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MONDAY 23 DECEMBER
Listen to the complete programme
Presented by Mark Lawson and Francine Stock
This is the first of two special programmes in which Front Row looks back at the headline people and events of culture in 2002.
BOLLYWOOD
At the Victoria and Albert Museum, an exhibition of Bollywood film art was a teaser for the movies which were attracting all kinds of audiences into multiplexes - including Devdas, the most expensive Hindi film ever made and Mira Nair's energetic family drama Monsoon Wedding. Then there was the rites of passage films Bend it Like Beckham and Anita and Me; and of course the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Sharon Uttam who reports on entertainment for the BBC's Asian network assesses the impact.
FOOTBALLERS' WIVES
ITV drama, Footballers' Wives, was deliberately timed for a World Cup year. It was created by producer Anne McManus and writer Maureen Chadwick, who previously created ITV1's Bad Girls. Mark Lawson spoke to them.
DANIEL CRAIG
Craig has made appearances on both stage and screen. He is one of the original gang of four from Our Friends In The North. In London, he played a son and his cloned brothers in Caryl Churchill's new play A Number. He's currently filming a dramatisation of one of the most picked-over and speculated-about of literary marriages, playing the poet Ted Hughes opposite Gwynneth Paltrow as Sylvia Plath. Earlier in the year, however, Daniel Craig could be seen in the film Road to Perdition, directed by Sam Mendes in which he played opposite Paul Newman.
Ted & Sylvia is currently in production at Shepperton Studios
FOLLOWING UP A BIG HIT
The only problem with an artistic success is the pressure to repeat it. This was the problem faced by several talents this year.
Sam Mendes had an oscar winning success with American Beauty and this year followed it up with the altogether different, Road to Perdition.
Zadie Smith followed White Teeth with The Autograph Man, a novel which picks apart the modern religion of celebrity…
Donna Tartt's novel, The Secret History, was a huge success. But she waited a further ten years before bringing out, The Little Friend.
Film director Christopher Nolan followed Memento with Insomnia.
SILENCE
Mike Batt is best-known as the composer-in-residence to The Wombles. On an album of classical compositions, he included a band of silence. He thought that it would be obvious even to a Womble that this was a jokey homage to John Cage, the late American who produced the totally silent composition 4"33'. However, the Cage estate failed to see the joke and sued for violation of copyright. After much discussion about whether silence could be trademarked, Batt agreed to make a goodwill payment to Cage's representatives, while insisting that he was not admitting theft. On the day of the settlement, Front Row brought Batt together with Nicholas Riddle, Managing Director of Cage's publishers, Peters Edition.
SIMON RATTLE
The classical music year was dominated by Sir Simon Rattle's first appearance in September as artistic director of the world's most famous orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic. This month he's returned to conduct in London, opera this time at Covent Garden. Mark Lawson spoke to him during rehearsals for Sophie's Choice.
LIVERPOOL BIENNIAL
At Liverpool'S Biennial, artists were encouraged to treat the entire city as a gallery leading to the creation of Britain's most unusual hotel room. Front Row's John Wilson checked in.
ARTANGEL
Some of the most imaginative and surprising art works of the past decade have come about through the offices of Artangel, who commission projects and place them in unusual locations, outside the usual gallery or theatre or cinema. Among their achievements this year, were films by Steve McQueen about falling and Mike Figgis' documentary of a recreation of the clash between miners in police during the Miner's Strike.
LEO MCKERN
Leo McKern, who played television's cantankerous barrister Rumpole of The Old Bailey, died this year. The character's creator, Sir John Mortimer, spoke to Front Row.
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