This week: Wall Street Crash

This week Newsnight and Newsnight Review team up for a special programme about the impact of the 1929 Wall Street Crash - 80 years ago this week - and examine parallels with the current economic crisis.

Kirsty Wark is joined by Arianna Huffington, founder of the influential US website The Huffington Post, author Liaquat Ahamed, journalist and author Andrew Ross Sorkin, historian Simon Schama, film and art critic David D'Arcy and author Hari Kunzru.

CRASH, RECESSION, DEPRESSION

Dorothea Lange's photographs of a migrant family are some of the most iconic of the era

Newsnight's Economic Editor Paul Mason assesses the huge impact of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 on American cultural life.

He illustrates how Hollywood became a channel for outrage by depicting lone gangsters and predatory women rather than upholding the establishment, and how film in the 1930s satisfied the public's desire for escapism with the musicals of Busby Berkeley and the emergence of "screwball comedy".

Paul also considers how literature reflected the struggle and despair of the Great Depression, and how photographers, artists and musicians captured the misery and despair of the dustbowl.

Works under discussion are:

Film: Bringing up Baby (1938)
Film: The Public Enemy (1931)
Book: Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
Book: Call it Sleep (Henry Roth)

MODERN CRASH, RECESSION AND RESPONSE

Sarah Jessica Parker stars as Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City 2

Kirsty Wark has been finding out how writers, film-makers and TV sitcoms are beginning to respond to new economic circumstances.

While a remake of the classic Wall Street is underway, Michael Moore, with characteristic speed, tells it how he thinks it is, in his latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story.

Meanwhile, there is an unmistakeable trend in new US sitcoms away from glossy New York locations and young, aspirational characters towards family-centred drama in small town America.

And how have writers responded? Kirsty's been asking that great chronicler of America, Philip Roth, and Jay McInerney, who's currently writing a novel about the economic crisis.

Works under discussion are:

Film: Capitalism: A Love Story (UK general release 26 February 2010)
Film: Wall Street 2, Sex and the City 2 (in production)
TV: Cougar Town (ABC, coming to Living in March 2010)
TV: Modern Family (ABC, Sky One)
TV: The Middle (ABC)
TV: Hank (ABC)
TV: Hung (HBO, More 4)
Book: Hedge Fund Wives, by Tatiana Boncompagni (HarperCollins)

Watch Newsnight and Newsnight Review from 10.30pm on Friday 23 October on BBC Two.