Front Row

Novelist Wendy Holden announces the category winners of the Costa Book Awards 2017 exclusively on Front Row and Stig talks to the winner of the Novel Category. Artist Elizabeth Friedlander is the subject of a new exhibition at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft. The work of Friedlander is instantly recognisable as mid-20th century design at its best including her Penguin book covers and Bauer Type Foundry typeface named for her - Elizabeth. Curator Katharine Meynell talks about her life and work. Taylor Swift's new album Reputation features the single Look What You Made Me Do, whose chorus bears more than a passing resemblance to Right Said Fred's 1991 single I'm Too Sexy. Mixing new lyrics and additions to an original piece of music has the name 'interpolation'. Music writer Ben Wardle ponders this now-widespread phenomenon, and looks back to when it all started.Presenter : Stig Abell Producer : Kate Bullivant.

The opening of V&A Dundee will be one of the big arts stories in 2018 and it's in Dundee that Samira Ahmed begins today's programme which looks at how arts organisations nationwide are seeking to make themselves open and relevant to their local communities. In Dundee, Samira visits the new V&A Dundee community garden in the company of volunteers Denis Harkins and Derek Cassie and Communities Producer Peter Nurick; she talks to Sarah Saunders, Director of Learning and Engagement at V&A Dundee, and Cameron Price about the museum's first public engagement project - Living Room For The City; and she joins young engineers Emma Evans and Ross Tolland on the deck of Captain's Scott's RRS Discovery to hear about their contribution to V&A Dundee's most recent public engagement project - the Scottish Design Challenge.Natalie Walton, former Head of Learning at the Hepworth Wakefield, winner of the Museum of the Year 2017 award, explains the steps The Hepworth took in the year before it opened to ensure it would be a welcome addition to the lives of local people.Alex Clifton, the artistic director of Storyhouse - the new and long desired arts centre in Chester - and Michael Green, the executive editor of local newspaper, The Chester Chronicle, discuss why the new £37 million pounds venue has received such strong local support.Emma Horsman, Project Director of The Cultural Spring in Sunderland and South Tyneside, reveals the work and thinking behind Creative People and Places - Arts Council England's latest approach to arts funding which puts local people first.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Ekene AkalawuImage: V&A Dundee, Construction - September 2017 Image Credit: Ross Fraser McLean.

Kay Mellor discusses her new ITV drama, Girlfriends, about three women in their late 50s, early 60s, and reveals how closely she's drawn on her own life and friends to write it.Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was published on New Year's Day 1818. Christopher Frayling, author of Frankenstein The First Two Hundred Years, joins Janet Todd, the biographer of Mary Shelley's mother Mary Wollstonecraft, to discuss how we read Frankenstein in our era of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence and how we view Mary Shelley herself.Upcoming film Swimming With Men, starring Rob Brydon and Daniel Mays, tells the true story of a group of middle-aged men who make it to the World Synchronised Swimming championships. It was shot earlier this year in Basildon swimming pool masquerading as Milan, Stig visited the set to meet Rob Brydon and the synchronised swimming trainer, Adele Carlsen.

Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer are back on TV with Vic and Bob's Big Night Out. Three decades after starting out they discuss their surreal and anarchic style of comedy. The legendary Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu returns with a new album Eternamente - her first studio album in six years. She discusses her affinity with the role of Tosca, and why she feels like the "black sheep" of the opera world. Bristol Old Vic is the longest continuously running theatre in the UK, and celebrated its 250th anniversary in 2016, which means it might just be old enough to house a ghost or two. Game of Thrones star Patrick Malahide and members of the theatre staff tell us of their spooky encounters there.

The surprise success of this year's Wonder Woman film emphasized the current dominance of superhero movies at the box office. Stig Abell investigates the comic book origins of these characters and explores why they have become such a presence in our culture. Dave Gibbons, the comic book writer and artist most famous for his collaboration with Alan Moore on The Watchman, shows Stig around his studio. Gibbons, who has also worked on Superman, Green Lantern, and Frank Miller's Give Me Liberty, talks about his 40 year career in comics and whether today is truly a 'Golden Age' for the form. Stig visits Orbital comics shop and is guided around the superhero universes by comic critic Adam Karenina Sherif and journalist Louise Blain. Plus he gets a lowdown on the changing film industry from Den of Geek editor Simon Brew.Author Nikesh Shukla and critic Gavia Baker-Whitelaw join comic book writer Kieron Gillen to examine what is it about superhero characters and their stories that is so appealing. Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Kate BullivantImage: Gal Gadot as Diana in Warner Bros film Wonder Woman Image credit: 2017 Warner Bros. Entertainment and Ratpac Entertainment LLC.

Gary Oldman on his 30 year career in film, from playing punk rebel Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy to a barnstorming performance as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour. He tells Kirsty why he was reluctant at first to take on the role. How he transformed himself into Britain's wartime Prime Minister and the challenge of recreating Churchill's distinctive voice. How when he was young his drama teachers told him that he wouldn't amount to anything. And as he approaches his 60th birthday, why he would like to return to British theatre.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Timothy Prosser.

Join John Wilson for a Christmas party including games and performances from all our guests.Impressionist Jon Culshaw delivers ten Christmas messages, but can you guess all the voices?Poet Patience Agbabi performs her Christmas poem, I Go To the Supervillains Christmas Ball As The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, written especially for Front Row. Cariad Lloyd and Charlotte Gittins from comedy improv group Austentatious perform an excerpt from a previously unknown Jane Austen work suggested by our party guests.Playwright Inua Ellams reads his poem, Swallow Twice, about family and feasting.Actress Josie Lawrence improvises a Christmas song based on a random object, with Steve Edis on piano providing musical accompaniment throughout.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins.

Emily Watson discusses her role as Marmee March, the mother of four daughters, in the new BBC TV adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women, set in 1860s Massachusetts against the background of the American Civil War.As the landmark film The Graduate turns 50 today, actress Tracy Ann Oberman and film critic MaryAnn Johanson discuss how the character of the seductress Mrs Robinson shaped the role of the older woman on screen.Ahead of this year's Doctor Who Christmas Special which features the regeneration of the 12th Doctor, Peter Capaldi, we ask Doctor Who: The Fan Show's Christel Dee exactly what regeneration is, how it works, and what we can expect from the Christmas Special.With only a couple of days left before Christmas, music writer Ben Wardle breathes a sigh of relief that he won't be bombarded for much longer by those perennial Christmas songs, from Wham to Wizzard. He discusses what makes an enduring Christmas pop tune and how having one in your back catalogue can be a nice little earner.Presenter John Wilson Producer Jerome Weatherald Image: Marmee March (EMILY WATSON), Meg March (WILLA FITZGERALD) Credit: BBC/Playground/Patrick Redmond.

Jodie Foster was a child star who fulfilled that early promise with performances as an adult that won her two Oscars. She went on to direct - four feature films so far. Now she is turning to television, taking charge of an episode of Charlie Brooker's sci-fi series Black Mirror. She talks to John Wilson about this and, after a quarter of a century, the continuing power of The Silence of the Lambs.Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut Molly's Game, starring Jessica Chastain, is based on the true story of Molly Bloom, an Olympic-class skier who ran the world's most exclusive high-stakes poker game and became an FBI target. Ellen E Jones reviews.Critic Ellen E Jones gives us her run-down of what films to see at cinemas this ChristmasAs the award-winning hip hop musical Hamilton transfers to London's West End from Broadway, critic Matt Wolf and music journalist Kevin Le Gendre discuss the hotly-anticipated musical phenomenon.With Radio 4 marking winter today as part of its Four Seasons project, the poet Imtiaz Dharker reads her specially commissioned piece, Thaw.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Edwina Pitman.

The actor and one-time theology student James Norton discusses his role as Alex Godman in new TV thriller McMafia. His character begins the series as a public advocate of clean capitalism with his own hedge fund investing only in ethical business, but Alex can't escape his Russian family connections and slowly gets drawn into the dangerous world of international organised crime and corruption. Penny Martin, editor of The Gentlewoman, and Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff, deputy editor of gal-dem magazine, discuss the agendas of their respective publications and the independent magazine landscape, which is vibrant and culturally significant.You love opera and would love to nurture such love in a loved one: music critics Norman Lebrecht and Alexandra Coghlan are at hand to help, offering their choices of a recording of an opera to entice the reluctant and a cracker available on a DVD. The Royal and Derngate Theatre in Northampton is staging The Jungle Book. It's impossible, but try to put 'I'm the King of the Swingers' out of your mind. This is a new musical with songs and a score by Joe Stilgoe (yes, son of...), which looks beyond Walt Disney to Rudyard Kipling and his stories about Mowgli, the boy brought up by wolves, and finds in them themes for our times: the complexities of cultural identity in a diverse world, what the Law of the Jungle means and where the Jungle might be. And Joe performs the song he has written for Baloo the Bear, live in the Front Row studio.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May.