals of all time, Les Miserables. Jason Solomons reviews the film in which actors, including Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe, had to sing live on set. The latest novel from Mo Yan, the Chinese winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize for literature, has been published in English before Chinese. Described as a "bizarre romp through the Chinese countryside" Pow! examines life in contemporary China. Alex Clark discusses Mo Yan's take on Chinese society. Ben Miller returns to our screens this evening in the second series of Death in Paradise, a quirky TV crime drama set on the island of Guadeloupe. He reflects on playing a British police inspector who finds he is a fish out of water when he lands a job as the island's new detective.Producer Olivia Skinner.

With Mark Lawson, Ryan Gosling and Sean Penn star in Gangster Squad, in which the Los Angeles police in the late 1940s battle a mafia boss. Penn plays a ruthless mobster opposite Gosling as an LAPD outsider, who tries to bring order to the streets by breaking the law. Kamila Shamsie reviews. Great Night Out is a new ITV comedy drama which focuses on four childhood friends, who are now in their mid-thirties and enjoy a weekly get-together in Stockport. The cast includes Ricky Tomlinson who plays the landlord of the local pub. Creators Mark Bussell and Justin Sbresni (The Worst Week of My Life) discuss finding humour in male relationships.Today the Royal Opera House is inviting live cameras into the backstage areas never normally visible to audiences. Online viewers can watch multiple rehearsals and interviews, and can even get involved by asking questions and submitting videos of themselves singing Va Pensiero from Nabucco. Opera critic Rupert Christiansen gives his verdict on this experiment in openness. Sall

Haim - the Los Angeles guitar trio of sisters - were announced this morning as the winners of the BBC Sound of 2013. Over 200 influential music experts, DJs, bloggers and music critics created a shortlist of 15 artists as their favourite new acts for the year ahead, and chose Haim as the winners, following in the footsteps of Adele, Ellie Goulding and Michael Kiwanuka. On the line from Los Angeles Haim give their response to the news.Mr Selfridge is ITV's new Sunday night drama - telling the story of the man behind the Oxford Street store and how it began in 1909. It stars the American actor Jeremy Piven in the title role and is written by Andrew Davies. The BBC's Economics Editor, Stephanie Flanders, reviews it. The Imposter was one of the best reviewed films of last year and the most popular documentary in British cinemas. The remarkable story of a Frenchman who assumes the identity of a missing American teenager is released on DVD next week and is reviewed by Sandra Hebron. Ten years after the National The

With Mark Lawson Comedian and actor Jack Whitehall was hardly off our screens in 2012 - playing a struggling newly-qualified teacher in self-penned sitcom Bad Education and as the über-posh JP in Channel 4's Fresh Meat. He explains how he destroyed his chances of playing Harry Potter and why it's his mum's fault he's obsessed with Robert Pattinson.Danish political TV drama Borgen - the second series of which starts this weekend - follows the attempts to form and maintain a coalition government by the female Prime Minister Birgitte Nyborg. Conservative Peer Michael Dobbs and Labour MP Gisela Stuart give their verdicts.Irish novelist Stuart Neville discusses his new historical thriller Ratlines, set in Ireland in the 1960s. When a German businessman is found murdered in a guest house, it transpires he is just one of a number of former Nazis granted asylum by the Irish government.Producer Jerome Weatherald.

With Mark Lawson, including the announcement of the category winners in the Costa Book Awards 2012 for novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children's book. As the new year gets underway, Skyfall director Sam Mendes, Fifty Shades author E L James, Bring up the Bodies writer Hilary Mantel, and presenter Clare Balding look ahead to what their own 2013 holds. And nominations for this year's Oscars are announced next week and likely nominees will be four films with disability at their centre; Rust and Bone, Amour, Untouchable and The Sessions. But how far do these big screen depictions represent a watershed in portrayals of severe disability? Critic Scott Jordan Harris assesses their impact.Producer Penny Murphy.

With John WilsonDigital technology is developing at a rapid pace. John investigates how new technology will shape how we experience culture in the coming year.Andy Serkis, who has recently reprised the role of Gollum in The Hobbit, has been so inspired by the technology behind some of his famous roles, that he has set up a studio to develop the art of performance capture in the UK. Serkis demonstrates the multiple ways in which technology can be used in films and video games.Neil Young explains why his dislike of the compressed sound offered by mp3 recordings has led him to invent his own digital music format, which he hopes will be more representative of a musician's performance.Discussing virtual theatre, art in a digital age and making their predictions for the future are technology writer Bill Thompson, Chair of Artangel and co-owner of Somethin' Else productions Paul Bennun and digital entrepreneur and product designer Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino.Producer Claire Bartleet.