Front Row

Saoirse Ronan stars as Jo March in Greta Gerwig’s new film adaptation of Little Women. The Irish actress, who’s tipped for an Oscar for the role, discusses how the film draws out the connection between Jo and her creator Louisa May Alcott, if Jo and Laurie would work as couple today and her frustration at Greta’s lack of Golden Globe nominations for the film.The Book People, the online and pop-up bookseller, went into administration yesterday just a week before Christmas, putting almost 400 jobs at risk. One of its suppliers, Galley Beggar, the small publisher responsible for the careers of Eimear McBride and Booker short-listed Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann, is now also threatened because the publisher had advanced 8000 copies of it to the retailer, for which it has not yet been paid. Today Galley Beggar launched a crowdfunding campaign to help raise £40,000 to enable it to continue trading. Galley Beggar publisher Sam Jordison tells us more.As preparations to celebrate Christmas gather pace, art critic Louisa Buck, art dealer Jana Manuelpillai and portrait artist Caroline de Peyrecave look at the depiction of babies in art from medieval times and ask why so many artists seem to get it wrong.And we pay tribute Kenny Lynch, the entertainer who was one of the few black British pop singers to find fame in the '60s. His death was announced today at the age of 81.Presenter Stig Abell Producer Simon Richardson

Taron Egerton, whose performance as Elton John in the film Rocketman has already earned him Golden Globe and SAG nominations for Best Actor, talks about channelling the flamboyant performer on screen and capturing his distinctive voice in hits such as Your Song and Tiny Dancer. Rocketman is available on DVD. There have been scores of actors who have played Scrooge from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, from Alastair Sim and Basil Rathbone to Albert Finney and Michael Caine. This season it is the turn of Guy Pearce who appears as the misanthrope in a BBC One television adaptation by Steven Knight. How will the the creator of Peaky Blinders interpret the festive perennial? Raifa Rafiq reviews.What are the ingredients of a Christmas hit song? Singer, pianist and songwriter Joe Stilgoe dissects some classics and performs from his Christmas album.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Edwina Pitman

Stories from Mark Gatiss will dominate the small screen once again this festive season. Gatiss joins Kirsty to talk about his new adaptation of Dracula, in 3 hour and a half episodes, starring John Heffernan as Jonathan Harker and Danish actor Claes Bang as the tall, dark, handsome vampire. They also discuss Gatiss’s new version of the M R James Christmas story, Martin’s Close, with Peter Capaldi as a lawyer facing the infamous ‘hanging judge’, George Jeffreys. Martin’s Close is on BBC 4 on Christmas Eve at 10pm and Dracula begins on New Year’s Day at 9pm on BBC 1.Every Christmas folk singer Kate Rusby tours the country playing Christmas songs, old, new and, especially, from Sheffield's carol tradition. She has now released five albums of Christmas music (but nothing like Slade's or Wizzard's) and she performs from her latest, Holly Head.As Brighton prepares for its annual winter solstice celebration – Burning The Clocks - Professor Martin Johnes, author of Christmas and the British: A Modern History, and Mark Norman, creator and host of The Folklore Podcast, join Kirsty to explore the way new traditions are created.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Julian May

The Two Popes is a based on true events, the resignation of Pope Benedict and the election of his successor, Francis. It's also a double act by two great Welsh actors, Jonathan Pryce, Francis, and Anthony Hopkins, Benedict. Jonathan Pryce discusses his role, the story of their unlikely friendship and what the film is really exploring - the nature of forgiveness. 300 years after the publication of Robinson Crusoe, which some claim is the first novel ever written, novelists Katherine Rundell and Katie Hale consider the continuing allure of its narrative of survival against the odds and how its complex post-colonial racist narrative reads in 21st century Britain. Presenter Stig Abell Producer Jerome Weatherald

Ballet star Francesca Hayward on the Royal Ballet's Romeo and Juliet: Beyond Words, filmed on location, and her lead role as Victoria The White Cat in the new film musical Cats. The Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir discusses her scores for the film Joker, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe this week, and the hit TV series Chernobyl, for which she won an Emmy. This Saturday will be exactly 40 years since The Clash released their classic LP London Calling, featuring songs such as Brand New Cadillac, Jimmy Jazz and The Guns of Brixton. Music writer Andy Kershaw celebrates the monumental double album.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy Prosser

The work of the playwright and screenwriter Mike Bartlett has become a staple of the theatre and television landscape with his plays, such as Bull, winning prizes, his television dramas, such as Dr Foster, tantalising viewers, and productions such as King Charles III having a life on both stage and small screen. Now he’s written a new ITV drama serial - Sticks & Stones - about workplace bullying. He joins Kirsty to discuss the dark side of office banter.Looking at art is very popular. Last year 5.9 million people visited Tate Modern, that’s more than those who went to the British Museum. But a visit to a gallery, especially to one of the blockbuster exhibitions such as Tate Britain’s William Blake show or the Leonardo da Vinci at the Louvre in Paris is not always a comfortable experience. Sometimes they are so crowded that you can’t actually see the art. We discusses this dilemma and explore how exhibitions are staged and visitors managed. Sirin Kale, who has written about being elbowed in the ribs at the William Blake exhibition sets out the difficulties and Jennifer Scott, co-curator of the ‘mindful’ Rembrandt’s Light show at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which includes a room with just a single painting, explains changing approaches to make going to exhibitions more enjoyable.Any One Thing is an immersive theatre company with a difference. Plot and prop details of their shows are tailored to individual audience members through use of software and technology more usually used for marketing and advert personalisation. Paul Farnell and Justin Fyles, the tech entrepreneurs behind the company explain their unique blend of fringe theatre and personal data.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Hilary Dunn

Controversy surrounds this year's Nobel Prize for Literature; unusually there are two winners, Polish Olga Tokarczuk and Austrian Peter Handke. Handke has been vocally supportive of the Serbs during the 1990s Yugoslav war including accusing the Bosnian Muslims of staging attacks. Jonas Eklöf, Editor in Chief of Swedish literary magazine Vi Läser, reports on the presentation ceremony in Stockholm today.Traces is a forensic crime thriller set in Dundee based on an idea by Val McDermid and written by Amelia Bullmore. Molly Windsor (who starred in Three Girls) heads the cast as a technician in a forensic laboratory who is still coming to terms with a traumatic event in her past. Critic Stephanie Merritt reviews the six-part UKTV drama series. Mike Lew’s darkly comic take on Shakespeare’s Richard III - “Teenage Dick” - has its UK debut at the Donmar Warehouse in London. Samira talks to Michael Longhurst about his vision for the theatre after becoming Artistic Director earlier this year and to actor Daniel Monks about playing this canonical disabled character.After a century and a half the Vienna State Opera has this week staged its first work by a female composer. Olga Neuwirth's opera, Orlando, is based on Virginia Woolf’s novel about an Elizabethan poet who lives for centuries, never ages and switches gender. The director, the librettist and the costume designer are also all women and the star is a queer cabaret artist. Olga Neuwirth talks to Samira Ahmed about her opera, and its wider cultural significance. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Hannah Robins

Last month Baltimore Museum of Art announced that in 2020 it would only collect works of art by women, because in the last decade just 2% of global art auction spending was on work by women? At 26 major American museums just 11% of all acquisitions and 14% of exhibitions were by female artists. Frances Morris, Director of Tate Modern. and arts journalist Julia Halperin join John Wilson to discuss why there is such a gender imbalance in art collections and what can be done to rectify this.In 2017, Britain’s oldest continuously working factory in the country, the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, was sold to American developers who wanted to turn it into a boutique hotel. Just last week the government intervened to prevent Tower Hamlets from granting permission to the proposed development. Gillian Darley, who writes about architecture and landscape, and Stephen Clarke, a trustee of the UK Heritage Building Preservation Trust, consider the importance of commercial viability rather than sentiment when it comes to protecting old buildings and industries.Graeae Theatre, which puts deaf and disabled actors at the centre of their productions, struck by the metaphorical deafness of Chekhov's characters in Three Sisters, who don't listen to each other, has long wanted to to tackle the play. Writer Polly Thomas and actor Genevieve Barr discuss their new adaptation for Radio 4. It's a radical re-imagining of the Russian original exploring how, even today, isolation and stagnation are the daily lot of many. The Russian country estate becomes an isolated farm in 21st century Yorkshire; Moscow becomes London. Olivia, Maisie and Iris struggle to survive with intermittent internet, and a sense of dislocation from the rest of the world. Episode one airs on Radio 4 on Saturday.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May

Inua Ellams, writer of the hit play Barber Shop Chronicles, has transposed Chekhov's Three Sisters to 1960s Nigeria, on the brink of the Biafran Civil War. His new version of Three Sisters is at London's National Theatre.Two bananas taped to a wall with duct tape have just been sold for $120,000 each at the Art Basel fair in Miami. These works of art were created by Maurizio Cattelan, whose 18 carat gold toilet was stolen from Blenheim Palace recently. So has the artworld gone bananas? Art critic Louisa Buck gives her view. Marriage Story, which stars Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson as a divorcing couple, has just swept the board at the Gotham Awards and is a frontrunner for BAFTAs and Oscars. As it is released onto Netflix, Stig talks to writer-director Noah Baumbach. Presenter Stig Abell Producer Timothy Prosser

Sarah Gosling is joined by Ferris & Sylvester, music director Kojo Samuel and composer Tom Foskett-Barnes, in a show recorded at the recent BBC Music Introducing Live weekend in London's Tobacco Docks. Ferris & Sylvester are a blues folk duo, championed by BBC Introducing, who played Glastonbury this year and are recording their debut album. Izzy Ferris and Archie Sylvester perform two of their songs, Flying Visit and London's Blues.Kojo Samuel is one of pop music's top music directors, who works with Stormzy, Jess Glynne, Dave, Rudimental and Rita Ora, and was responsbile for Stormzy's Glastonbury performance this year. But what does a music director actually do? Kojo Samuel explains. Composer Tom Foskett-Barnes has created a new audio documentary about the London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard, the charity phoneline that has provided help since the 1970s. He was comissioned by the New Creative scheme, run by BBC Introducing Arts and Arts Council England. BBC Music Introducing Live is a weekend of masterclasses, interactive sessions and performances for emerging artists, music fans and anyone who wants to know more about how to get into the music industry. Presenter Sarah Gosling is the BBC Music Introducing Presenter for Devon and Cornwall and hosts evening shows on BBC Radio Devon.Producer: Timothy Prosser