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TUESDAY 24 DECEMBER
Listen to the complete programme
Presented by Mark Lawson and Francine Stock
In the second of two special programmes,Front Row looks back at the headline people and events of culture in 2002.
MICHAEL GAMBON
Michael Gambon is an actor who this year seemed to have an almost mystical instinct for which script to pick out of the pile. 20 years after he went from character actor to name above the title in a National Theatre production of Brecht's The Life Of Galileo, Sir Michael Gambon played the first murder victim in the year's most successful serious film - Robert Altman's Gosford Park.
He also appeared in what many critics regarded as the best stage play of 2002: Caryl Churchill's drama about a man who may have cloned his dead son: A Number. To complete a triple, he won an Emmy award in America for his performance as President Lyndon Johnson in the American television series, The Path To War. Tonight he talks to Francine Stock about how he makes his choice of roles.
RAY LAWRENCE
The film Lantana has won awards in Australia and abroad. It's both a thriller and a film about communications between couples that doesn't opt for trite solutions. It's only the second feature by the Australian director Ray Lawrence, following his 1985 debut Bliss, about an advertising executive who goes to hell. Mark Lawson talks to Ray Lawrence about why his refusal to put a gloss on ordinary life makes Lantana a special film.
DANIEL LIEBESKIND
Francine Stock talks to architect Daniel Leibeskind about the moment when theory becomes concrete, and what it was like after so many years of thinking and building to see the opening of the Imperial War Museum of the North in Manchester.
DAVID BOWIE
John Wilson met David Bowie in New York to talk about his about latest album Heathen and whether he minds getting older.
DAMON GOUGH AKA BADLY DRAWN BOY
Damon Gough, a guitar-player in a woollen cap, and better known as Badly Drawn Boy made a big impression with his album Hour Of The Bewilderbeest, and this year followed it with Have You Fed The Fish?. In an age where not many pop stars now write their own material, Mark Lawson talks to Gough about his prolific output, rumoured to have been around 1000 songs in his short career.
PAUL BAILEY
In fiction two European classics were rediscovered this year. In Sandor Marai's Embers from Hungary, two old men meet in a grand house after decades to settle an argument while in Doctor Glas by the Swede Hjalmar Soderberg a doctor contemplates euthanasia on an unwanted husband. Paul Bailey's novel Uncle Rudolph, published this year, also adheres to this European novella tradition. Tonight Francine Stock talks to him about the appeal of this type of fiction.
ALFRED BRENDEL
Born in 1931 in a town in what is now the Czech Republic, the pianist Alfred Brendel was moved around Europe by his father's professions and the Second World War. He received little formal piano teaching. Despite this, he became one of the greatest interpreters of the classical piano repertoire and also writes poetry in German and English in his spare time. Mark Lawson talks to Alfred Brendel about how - after decades of performing - he judges whether a public event was a success.
MATT WOLF
This year critics seem to be more than usually out of tune with public taste. Several West End were which were panned (including one or two on Front Row) have done far better than predicted at the box office. Matt Wolf, London Theatre Correspondent for Variety magazine talks to Francine Stock on how tickets are selling for West End shows.
GRAHAM NORTON
American and British television is increasingly similar, until lately there remained one big difference in the schedules. In the U.S, the nightly chat-show has been an anchor of week-day programming for decades, but in the UK attempts to keep the same interviewer on screen from Monday through to Friday have always failed. But, during 2002, a chat-show host here finally pulled off the big one and kept it up for five nights running. Mark Lawson meets Graham Norton and asks a show each weekday evening had been his idea or Channel 4's.
SPIKE MILLIGAN
A finally, a word or two from Spike Milligan who gooned for the nation. He died in February 2002.
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