Radio Week
The picks of the best of this week’s radio
ENTERTAINMENT The Lyric Feature
SUNDAY, 6PM, LYRIC FM ★★★★
The literature and storytelling traditions associated with The Great Blasket have long been acclaimed both internationally and at home. This programme offers a lively blend of expert opinion, music and song together with excerpts from letters and diaries of islanders, creating a vivid picture of Blasket life and the role that music and song played in the lives of the people. The music selections include field recordings made by various collectors over the years now archived in the National Folklore Collection, together with new recordings made especially for the programme by descendants of islanders playing music that draws upon their island heritage.
Omós Áite
WEDNESDAY, 2.05PM, RNAG� ★★★★ Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh visits Gaoth Dobhair with the writer and publisher Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhríde. Eoghan and Ailbhe walk along the beach and the bog and they climb Binn Bhuí; a place that has inspired his stories. He reads passages from his short stories at the places that inspired them and discusses the emotions and themes within them – youth, nostalgia, life on the edge and the mindset of the public.
Take to the Floor with Rachel Riley
SUNDAY, 6PM, SCALA ★★★★ Countdown star Rachel Riley owes a lot to the world of dance. Her stint on Strictly helped to raise her profile, and it also gained her a second husband in the shape of professional dancer and her partner on the show, Pasha Kovalev. In this new series she celebrates different dance styles and the music that goes with them.
Riley starts with ballet (ahead of World Ballet Day on Wednesday), and features famous tunes from The Nutcracker, Giselle and Romeo & Juliet.
FACTUAL The Essay
MONDAY, 10.45PM, BBC RADIO 3 ★★★★ In 1952 a first consignment of reindeer were introduced to the Scottish Highlands by Swedish reindeer herder Mikel Utsi who had recognised the similarity between the landscape there and his home in Lapland. The animals had a rough crossing by sea from Sweden and spent a month in quarantine at Edinburgh Zoo before heading for the Cairngorms. Poet Kenneth Steven looks back to that intervention in a week-long series about the introduction of wild animals and their effect on rural life.
People Fixing the World
TUESDAY, 3PM, BBC WORLD SERVICE ★★★★
The chaos and destruction of disaster zones might bring on feelings of despair and inertia in most of us, but luckily they spur some people on to innovate. This programme celebrates some of their inventions, including a hospital that was built inside a train to treat Ukrainian civilians in a war zone and a medical robot being developed to treat people in places that are too dangerous for rescuers to enter.
DRAMA Drama On One
SUNDAY, 8PM, RTÉ RADIO ONE ★★★★ Drama On One concludes its Beckett Season with A Piece of Monologue, performed by Barry McGovern, and directed by Daniel Reardon. A Piece of Monologue was originally written for the actor David Warrilow and first performed in 1979. A man, Speaker, opens with the arresting line, ’Birth was the death of him’, before describing fleeting aspects of a life, most likely his own: from successive lightings of a lamp; to the ripping of photos of loved ones.