Front Row

Roy Williams joins Samira Ahmed to talk about Death of England: Delroy. Just before Lockdown 2, this play’s opening night became its closing night. The understudy Michael Balogun had just stepped into the role. Luckily the press and audience loved it, and the film of that performance will be available on the National Theatre’s youtube channel this Friday. Directed by Clint Dyer, and written by Roy Williams and Clint Dyer, this powerful monologue explores the experiences of a working class Black British man who has been told by his best friend that he ‘will never be one of us’. Fred D’Aguiar spent his childhood in Guyana, his teens in South London and now lives in California. All this experience is distilled in his novels, plays and, especially, his many books of poetry. We talk to him about his new collection, Letters to America which addresses his adopted country in poems such as ‘Burning Paradise’ and ‘Downtown L.A’, but also Britain and the Caribbean, with work influenced by Philip Larkin, Derek Walcott and Calypso. Digga D is a twenty year old star of the UK Drill music scene on the brink of global fame and fortune. He has also been convicted and imprisoned for planning a knife attack. A new BBC Three documentary follows him as he leaves prison and attempts to return to his recording career. Can he rehabilitate himself in spite of being saddled with a Criminal Behaviour Order that means the police vet his lyrics line by line? And can Drill music escape its connection to gangs and violence? We’ll ask the journalist Andre Johnson, presenter and director of Terms and Conditions, a YouTube commissioned documentary about the UK Drill scene.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May Studio Manager: Emma Harth

We exclusively reveal and analyse the 2020 Costa Book Prize shortlists. Critics Alex Clark and Jade Cuttle discuss the books chosen in the five categories: Novel, First Novel, Poetry, Biography and Children's fiction. Category winners will appear on the programme in January and Front Row will announce the overall prize-winner on 26 January 2021.Guy Garvey from Elbow reports on what he said to MPs earlier today during the DCMS inquiry into the rise of music streaming services and the effect on musicians themselves. Are artists being fairly re-numerated or does the business model of streaming need an urgent overhaul? Simon Russell Beale, always a busy actor, gives his voice to Scrooge in a new dance-film version of A Christmas Carol directed by Jacqui and David Morris and will be giving his voice, and the rest of him, playing the epitome of meanness in Nicholas Hytner’s new production – with just three actors – at the Bridge Theatre. He talks to Irenosen about performing the role in the film and in the theatre, navigating the arc from misanthropy to philanthropy – and how to say ‘Bah, humbug’ as if no one has ever said that before.Presenter: Irenosen Okojie Producer: Jerome Weatherald

On Front Row last week, Douglas Stuart was awarded the 2020 Booker Prize for Fiction for Shuggie Bain, his debut novel about a boy in 1980s Glasgow who supports his mother as she struggles with addiction. Tonight Douglas Stuart talks in-depth with John Wilson about his extraordinary journey from Glasgow to becoming a fashion designer in New York and now a best-selling novelist, after being rejected by more than 30 publishers. Plus we announce the winner of this year’s George Devine Award – the £15,000 prize for an original stage play. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy Prossermain image: Douglas Stuart Image credit: Martyn Pickersgill

Tim Minchin - the Australian actor, comedian, performer, musician, and composer and lyricist of the Olivier Award-winning RSC stage show Matilda The Musical – discusses his first solo album Apart Together, the themes he chooses to reflect on, and his approach to composition.Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 are in the shops. The much-anticipated new generation of gaming consoles has arrived seven years after the previous iteration. We review both consoles as well as new games Spiderman: Miles Morales and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla with video games broadcaster and writer Aoife Wilson.Travel writer and journalist Jan Morris, whose death was announced today at the age of 94, is remembered by fellow travel writer Horatio Clare.British actor Nicholas Pinnock on his leading role in the American TV drama series For Life, in which he plays a prisoner who trains to become a lawyer whilst incarcerated.Presenter Tom Sutcliffe Producer Jerome Weatherald

Live from the Roundhouse, London, Front Row brings you the 2020 Booker Prize ceremony. Who will be the winner of the £50,000 prize for fiction in this extraordinary year?Taking part in the socially distanced proceedings will be Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, last year's winners Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo, chair of judges Margaret Busby, HRH The Duchess of Cornwall, former President of the United States Barack Obama - and of course, the winner. The evening will be hosted by Front Row's John Wilson and broadcast simultaneously on BBC iPlayer.The shortlisted authors and titles are: Diane Cook, The New Wilderness Tsitsi Dangarembga, This Mournable Body Avni Doshi, Burnt Sugar Maaza Mengiste, The Shadow King Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain Brandon Taylor, Real Life Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Sarah Johnson

Gillian Anderson on her technique for perfecting Margaret Thatcher’s distinctive voice in the fourth season of The Crown, and the recent debate the TV series has ignited over what is fact and fiction. South Georgia is a remote, windswept and icy Antarctic island, with no permanent population. But much of the industrial whaling industry was based here until the 1960s, when there were scarcely any whales left to slaughter. Now, though, whales are returning. Rats and mice that came with the whaling ships and ate chicks in their nests and burrows have been eradicated, and the seabirds are flourishing. To mark this history and celebrate the change there's been a competition to create an artwork on the site of the Grytviken whaling station. We speak to the Scottish sculptor Michael Visocchi about his inspiration and plans.We’ll soon know who has been awarded the 2020 Booker Prize. Novelist Sara Collins, whose debut The Confessions of Frannie Langton won the 2019 Costa First Novel Award, Ellah Wakatama, Editor at Large at Canongate, and literary critic John Self discuss the role of literary prizes with the BBC’s Elle Osili-Wood on the eve of one of the biggest highlights of the literary calendar.Producer: Julian May Presenter: Kirsty LangMain image: Gillian Anderson as Margaret thatcher in The Crown Image credit: Des Willie/Netflix

Patrick is a black comedy from Belgium set in a woodland nudist camp. After his father dies and leaves him to run the campsite, Patrick’s favourite hammer is stolen, and he finds himself on an existential quest as he attempts to recover his beloved tool. The film is by Tim Mielants who directed the third series of Peaky Blinders. Briony Hanson gives us her verdict. The Dublin residence known as The House Of The Dead because James Joyce used it as the setting for part of his 1914 short story The Dubliners is in the news because developers want to turn it into a 50-bed hostel. Many important Irish writers have objected, saying that it would 'destroy an essential part of Ireland’s cultural history'. Colm Tóibín explains why he thinks the development shouldn’t go ahead. The poet Christopher Reid won the Costa Book of the Year in 2009 with A Scattering, in which he reflected on the death of his wife Lucinda. Today he discusses his new collection The Late Sun, in which he also memorialises those recently departed, including his mother, but also celebrates the vitality of living, as well as travel and the reality of the day-to-day experience.Scottish singer songwriter Amy Macdonald talks about her fifth album The Human Demands, which spans a range of emotions, from the happiness of falling in love to a feeling of loneliness. Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Oliver Jones

Fela Kuti was the creator of Afrobeat – a blend of traditional Yoruba and Caribbean music with funk and jazz that exhilarated the global music scene in the 1970s and gave rise more recently to the Afrobeats scene from Burna Boy to Tiwa Savage. A new documentary by the Nigerian novelist and playwright Biyi Bandele aims to chart Fela Kuti’s rise to fame and politicisation in 1960s Lagos and the US. As Nigerians march the streets to protest at police brutality, using Fela Kuti’s music as a backdrop, Samira talks to Biyi Bandele about his musical and political legacy. With the Booker shortlist featuring books which deal with trauma – from Diana Cook’s The New Wilderness following a mother trying to keep her daughter safe after an environmental disaster and Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain about a childhood blighted by poverty and addiction in 1980s Glasgow we explore the issues for writers in writing about trauma in both fiction and non fiction with writers Meg Rosoff and Monique Roffey and the critic Suzi Feay.The Queen’s Gambit is a new miniseries on Netflix which tells the story of a young female chess genius. It’s being hailed as “one of their best ever shows” but how is a drama about 32 chess pieces and 64 black and white squares so compelling? Roisin O’Connor is a big fan and eager to tell everyone how wonderful it is.Main image: Fela Kuti Image credit: Ian Dickson/Redferns

The Simpsons is the longest running scripted primetime TV show ever. As season 31 kicks off in the UK we explore its potent popularity with comedian and fan David Baddiel and writer, producer, and story editor on thes how Tim Long who’s worked on more than 450 episodesPhotographer Simon Phipps discusses his book Brutal North, a celebration of modernist and brutalist architecture in the north of England. The post-war years saw the building of some of the most aspirational and successful modernist architecture in the world, from Newcastle’s Byker Wall Estate to the Preston bus station, completed in 1969. But how vulnerable are these buildings today?British film director Steve McQueen has achieved Oscar success but his latest project sees him returning to the small screen with a series of five new dramas for BBC TV, set in London’s West Indian community between 60s and the 80s.Jenny Sturgeon’s new album is inspired by and takes its title from Nan Shepherd’s book about the Cairngorms, The Living Mountain, which, though slender, has had a profound influence, changing the way we relate to high and wild places. There are 12 chapters and Sturgeon has written a song for each. She talks about recording them in the mountains, with a backing track of natural sounds. She tells, too, the story of her guitar, made from local materials – an old shelf from a local bar and even heather and lichen growing in the Cairngorms. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Julian May

We conclude our tour of the novels shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020 tonight with a final book group where listeners put their questions to Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life. A campus novel and a coming-of-age story, it tells the experiences of a gay, Black doctoral student in a predominantly White, PhD programme at a supposedly enlightened American university.With part of Sir Malcolm Arnold’s archive under threat of destruction by the Ministry of Justice, cellist Julian Lloyd Webber argues that these papers are important to the 20th Century British composer’s legacy. Throughout the period of two lockdowns, self-isolation and working from home, we’ve been hearing from individuals in the creative industries about something that has given them a lot of pleasure, and occasionally brought them solace, in these challenging times. Tonight it’s the turn of Nick Park, the Oscar-winning creator of Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run, and many other Aardman classics, to reveal his personal Lockdown Discovery. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Oliver Jones Studio Manager: Donald MacDonald