Front Row - 04/12/2009

Andrea Levy's 2004 award-wining novel Small Island has been adapted for TV in a three-hour dramatisation. Her book, which deals with issues faced by immigrants leaving their 'small island' of Jamaica and coming to Britain, won the Orange Prize and the Whitbread Book of the Year. Novelist Dreda Say Mitchell reviews the BBC One adaptation. Julian Rhind-Tutt is best known for his role in the hospital sitcom Green Wing, which led to a series of credit card adverts with his co-star Stephen Mangan. He's also a seasoned stage actor and discusses The Hampstead Theatre's Darkened Shores, which opens next week despite Mark Gatiss - who played the other lead role - having to pull out at the eleventh hour due to a family illness. The Rolex Mentor and Protege programme teams six established figures, in six different art forms, with young up-and-coming artists. Nobel Prize-winning poet, novelist and playwright Wole Soyinka is mentoring Tara June Wynch, a young indigenous Australian writer. They discuss the impact of the mentoring process. As the internet buzzes with the news that The Climb by Miley Cyrus has been chosen by Simon Cowell to be this year's X Factor winner's song and scheduled for performance tomorrow night by the four remaining finalists, Danny Robbins analyses the formula that all the winning songs so far have fitted.