Front Row: Archive 2013

With Mark Lawson,For the first time, three Vermeer paintings of female musicians are on show together at the National Gallery, London. They form the centrepiece of a new exhibition examining music as a motif in Dutch painting of the 17th Century. Composer Michael Berkeley considers the various roles played by musical instruments in the art of that period. For many writers working in TV drama, the trickiest things they have to deal with are the notes from the producers. At their worst, such notes can confuse and undermine a writer's vision. At their best, they can help a writer to see a better way of telling the story. Peter Bowker, writer of Blackpool, Desperate Romantics and Monroe, and Patrick Spence, the executive producer on Murphy's Law, Lilies, and Hancock and Joan, reflect on the best and the worst notes writers receive.As Wimbledon gets under way, Ed Smith reviews two tennis documentary films. Venus and Serena shows the lives of the champion sisters as children, in their shared home and battling illne