Front Row

After an awkward mix-up, Moonlight was eventually revealed as best picture at the Oscars. Critic Tim Robey discusses why it was a worthy winner over La La Land.Mary Beard discusses Rome and Shakespeare alongside Angus Jackson, season director of a new run of the Roman plays at the Royal Shakespeare Company.Critically acclaimed writer Ross Raisin talks about his new novel A Natural, which is about a young footballer whose dreams of reaching the upper leagues are rapidly fading and whose identity is conflicted.Guido Cagnacci's masterpiece The Repentant Magdalene is on loan for three months at the National Gallery, the first time the painting has been on view in the UK in over 30 years. Art critic Waldemar Januszczak examines the power of this extraordinary work and discusses the depiction of Mary Magdalene in art.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, looks ahead to Sunday when he's transforming Trafalgar Square into 'London's biggest cinema' for a free public screening of Iranian director Asghar Farhadi's Oscar-nominated film The Salesman, just hours before this year's Academy Awards are announced. Jake Arnott discusses his latest novel The Fatal Tree set in Georgian London's criminal underworld. It follows the fortunes of notorious prostitute and pickpocket Edgworth Bess and her husband Jack Sheppard, a thief whose escapades inspired the character of Macheath in John Gay's The Beggar's Opera.Next week the Guildhall School will put on the world premiere of Julian Philips' opera The Tale of Januarie. Based on Chaucer's The Merchant's Tale, it's the first opera to have been written in Middle English. The librettist Stephen Plaice and composer Julian Philips join John to discuss how they approached it.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Edwina Pitman.

Monty Python legend John Cleese has adapted George Feydeau's 1892 French comedy BANG BANG for a brand-new staging at Colchester's Mercury Theatre. He talks about his enthusiasm for farce.Jay Z is to become the first rapper inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Jacqueline Springer discusses the significance and why it's taken four decades for rap to be recognised in this way.Authors Hannah Kent and Kate Summerscale discuss the process of using real court cases as inspiration for their books. Hannah's novel, The Good People, is based on a mysterious case of a 'fairy doctress' in 1820s Ireland and Kate tells us about The Wicked Boy which she based on a grisly murder in Victorian England.From Galvani and twitching frogs' legs to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; from Sci-fi to Bovril; electricity has inspired inventors, scientists and artists alike. As a new exhibition Electricity: The spark of life opens at the Wellcome Collection in London, curator Ruth Garde and Irish artist John Gerrard show us round.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Angie Nehring.

David Tennant discusses his return to the Dorset coast in the final series of the ITV crime drama Broadchurch which begins next week. The actor also gives his response to the secrecy surrounding the script of the new series and the challenge he faced not being allowed to know the full storyline before shooting began.The Royal Society of Literature has launched a vote to find the Nation's Favourite second novel. Chair of Judges Alex Clark explains the challenges of writing a second novel and talks through the list, which ranges from Pride and Prejudice to David Walliams's Mr Stink.In the middle of awards season, and following controversies around race at both last year's Brits and Oscars, we ask if awards are still relevant and who they're actually for. Film journalist and President of the Critic Circle Anna Smith gives us an insight into the role of a judge, and music commentator Jacqueline Springer discusses whether a wake-up call has been heeded.Presented by: John Wilson Produced by: Rebecca Armstrong.

Director Gurinder Chadha discusses her new film Viceroy's House, which tells the story of the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan in 1947, seen from the vantage point of Lord and Lady Mountbatten (played by Hugh Bonneville and Gillian Anderson) and the British and Indian staff who worked in the Viceroy's palace. America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s, a new exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, begins with 'the fall' that the US experienced after the Crash of 1929. Curator Adrian Locke takes John Wilson round the exhibition which offers artists' reactions to the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, the rise in racial tensions and a huge swell in immigration, starting with Grant Wood's famous American Gothic which has left North America for the first ever time.The fashion house Burberry has teamed up with the Henry Moore Foundation to collaborate on an exhibition celebrating the company's new collection. Alongside some of Henry Moore's work, Christopher Bailey - chief executive and chief creative officer at Burberry - shows how the sculptor's work has influenced and inspired his designs and his working process.Presenter John Wilson Producer Jerome Weatherald.

Mark Wahlberg stars in new film Patriots Day, which focuses on the bombing at the Boston Marathon in 2013 which killed three people and injured 264. Michael Carlson reviews the film which was directed by Peter Berg, who also worked with Wahlberg recently on Deepwater Horizon.Stephen Karam is one of the hottest playwrights in America right now - his play The Humans recently won several Tony Awards. As his work is performed in the UK for the first time, he discusses Speech and Debate, his early play about three misfit teenagers caught up in a sex scandal. The Oxfordshire-based European Union Baroque Orchestra has announced it will give its last UK concert in its current form on 19 May, before moving to Antwerp, citing the prospect of reduced funding and administrative difficulties post-Brexit. Director General Paul James explains the orchestra's decision. The situation in Aleppo in Syria has been the focus for a number of documentary-makers recently, and two of them are nominated for an Oscar for the Documentary (Short Subject) category which will be announced on Sunday. The makers of Watani: My Homeland and The White Helmets discuss the challenges they faced. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Hannah Robins.

Gary Barlow has written his first musical with his long-time friend, the screenwriter Tim Firth. The Girls, like the film Calendar Girls, charts the true life story of a group of friends who meet at the Burnsall Women's Institute and decide to pose for a nude calendar to raise money for charity. Gary and Tim discuss stage nudity and body confidence, and meeting the real Yorkshire 'girls'.The new five-part TV drama series SS-GB imagines the UK under Nazi occupation in 1941 after the Germans won The Battle of Britain. The writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who wrote the last six James Bond films, discuss this adaptation of the 1978 Len Deighton thriller, and their approach to re-imagining history. Famous for his paintings of Ned Kelly, Sidney Nolan is often seen as the most prominent Australian painter of the 20th century. Yet he spent most of his life in Britain recreating the landscapes of his birth country from his imagination. Art critic Richard Cork reviews Transferences, a new exhibition at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, which kicks off a year of events marking the centenary of the artist's birth.Veteran director Zhang Yimou and Hollywood star Matt Damon have teamed up to create The Great Wall, a film spectacular set in ancient China, which sees European mercenaries and Chinese soldiers working together to defeat a mythical horde of ravening beasts. It's the largest Hollywood co-production to be filmed entirely on location in China. Film critic Angie Errigo reviews.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Angie Nehring.

Academy Award winning screenwriter and director Neil Jordan talks about his latest novel Carnivalesque. During a trip to a carnival, schoolboy Andy gets trapped inside the glass in the hall of mirrors and his reflection takes his place in his family.A new theatre production created and performed by current and former sex workers aims to challenge stereotype and stigma. Writer Molly Taylor and member of the cast Jane discuss bringing together a group of male, female and transgender performers to share their stories on stage.He's the artist who put a giant water slide in the centre of Bristol, and pianos at stations inviting passing musicians to play; now Luke Jerram has cast five small artefacts from the North Lincolnshire Museum in 18 carat gold and hidden them across Scunthorpe for the public to find. As Treasured City, his artistic treasure hunt, begins, he explains why art is better when the public is involved, and why it doesn't need to be confined to galleries.In Michael Keaton's new film The Founder he plays Ray Kroc, a salesman from Illinois who turned one small takeaway burger bar in California called McDonalds into the globally-franchised billion-dollar empire it is today. The film's writer Robert Siegel - who also wrote The Wrestler starring Mickey Rourke - discusses his fascination for the story and what it says about America in the 1950s.

John Adams is one of the world's most critically acclaimed and popular composers whose music is performed frequently and globally. Over more than four decades he's covered a lot of musical ground, from experiments in recorded sound, and the harmony and rhythm of Minimalism to grand-scale symphonies and operas that tell big stories of global politics, science and terrorism. As he turns 70 he looks back at his musical life with John Wilson. Producer: Rebecca ArmstrongPlaylist: Hallelujah JunctionTchaikovsky's 1812 OvertureBozo the Clown's theme tuneGrand Pianola MusicOn The Transmigration Of SoulsSteve Reich's DrummingPhilip Glass's Knee Play from Einstein on the BeachPhrygian GatesBeginning from Nixon in ChinaThe People Are The Heroes Now from Nixon in ChinaChorus of Exiled Palestinians from The Death of KlinghofferChorus of Exiled Jews from The Death of KlinghofferMarilyn Klinghoffer: "You embraced them!" from The Death of KlinghofferTale of the Wize Young Woman from Scherherazade 2Image: John Adams Image credit: Brad Barket/Getty Images.

As a major new retrospective of the British artist Eduardo Paolozzi opens, John Wilson explores 'the godfather of Pop Art', with reflections from Paolozzi's friend and collaborator Sir Terence Conran, and the artist himself, from a Front Row interview recorded before his death in 2005.Neil Gaiman talks about his new book Norse Mythology, as he returns to the original sources to create his own version of the great northern tales. The Pros and Cons of self-publishing, with literary critic Alex Clark and author Mark Dawson, who left a traditional publishing company to self publish and now regularly tops the best-seller lists. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy Prosser.