Front Row - 04/05/2009

Arts news and reviews. Armando Iannucci discusses the combination of luck and judgement which led his film In The Loop to be released in the week that strikingly similar events unfolded in UK politics. The producer of TV spy drama Spooks explains how writers aim to predict events when planning storylines - for example, an episode about financial turmoil which aired at the moment when real banks were collapsing. He also reveals some of the programme makers' tricks of the trade. Through new and archive interviews with screenwriter Simon Beaufoy, the late novelists JG Ballard and Michael Crichton, ITV Director of Television Peter Fincham and a nun whose book predicted the credit crunch with uncanny accuracy, Mark Lawson looks at the films, books, plays and TV programmes which, intentionally or by chance, achieve great topical resonance.