Front Row

Golden Globe Award winner Ruth Wilson stars in the new BBC drama Mrs Wilson in a uniquely challenging role: she is playing her own grandmother, Alison Wilson. The drama follow Alison's investigation into the mysterious multiple lives of her husband Alec, which only come to light after his sudden death. TV critic Alison Graham gives her verdict. As veganism gains more popularity in the UK, we consider how it is applied to the art world; both in terms of how animals are represented and how animal products are used in creating work. We speak to novelist cultural academic Alex Lockwood from the University of Sunderland and Aisha Eveleigh who runs a vegan art festival Liberation Arts in Bristol. Plus Nigerian author Akwaeke Emezi on their debut novel, Freshwater, which is about a person inhabited by Igbo spirits. Emezi explains how the book explores ideas of identity using their own life experience and Nigerian mythology.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Hilary Dunn

We reveal this year's Costa Book Awards shortlists. Critics Alex Clark and Toby Lichtig 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 29 January 2019.Documentary maker Sean McAllister reveals what has happened in the week after his film, Northern Soul, was shown on BBC Two. He explains what has happened with Steve Arnott's Beats Bus after his crowdfunding page surpasses its target.Shoplifters, a warm-hearted Japanese film about a family of small-time crooks, won the top prize, the Palme d’Or, at this year’s Cannes Festival Film. As it is released into UK cinemas, cultural historian of Japan Dr Chris Harding gives his verdict on the film, its depiction of contemporary Tokyo and the controversy around its success.The Ben Uri Gallery and Museum has seen eleven members of its international advisory panel, including Sir Nicholas Serota – Chair of the Arts Council - resign in protest over the sales of artworks from their collection. David Glasser, the Executive Chair of Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, discusses why he thinks selling works is the only way ensure the establishment’s future.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Ben Mitchell

Kurt Russell, whose credits include The Thing, Escape from New York and The Hateful Eight, discusses his new role as Santa Claus in the new Netflix family film The Christmas Chronicles. Russell looks back over his five-decade acting career, including the time he worked with Elvis and Walt Disney as a child actor.Poet Ruth Fainlight talks about her new collection Somewhere Else Entirely, her first book in eight years and the first since the death of Alan Sillitoe, her husband of 50 years. Several of the works in Fainlight’s collection serve as elegies to him, a meditation on mortality and memory in poetry and prose .Damien Hirst's latest artwork has been unveiled outside a hospital in Qatar - fourteen large bronze sculptures that graphically chart the journey from conception to birth. Layla Ibrahim Bacha, the Art Specialist for the Qatar Foundation who commissioned the controversial artworks, talks to John Wilson from Doha.Presenter John Wilson Producer Jerome Weatherald

Marianne Faithfull released her first record in 1965 and now aged 71 she's releasing her 21st. Titled Negative Capability, the album is inspired by loss, ageing, and love. She discusses being misunderstood, her refusal to live in the past, and why this album is her most honest.Last night Holly Willoughby made her I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! presenting debut in what is the first series not to be hosted by both Ant and Dec since the show began in 2002. Convicted of drink-driving earlier this year, Ant stepped down from all presenting duties alongside his friend and long-time presenting partner Dec. TV writer Louis Wise reviews if Dec and Holly can re-capture that on screen magic.As part of our art and mental health series we talk with digital artist Kirsty Latoya. Diagnosed with depression at the age of 13 she turned to drawing to help express her thoughts and feelings. With her first collection, Reflections of Me, she combines both her passions of art and poetry in the hope to help others also struggling with mental health issues.A tweet from Broadhursts Books in Southport has gone viral since a children's book was sold on Saturday afternoon after sitting on the shelf for 27 years. Joanne Ball, who sold the book, talks about the reaction.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Hannah Robins

Jane Fonda, the two-time Academy Award-winning actress, film producer, political activist and fitness guru, looks back at her 60 year career with Kirsty Lang. The feminist classic film 9 to 5, about three female office workers who take on their chauvinist boss, is being rereleased in cinemas. Jane Fonda, who produced and stars in the film, explains how she came up with the idea, cast Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton in the other lead roles and why it's a comedy. We also speak to Lily Tomlin about her friendship with Jane Fonda. As well as working together on 9 to 5, the two actresses star in the Netflix sitcom Grace and Frankie, and have even co-presented a TED Talk about the importance of female friendships. Plus film critics Helen McGill and Jason Solomons look back at Fonda’s career. From Barbarella to The China Syndrome, from Klute to Monster-in-Law, we examine how this actress reinvented herself on screen and her cultural and political impact beyond cinema.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Kate Bullivant

In Sebastian Barry’s inaugural speech as Laureate for Irish Fiction earlier this year, he stated that Ireland was in a 'golden age of prose'. As Northern Irish writer Anna Burns scooped the Man Booker Prize for her novel Milkman last month, Front Row hears voices from the No Alibis bookstore in Belfast. We speak to former Irish Laureate and Booker Prize winner Anne Enright; Professor of Irish History and Literature, Roy Foster; award-winning, Belfast-born writer Lucy Caldwell; and writer, editor and journalist Sinead Gleeson. They discuss the renaissance in Irish writing, its roots in Irish storytelling and love of language, and how the border - now at the heart of the Brexit debate - is being written about by a new generation of writers, north and south.And Front Row exclusively announces the winner of this year's Hepworth Sculpture Prize, hearing live from the victor and from the Chief Curator of The Hepworth Wakefield, Andrew Bonacina. This year’s shortlist includes Mona Hatoum, Michael Dean, Phillip Lai, Magali Reus, and Cerith Wyn Evans.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Sarah Johnson

Arts education has become the focus of a great deal of passion and concern recently, since the core, knowledge-based subjects took precedence over the creative subjects when the EBacc was introduced in England by the then Education Minister Michael Gove, announced in 2010.With the arts not being a requirement in the GCSE syllabus for the English Baccalaureate (the EBacc), leaders in the arts and the lucrative creative industries have been very vocal in their criticism of government policy.Stig Abell chairs a discussion on the subject from a state secondary school - Soar Valley College in Leicester - with leading figures in arts and education.On the panel are:Bob and Roberta Smith, contemporary artist and education advocate Deborah Annetts, Chief Executive of the Incorporated Society of Musicians (the ISM)Trina Haldar, graduate in chemistry and engineering, and director and founder of Leicester-based Mashi Theatre Branwen Jeffreys, BBC’s Education EditorMark Lehain, founder (and former headteacher) of one of the first secondary Free Schools. He also leads the Parents and Teachers for Excellence campaignJulie Robinson, headteacher of Soar Valley College in LeicesterCarl Ward, Chief Exec of the City Learning Trust, a partnership of schools teaching a combined total of 6000 pupils in Stoke-on-TrentPresenter: Stig Abell Producers: Edwina Pitman and Jerome Weatherald

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is the second in the Fantastic Beasts film franchise from JK Rowling which explores the Wizarding World before Harry Potter. Eddie Redmayne and Johnny Depp star, and Jude Law joins the cast as a young Dumbledore. James Walters, Head of the Department of Film at the University of Birmingham reviews. As CAPSID, a new exhibition which explores how viruses behave, opens in Manchester, Front Row brought together the artist behind it, John Walter, and scientist turned artist, Dr Lizzie Burns to discuss the appeal of making art inspired by the microbiological world.Fernand Léger is the subject of a new exhibition at Tate Liverpool. Leger's work moved between many of the great art movements of the 20th century - Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism - but retained his own distinctive style. Fernand Léger: New Times, New Pleasures is the first major exhibition dedicated to the artist in the UK in 30 years. Art Critic Laura Robertson explains his significance.Adapting 1902 novel Heart Of Darkness for the stage in 2018 - theatre company Imitating The Dog has turned Joseph Conrad's famous story on its head, swapping the African Congo for war-torn Europe, narrator Charles Marlow for a black female private detective, and using digital film and a dual narrative on stage. To discuss this creative reimaging and how it tackles the novel’s issues with race and colonialism, John is joined by Co-Artistic Director Andrew Quick, and Keicha Greenidge, who plays the lead role.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Getting butterflies is something many performers admit to, and although some thrive off it, others are often more badly affected. Professor of Performance Science, Aaron Williamon and West End psychologist Dr Anna Colton discuss the power of stage fright and how to overcome it.This week Channel 4 airs a true crime drama about Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer who in 1999 shot dead a burglar at his Norfolk farmhouse. His actions and subsequent murder trial sparked a national debate about householders' rights to protect their property. The drama, however, does not focus on the furore surrounding the case, instead the script is taken verbatim from police interviews with Tony Martin. Crime writer Dreda Say Mitchell gives her verdict. Joel and Ethan Coen discuss their latest feature The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a six-part anthology film made up of tales about the American frontier, starring a plethora of big names including Liam Neeson, Tom Waits and James Franco. Each of the stories, which were written over a 25 year period, pay homage to a different subgenre of movie about the American West, in the Coen Brothers’ characteristic style.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Kate Bullivant

Helena Bonham Carter discusses how she drew on her own experience of depression for her new film 55 Steps which is based on the life of Eleanor Riese. Riese was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 25 and successfully sued a hospital in San Francisco for the right to refuse anti-psychotic medication. At the time of her court case in 1989 Riese was 44, and had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for several years. This interview is part of Front Row’s occasional series exploring the way in which mental health issues are represented across the arts.What ho! Ben Schott talks about taking on PG Wodehouse’s beloved characters Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves in his new novel, Jeeves and The King of Clubs. Schott argues that the pair becoming spies in pre-war London and taking part in car chases is all in the spirit of their creator.11-11: Memories Retold is the first full-length video game to come from Wallace and Gromit creators, Aardman Animations. Set in the final days of WWI it follows a young Canadian photographer and German soldier who, uniquely for a wargame, never fire a shot. Gaming expert Jordan Erica Webber reviews.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Hilary Dunn