Front Row

The latest Alien film is a prequel to the 1979 original. Rhianna Dhillon assesses how Alien: Covenant fits into the series and looks at Michael Fassbender's role as not one but two robots.A gong surrounded by ivory tusks was removed from display at Sandringham House last week amid ethical concerns. To discuss how museums should reflect changing views in contemporary society Emma Dabiri is joined by cultural commentator Tiffany Jenkins and curator and writer Priya Khanchandani. The elongated human sculptures from artist Alberto Giacometti are some of the most recognizable works of modern art. As Tate Modern opens the UK's first major retrospective of his work for 20 years, art critic William Feaver gives the low down on the somewhat mythical Swiss painter-sculptor.Jamestown is a new Sky 1 drama set in one of the first British settlements in America in the early 17th century. It begins as a group of women arrive from the UK, paid to travel to the colony to marry men they have never met. Writer Bill Gallagher reveals how the story of these women inspired the drama.Presenter: Emma Dabiri Producer: Hannah Robins(Main Image: scene from Alien Covenant with Carmen Ejogo (rhs) and Amy Seimetz on the left. Credit: Twentieth Century Fox).

Mervyn Morris is Jamaica's first Poet Laureate since the country gained independence in 1962. As his tenure draws to a close, the poet reflects on his time in the role, and discusses his new collection, Peelin Orange, which is drawn from his writing over 50 years. With the deciding round of the French presidential election this Sunday, cultural commentators Agnès Poirier and Andrew Hussey discuss the likely impact of a Macron or Le Pen win on the arts in France and whether culture is a political card to be played.With the release of a 'Black and Chrome' edition of the 2015 Oscar-winning movie Mad Max: Fury Road, BFI's Gaylene Gould considers film-makers' love affair with black & white.The Ferryman by William Stott of Oldham is on display for the first time today at Tate Britain having been acquired for the public. John Wilson looks at the painting with the curator Alison Smith who explains that it marks a pivotal moment in this country's art, the embrace of naturalism and progress towards impressionism - British impressionism. Presenter John Wilson Producer Jerome Weatherald.

Samantha Spiro has played the role of Barbara Windsor both on stage and on television and now returns to the role in a new BBC biopic of Dame Barbara. She talks about how she shares the role with three other actors and the contrast with the other roles she is playing such as Catherine the Great on Radio 4. Record producers Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse, and Sam Cohen discuss working together on their album, Resistance Radio: The Man In The High Castle Album. Inspired by an Amazon TV series which imagines a world in which the allies lost WW2, they selected songs from the 50s and 60s, and recorded them with artists such as Beck and Norah Jones.Two weeks ago we revealed that Historic England had unearthed a lost treasure of the 1951 Festival of Britain in a hotel garden in Blackheath. John Wilson joined the daughter of the sculptor Peter Laszlo Peri at a studio in Surrey to see The Sunbathers painstakingly reassembled. Eighty five-year-old Ann MacIntyre had not seen her father's sculpture for over 60 years and believed it lost forever when the Southbank site was demolished at the end of the Festival.

In 2002 the actor Woody Harrelson had a wild night in London which ended with a police pursuit and his arrest. In January he recreated that escapade in his film Lost in London, which was the first to be shown in cinemas live, as it was being shot. As it had a 30 strong cast, 24 locations, chases on foot and in cars, this was an invitation to chaos. One slight hiccup was that an unexploded bomb was discovered in the Thames a bridge that evening and a bridge, crucial to the action, was blocked. Harrelson talks to Samira Ahmed about his project now the film is having a more predictable release.Jude Law stars as the love sick and murderous drifter Gino in star director Ivo van Hove's stage adaptation of Visconti's classic film Obsession. They reduced this lush and expansive movie to just 6 characters, but with huge screens and a treadmill on the Barbican stage, and a roaring lorry engine suspended above it. They explain their radical approach to this classic.The Journey imagines what happened when Martin McGuiness and Ian Paisley travelled in the same car from St Andrews to Glasgow airport during the peace talks. Colm Meaney plays McGuiness and Timothy Spall is Paisley, and the two of them tell Samira how they went about portraying these giants of Northern Irish history.With the announcement today of the contenders for this year's Turner Prize, critic Charlotte Mullins assesses the work of the four shortlisted artists, one of whom will be awarded the £25,000 prize when the winner is announced at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull in December. Producer: Julian May.

Mindhorn is the new film about a faded TV star who reprises his role as an Isle of Man sleuth who has a robotic eye, and can see the truth. Julian Barratt (Mighy Boosh) and Simon Farnaby (Horrible Histories) co-wrote and co-star and talk to Kirsty about poking fun at actorly behaviour, and how the film parodies Bergerac and the Sixty Million Dollar Man. Tony Kushner on his epic play Angels in America, which he wrote and set during the Aids crisis in America in the 1980s, and which is being revived in a new production at the National Theatre, starring Andrew Garfield, Russell Tovey, Denise Gough and Nathan Lane. Madeline Miller, the Orange Prize winning author of The Song of Achilles, and the writer and broadcaster Natalie Haynes, whose new book The Children of Jocasta retells with the story of Antigone, discuss turning the tales of the Greek myths into novels and why the ancient legends still have a contemporary and universal appeal.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Dymphna Flynn.

The composer and artist Oliver Beer discusses his new acoustics project in which he explores the resonant frequencies of the empty spaces of buildings and everyday vessels.To mark her 70th birthday the composer Nicola LeFanu talks about her career in the world of contemporary classical music, from her childhood making music for the plays she wrote to the recent premiere at the Barbican of her latest large-scale work, The Crimson Bird. On 17 July 1717 George Frideric Handel premiered his Water Music for King George I, and to mark the 300th anniversary of this musical landmark Front Row has commissioned a new piece by Grace Evangeline Mason, the 2013 winner of the BBC Proms Inspire Young Composer Competition. Before beginning work on the piece she came in to meet John and discuss her early ideas.To celebrate May Day, poet Alison Brackenbury discusses the joy of spring in verse and reads a section of John Clare's The Shepherd's Calendar and her own poem May Day, 1972.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins.

The British actor Christian Bale started his film career as a child star but has gone on to become a hugely successful adult actor. With the release of his latest film The Promise - an epic set in First World War Turkey - film critic Angie Errigo looks at his choice of roles and assesses what it says about Bale as a serious actor. The clash of creative differences at Shakespeare's Globe has put the role of Artistic Director into the spotlight. But what exactly is that role and what are the pressures facing the people leading theatres? Daniel Evans, who has just started his first season at the helm of Chichester Festival Theatre, and Tamara Harvey, now in her second year at Theatr Clywd, discuss. On last night's Front Row John Wilson hosted a debate about the future of museums with with Hartwig Fischer, the new director of the British Museum, Tristram Hunt, who's just taken up his post as director of the V&A, Sarah Munro, director of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary art in Gateshead, and Stephen Deuchar, director of Art Fund. The debate continued off air and in tonight's programme, and last night's podcast, you can hear the panellists discuss the importance of museums working with schools, local communities and each other.This week is the 100th anniversary since the birth of a singer who has been dubbed the Queen of Jazz. Ella Fitzgerald sold over 40m albums and won 13 Grammy awards. Singer Peggy Lee described her as 'the greatest jazz singer of our time, the standard by which each of us is measured'. To celebrate Lady Ella's centenary week, Kevin Le Gendre picks three stand-out moments from her vast canon of work which highlight what makes her so special.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Harry Parker.

In a live programme from the Nereid Gallery in the British Museum, John Wilson is joined by Hartwig Fischer, director of the British Museum, Tristram Hunt, director of the V&A, Sarah Munro, director of Baltic, and Stephen Deuchar, Director of the Art Fund. After the announcement of the Art Fund Museum of the Year shortlist, the panel will debate the current and future role for museums and galleries in Britain, with particular attention to how they are funded, and how to make them relevant to the people of Britain today.

Dame Judi Dench talks about her friend Sir John Gielgud, as the actor is honoured with an English Heritage blue plaque at his former London home. AM Holmes and Granta editor Sigrid Rausing discuss the new Granta list of the best young American novelists.Tim Robey pays tribute to the director Jonathan Demme, whose films include Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia, and whose death was announced today.

Thomas Ades, hailed as Britain's greatest composer since Benjamin Britten, on the premiere of The Exterminating Angel, his opera which is based on Louis Bunuel's 1962 surrealist film and features live sheep on the Royal Opera House stage. What if a deer did porn? Is it legal to marry a stuffed owl exhibit? Why is it so difficult to find a baby called Gary? American poet Patricia Lockwood ponders all of these in Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, her new collection which also features the autobiographical poem Rape Joke, a viral hit on the internet. The poetry collection is published to coincide with her memoir Priestdaddy, which details growing up in a religious household with an ordained Catholic Priest as a father.The quirky superhero film Guardians of the Galaxy was the surprise hit of 2014. Cinema-goers loved the rag-tag group of lesser-known Marvel Comics characters, their bickering humour and the awesome mix tape that provided the soundtrack. Samira Ahmed talks to writer and director James Gunn about bringing the gang back together for Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 and creating another awesome mix tape of retro tunes to accompany their latest space adventure.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Jack Soper.