Radio Week
The picks of the best of this week’s radio
ENTERTAINMENT
The Poetry Programme SUNDAY, 7.30PM, RTÉ RADIO ONE ★★★★ Olivia O’Leary is joined by John McAuliffe to talk about new voices in poetry, and the programme marks Mother’s Day.
The Rolling Wave
SUNDAY, 9PM, RTÉ RADIO ONE ★★★★ Sharon Shannon (pictured) is Aoife’s guest tonight and she’ll be talking about one of her favourite traditional artists.
Spoken Stories
SUNDAY, 7PM, RTÉ RADIO ONE ★★★★
The Silver Coast by Colin Barrett is read by Eileen Walsh. The story is about what people owe each other, and the interplay between the human impulse to escape or transcend the world, and give yourself over to it.
Newstalk Breakfast MON-FRIDAY, 9PM, NEWSTALK ★★★★
Shane Coleman and Ciara Kelly have all the stories from politics, business, sport, entertainment and everything in between.
DRAMA
Sweeney Todd And The String Of Pearls
SUNDAY, 3PM, BBC RADIO 4 ★★★★
No, not a new Sondheim musical but a dramatisation of an 1846 ‘penny dreadful’ about the demon barber of Fleet Street that involves some pearls, cross-dressing, madness and, of course, pork pies. A terrific cast includes Rufus Sewell and Jonathan Cake as the investigators, Martin Jarvis as the man with the cut-throat razor and Joanne Whalley as his partner in grisly crime, Mrs Lovett.
The Lyric Feature
SUNDAY, 6PM, LYRIC FM ★★★★
A combination of radio play, poetry and performance art, One Day (Lá dá raibh) is a work of fiction which tells the story of a day in the life of a small village in the west of Ireland, where the dead and the living meet
MUSIC
The Alternative
MONDAY, 10PM, 2FM ★★★★
Ash (pictured) released their seventh studio album (eighth if you consider Trailer) Islands in May 2018. Dan Hegarty features tracks from Islands all this week on The Alternative. You can hear an interview that Dan had with the band from 2018 on Wednesday night’s show. both historical characters and others from the speaker’s own imagination. I
FACTUAL
Tech Talk
SUNDAY, 5PM, NEWSTALK ★★★★
Tech Talk highlights how technology affects us all, as Jess Kelly decodes the jargon to explain exactly what we need to know, and answers listeners’ questions.
Borderline: A Postcard From The Edge
SUNDAY, 7.15PM, BBC RADIO 4 ★★★★
In a performance to a virtual
Northern Irish audience, Co Down-born comedian Patrick Kielty is well placed to chat about life in the North pre-ceasefire to postBrexit.
Irish Chamber Orchestra, hear their Bach with a Bang concert recorded at UCH Limerick last year which includes Luasc by composer Ryan Molloy, a birthday commission from RTÉ Lyric FM to the orchestra.
Colm O’Regan Wants A Word WEDNESDAY, 1.30PM, RTÉ RADIO ONE ★★★★
Host Colm O’Regan talks about Ireland’s historical past with comedy sketches from actors Paul Tylak and Sharon Mannion, plus fascinating insights from Dr Sarah-Anne Buckley, historian and co-author of the bestselling book Ireland in Colour.
Documentary On One WEDNESDAY, 6.14PM, RTÉ RADIO ONE ★★★★
Four people tried to assassinate Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Only one person ever came close – her name was Violet Gibson and she was Irish. Violet spent the rest of her life in mental institutions, forgotten by society and by history
Classic FM Concert
WEDNESDAY, 8PM, CLASSIC FM ★★★★
It’s St Patrick’s Day and John Suchet marks the occasion with a range of Irish music, from Danny Boy, to a piano concerto by John Field (inventor of the nocturne), Charles Stanford’s Irish Rhapsody No. 3 performed by cellist Raphael Wallfisch, and Riverdance, the Eurovision interval act turned worldwide dance phenomenon (still going after 27 years). Meanwhile, The Folk Show With
Mark Radcliffe (BBC Radio 2, 9pm) offers more St Patrick’s Day music with tracks by Irish musicians such as Ye Vagabonds, Lankum and Daoirí Farrell.