Radio Week
The picks of the best of this week’s radio
ENTERTAINMENT Sunday Afternoon with Simon Delaney
TONIGHT, 1PM, LYRIC FM ★★★★
Join stage and screen actor Simon Delaney and indulge in a perfect musical blend for weekend listening. Whether you’re a swingin’ cat with an ear for jazz or a lover of classical favourites, Simon will keep the great tunes and easy chat flowing.
Young Again
TUESDAY, 11AM, BBC RADIO 4� ★★★★ Kirsty Young’s show in which a guest reflects on their past and offers advice to their younger self is really just another celebrity interview, so Desert Island Discs without the music. Today’s interviewee Scary Spice, aka Mel B, has never been shy about discussing the traumas she experienced through her life, including her troubled 10-year marriage and she has plenty to say. She’s also just updated her autobiography Brutally Honest, revealing that she underwent unconventional brain therapy involving electromagnets to try and combat suicidal thoughts.
FACTUAL
The Lyric Feature
TONIGHT, 6PM, LYRIC FM ★★★★
In 1957, Blanaid Ó Brolcháin, niece of Joseph Plunkett, invited former Imperial and State Prima Ballerina Madame Nadine Nicholeva Legat to Dublin to help find a teacher of Russian-style ballet for the ballet school her daughter Ester attended. This led to an unlikely match with one of Legat’s former pupils, Patricia Ryan, the unconventional wife of Dublin artist and literary publisher John Ryan. This documentary traces the seven years of intense creativity that followed, during which Patricia Ryan and her exceptional students transformed their small ballet school into the now almost entirely forgotten National Ballet Company.
Tracking the Planet
THURSDAY, 4�PM, BBC RADIO 4� ★★★★ Across the world, animals on land and sea, both large and small, from rhinos to bees, have been fitted with tracking devices by scientists. Emily Knight explores what we have learned about their behaviour and migration patterns as a result. We’ve also gained insight into climate change, with diving seals sending back information about the state of glaciers and migrating birds about wind patterns. There are also the farm animals in the Italian mountains that are eagerly observed — any nervous movements in the fields can be a silent warning that an earthquake is coming.
DRAMA
Mouth
WEDNESDAY, 2.15PM, BBC RADIO 4� ★★★★ Heidi is trying hard to come to terms with the death of her paramedic husband Tom in a car accident, as is their teenage son Harry. But when a former work colleague of Tom’s turns up uninvited at Heidi’s door one day, the family’s lives are turned upside-down in this neatly written drama in which your sympathies move between the characters. Gillian Kearney (who played Debbie in Brookside and Emma Barton in Emmerdale) and Christine Bottomley (EastEnders and Early Doors) give impressive performances as the two women at the heart of the story.
MUSIC
Henry Mancini
TONIGHT, 6.4�5PM, BBC RADIO 3� ★★★★★ Ahead of tonight’s Oscars ceremony, this station celebrates film music all day, including The Early Music Show, Jazz Record Requests, Words And Music, and this profile of the composer of striking scores for Breakfast At Tiffany’s and The Pink Panther.