The show follows Ian Rankin’s creative process, beginning in December 2011 with a trawl through hisnotes, newspaper clippings and story ideas scribbled on the back of napkins. It also features intimate video diary footage as we see him wrestle with his demons and various unfolding plots.

Alan takes a look at the extraordinary life of Lang Lang, China’s classical music superstar.

One of the planet's most influential photographers, William Klein pioneered the art of street photography and created some of the most iconic fashion images of the 20th century. With a major Tate Modern exhibitionelebrating his work, the series spends time with William to find out more about the irrepressible, charismatic personality behind a remarkable creative life.

Alan chats to a vicar, a psychologist, a Hollywood composer, an adman and even the people who choose the music played in shopping malls about the power of music. He also sees babies dance to a rhythm, and old people brought forth out of silence by music.

Thirty years on from her triumphant debut novel, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson goes back with Alan to the scenes of her extraordinary childhood in Lancashire.

During Jennifer Lebeau's film, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel talk about an extraordinarily creative period in their career during the making of Bridge Over Troubled Water. Archive footage is used to look at the technical breakthroughs and the feelings the two singers had for one another.

Matthew Bourne is the country's most commercially successful choreographer. He is now attempting to reinterprete Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty. and Alan is given exclusive access to the creative process, from first workshops to the final rehearsals.

Alan profiles the American R'n'B star, who rose to fame in the late 1990s as one third of Destiny's Child and has gone on to enjoy a phenomenally successful solo career.