Front Row

Arts news and reviews with Mark Lawson. How does television treat poverty? Mark Lawson and Kate Saunders discuss ITV's two-part documentary The Duchess on the Estate and Channel 4's Benefit Busters. Armando Iannucci discusses his new book The Audacity of Hype, a satirical portrait of politics and modern life. With the news that Channel 4 is to broadcast its final series of Big Brother in 2010, Front Row reflects on a decade of a show which gave the tabloids plenty of front page material while dividing opinion among the public. Writer Nicholson Baker gained notoriety with his inventive erotic novels Vox and The Fermata. He tells Mark Lawson why the protagonist of his new novel is a poet.