Front Row

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.

Mavis Staples, formerly of the gospel group The Staple Singers, discusses her new album If All I Was Was Black, ten songs which address the continuing racial issues in America today. The singer, who first performed in 1948, also reflects on her association with Martin Luther King and her close friendship with Prince. Her Body and Other Parties is the acclaimed debut short story collection from American writer Carmen Maria Machado. The book sits between magic realism, science-fiction and horror and Carmen reveals what she drew on to create the stories. With Christmas fast approaching - along with stage, film and TV versions à go-go of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol - writer, comedian, and self-professed fan of the Christmas ghost story, Danny Robins, explores our endless fascination for them.

As The League of Gentlemen returns to BBC Two for three new episodes we speak to Mark Gatiss and Jeremy Dyson about revisiting the bizarre characters of Royston Vasey. Gina Yashere and Jenny Eclair discuss how the climate for comedy has changed and whether comedians still have a duty to shock.How Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World changed television, with producer John Fairley and Professor Roger Luckhurst from Birkbeck, University of London.Image: Mickey (MARK GATISS), Pauline (STEVE PEMBERTON), Ross (REECE SHEARSMITH) Credit: BBC/James Stack.

Emily Wilson, the first woman to translate The Odyssey, explains why the issues running through the epic - gender, geo-politics, migration - make Homer, writing 3,000 years ago, an author for our times.Emily Wilson is joined by Daniel Hahn who, as well as writing books, translates them from Portuguese, Spanish and French. Comparing their approaches they discuss the art of translating, how it reflects the age in which it is undertaken, its challenges and its importance to our culture today.Michael Cooper, journalist at the New York Times, tells Stig about the latest developments in the drama unfolding around the Metropolitan Opera House's new production of Tosca.As the Hayward Gallery in London prepares to re-open its doors next month after a two-year closure, its director Ralph Rugoff and the architect Richard Battye discuss the renovations and restoration of the brutalist contemporary art gallery.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Edwina Pitman.

Theatre director Emma Rice talks about her final production as Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe, The Little Matchgirl and Other Happier Tales. She discusses the inspiration for the show as well as her reasons for leaving her post after only two seasons in the job. Children's writer Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie novels have been much loved since they were first published in America during the Great Depression. Caroline Fraser, the author of a new biography Prairie Fires, and Eddie Higgins, a British member of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Legacy and Research Association, examine Wilder's life and popularity, 150 years since her birth. South London-born actor John Boyega discusses improvising on the set of his latest film, the sci-fi behemoth Star Wars: The Last Jedi and why he likes to mix Hollywood blockbusters with theatre. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Jerome Weatherald.

Kazuo Ishiguro is the winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature. To mark the occasion, he talks to John Wilson from Stockholm about his reaction to the award. He highlights issues such as artificial intelligence and genetic research that are firing his imagination. Front Row also hears from his first editor Robert McCrum, Booker-nominated fellow author Mohsin Hamid, and singer Stacey Kent about the powerful, moving, strange and sometimes funny work of the author, whose work ranges from A Pale View of Hills to The Remains of the Day and most recently The Buried Giant.

As the Christmas TV schedules are finalised we round up the best festive telly. With Caroline Frost. Do live music venues need protecting from inner-city property development? We debate a proposed "Agent of Change" law to do just that. With the Rt Hon John Spellar MP and Andrew Whitaker, Planning Director of the Home Builders Federation. The young directors who brought theatre to the Jungle camp in Calais, Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, have now written a play about the experience. They discuss staging The Jungle at the Young Vic in London. With news that sales of vinyl records have hit a new 25-year high, music writer Ben Wardle - a self-confessed middle-aged vinyl bore - expresses his concerns over his patch being a little threatened by a new breed of collector, the vinyl hipster.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Helen Fitzhenry.