Front Row

Mortal Engines is a new sci-fi fantasy film co-written and produced by Peter Jackson, based on the first in a series of young adult steampunk novels by Philip Reeve. In a post-apocalyptic future, mobile cities on huge caterpillar tracks roam the landscape, consuming smaller towns for their resources. Starring Hera Hilmar as Hester Shaw, the film is the directorial debut of long-time Jackson collaborator Christian Rivers. Katie Popperwell reviews.In a year when housing has risen up the political agenda, Richard Gregory, artistic director of Quarantine theatre company, and performance artist Grace Surman discuss Tenancy, part of a Manchester-led international project which explores the changing nature of cities by artists taking over a residential home for a year.The work of the Chinese photographer Ren Hang found admirers worldwide and was championed by Ai Weiwei, though the Chinese authorities were less enamoured. Almost two years after his death at the age of 29 and with the first show of his work in the UK premiering at Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, Laura Robertson, critical writer-in-residence at the gallery discusses Ren Hang’s significance. When Martin Jenkinson was made redundant from the Sheffield steel industry in 1979, it was the start of a four decade-long career as a professional photographer whose first subject was his adopted city. His pictures of the 1984 – 85 miners’ strike were widely published in the national press. Years later they would catch the eye of Turner-prizewinning artist Jeremy Deller who worked with Jenkinson on his recreation of The Battle of Orgreave. Art critic Orla Foster reviews the new retrospective of Jenkinson’s photographs at Weston Park Museum in Sheffield.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Tamara Lawrance stars in new BBC One drama The Long Song, an adaption of the Andrea Levy novel set on a sugar plantation during the final days of slavery in 19th century Jamaica. The actress talks about the drama as well as her career so far, which in the three years since leaving drama school has seen her play Viola in Twelfth Night at the National Theatre, Cordelia opposite Ian McKellen's Lear in Chichester and Prince Harry’s republican girlfriend in BBC One’s Charles III. Meet Vermeer is a new initiative between The Hague's Mauritshuis gallery and Google Arts and Culture which brings together all 36 authenticated works of 17th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer in an augmented reality experience viewable via the Google Arts and Culture app on a smartphone. Art critic Estelle Lovatt reviews the virtual museum and chooses some of her favourite art apps.Matty Healy, frontman for The 1975 discusses the band’s third album A Brief Enquiry into Online Relationships which looks at addiction, depression and social media. Matty, who is almost 30, explains why the band connects so strongly with their huge teenage fan base and why the album represents the millennial generation.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Edwina Pitman

As Bruce Springsteen nears the end of his 236-show run in New York, Kate Mossman reviews Springsteen on Broadway, the new Netflix film of his stage show based on his autobiography Born to Run, in which he looks back on his life and performs songs on acoustic guitar and piano.From James Bond nemesis Blofeld to Scar from the Lion King – facial disfigurements have long been commonplace for cinematic villains. A new campaign by the charity Changing Faces and the BFI, I Am Not Your Villain, wants to end the use of “scars, burns or marks as shorthand for villainy”. Kirsty talks to Changing Faces CEO Becky Hewitt and film podcaster Mike Muncer.Sarah Shaffi selects the most beautiful books to buy as presents this Christmas. In the age of streaming music and films, do books make better gifts? And theatre critic Lyn Gardner discusses the difficult financial situation facing the Liverpool Everyman Theatre, which has announced the closure of its repertory theatre company. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Timothy Prosser

Screenwriter Jimmy McGovern talks about his new BBC One drama Care, starring Sheridan Smith, Alison Steadman and Sinead Keenan, which looks at the personal challenges of caring for a parent with dementia and the struggle to find good and affordable care.Cuban performance artist Tania Bruguera talks to us from her home in Havana and explains why she is continuing to protest over Decree 349, a new law that will require artists to obtain a government licence, despite Bruguera being arrested twice this week by the authorities. BBC Correspondent in Havana, Will Grant, explains the context and implications of the new law. How can the arts help people with insomnia? We speak to two artists making work to fall asleep to – Richard Talbot of band Marconi Union, who worked with a sound therapist to write the soporific track Weightless, and Phoebe Smith, Sleep Storyteller-in-Residence for the sleep app Calm.Presenter John Wilson Producer Edwina Pitman

Maggi Hambling discusses her new exhibition The Quick and the Dead at Jerwood Gallery in Hastings, which centres on paintings and drawings made over the past decade, in which she has portrayed four fellow artists - Sebastian Horsley, Sarah Lucas, Julian Simmons and Juergen Teller - whose lives have intersected at various points, and who have created their own reciprocal artistic interpretations.Nearly 40 years ago, three white Jewish teenagers called Adam Horovitz, Adam Yauch and Michael Diamond became Ad-Rock, MCA and Mike D when they stopped playing hardcore punk and took up rap. The hip hop group Beastie Boys went on to gain 3 Grammy awards and sell 50 million records worldwide. Stig talks to Mike D and Ad Rock about their new book - which is as much dedicated to MCA, who died in 2012, as it is to documenting the band’s history.With actor Ellie Kendrick making her professional debut as a playwright with Hole at the Royal Court in London this week, she and theatre critic David Benedict consider the long tradition of the actor-turned-playwright, from Shakespeare and Garrick to Pinter and Rory Kinnear.Presenter Stig Abell Producer Jerome Weatherald

Twelve flights. Twelve travellers. Twelve stories. David Szalay talks about his new book, Turbulence, which features lives in turmoil, each in some way touching the next. David Szalay was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2016 – and Turbulence is an original Radio 4 commission. The 55th annual Golden Horse awards, dubbed the "Chinese Oscars", saw An Elephant Sitting Still win best picture. Created by novelist-turned-director Hu Bo, who adapted it from his own book, it tells the story of four people in a society plagued by cruelty and violence. As the film is released in the UK, critic Simran Hans gives her verdict and Asian film expert, Andrew Heskins, discusses the wider landscape of cinema in China and the way the industry is changing.This weekend UNESCO added the reggae music of Jamaica to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage, a programme that looks to protect and promote traditions or living expressions of cultural identity. To discuss the programme and the decision to include reggae on this year’s list we speak to Assistant Director-General for Culture of UNESCO Ernesto Ottone, plus music journalist Kevin LeGendre considers what this means for reggae. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Hannah Robins

For his final role as an actor, Robert Redford plays a charming bank robber in The Old Man and the Gun, harking back to his early roles in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. Tim Robey reviews. Booker prize winning narrator of Anna Burns’s Milkman reads 19th century novels as she cannot bear the 20th century. What do other fictional characters read and what does it reveal about them, their authors and the period in which the books were written. John Bown, Professor of Literature at York university joins to discuss fiction within fictionPoet Fred D'Aguiar's new collection, Translations from Memory, starts with Gilgamesh, the earliest poem and ends with with a response Kamau Brathwaite, the poet from Barbados, who is still alive. It includes responses to philosophers - Spinoza, Hume, Kant - to writers - Lorca, Akhmatova, Seferis - to scientists such as Marie Curie, to political leaders - Nelson Mandela - to religion - Islam - and great movements such as the Reformation. He talks to Samira Ahmed about writing poems about what amounts to the whole of western civilisation and history. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May

Strictly Come Dancing Head Judge Shirley Ballas describes her approach as fun, firm, feisty but fair. As one of the couples comes ever closer to raising this year’s glitter-ball trophy she talks about her own background in dance, dismisses the “curse” of Strictly and explains why she thinks the show has such appeal to young, old and everyone in between.Sarah Jenkins, who recently won the BBC Proms Inspire competition for young composers, talks about her new piece, inspired by the winter solstice. And the Sun Stood Still is being premiered by the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Southbank Centre on 5 December and broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. The current criticisms aimed at National Theatre Wales, that neither their productions nor their casts are Welsh enough, echo the criticisms that the National Theatre of Scotland faced a few years ago. Joyce McMillan, theatre critic for The Scotsman, and Dr Emma Schofield, associate editor of Wales Art Review discuss what it means to be a national theatre.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Julian May

Hot on the heels of Disney's successful remake of The Jungle Book, Netflix release a live action/motion capture retelling of Kipling stories, Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, directed by Andy Serkis and starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett and Benedict Cumberbatch. Novelist Katherine Rundell reviews. Samira talks to Dana Gioia, who as Poet Laureate of California recently went on a poetry reading odyssey, visiting all 58 counties in the state. He's also spent the last year choosing the poems for The Best American Poetry 2018 anthology. Earlier this month Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that "arts on prescription" is an indispensable tool in tackling loneliness, mental health and other long-term conditions. To discuss arts and healthcare, Samira is joined by Wellcome Research Fellow Daisy Fancourt, Gavin Clayton, head of the Arts and Minds charity and GP Dr Simon Opher. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Timothy Prosser

Naomi Alderman’s debut novel, Disobedience, has been adapted into a film starring Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. The women are reunited as Ronit, now living in New York, returns to her Orthodox Jewish community in London after her father’s death, reigniting a forbidden passion with her childhood friend Esti. Briony Hanson, Head of Film for the British Film Institute, reviews. Scottish artist Rachel Maclean discusses her new exhibition, The Lion and The Unicorn, at the National Gallery in London. Scottish identity lies at the heart of much of her work, which includes ornate films and stills, the satirical artist playing multiple roles, and extensive use of make-up, prosthetics, and CGI. The Brazilian writer Julián Fuks talks to Kirsty about his award-winning novel, Resistance. Based very much on his own family story, it deals with his parents’ flight from the military Argentine dictatorship in the 1970s, their adoption of a son before having two further children, and examines identity, family bonds and the different forms exile can take. Julián also discusses how books are being used in Brazil to protest against the new right wing President Elect.Diversity offstage in theatre: we hear about the new BECTU (Broadcast, Entertainment, Communications and Theatre Union) initiative, which has been backed by more than 90 theatres and wants to increase the number of BAME people in backstage and front of house roles.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Hilary Dunn