The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
On My Wavelength
The Jubilee celebrations continue today with Ken Bruce hosting live coverage of the superstar entertainment (Andrea Bocelli, Alicia Keyes, Celeste, Queen + Adam Lambert, Sam Ryder, Nile Rodgers and more) at the Platinum Pop Party (Saturday, Radio 2, 8pm). There’s build-up coverage, too, with Zoe Ball and Dermot O’Leary live backstage from 6pm, and Alan Titchmarsh’s morning show live from The Mall (Classic FM, Saturday, 7am). Also catch Archive on 4: Encounters with Elizabeth (Saturday, Radio 4, 8pm), looking back on meetings between the monarch and her subjects.
In Playing the Queen (Sunday, Radio 2, 9pm), Edith Bowman assembles a top-flight line-up of actors, impressionists and lookalikes – Olivia Colman, Claire Foy and Jan Ravens among them – to share memories of taking on the role of the most famous woman on earth. Highlights are Helen Mirren talking about her “utter terror, intimidation and fear” on being cast in Stephen Frears’s 2006 hit The Queen, and lookalike Jeanette Charles, now 94, recalling a globetrotting career based on her remarkable resemblance.
Petroc Trelawny takes his Breakfast (Monday, Radio 3, 6.30am) on a trans-Caledonian road trip this week, from the Black Isle in the east to the Isle of Mull in the west. “This part of Scotland has inspired generations of musicians,” says Trelawney, “whose music we’ll hear alongside live open-air performances by some of the country’s most exciting musicians”. Starting in Cromarty, he’ll be at Loch Ness on Tuesday, Fort Augustus on Wednesday and Oban on Thursday – ending at Fionnphort on Friday.
Sociologist Rachel Hurdley invites us to contemplate The Hidden History of the Front
Door (Tuesday, Radio 4, 4pm). Starting out at Chepstow Castle, she explores how doors evolved from defensive structures, and how they tell us more about those behind them than we realise. Contributors include architecture critic Jonathan Glancey.
Another superb investigation in Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley (Wednesday, Radio 4, 11.30am), this week exploring the historical case of Esther Lack, a London mother who, in 1865, was accused of cutting the throats of her three children. But was Lack really a heartless, cold-blooded child killer? Worsley and fellow historian Rosalind Crone unearth evidence of a decent woman enduring a life of unimaginable hardship and squalor.
Peter Flannery’s 1990s state-ofthe-nation TV drama Our Friends in the North (Thursday, Radio 4, 2.15pm) made a surprisingly smooth revival on radio. But a question mark hung over the decision to produce this brandnew addendum episode, set in 2021, and written by rising star Adam Usden rather than Flannery. Happily, the legacy was in good hands as Usden has produced more of a companion piece than a sequel, which touches on the series’ themes while setting free the ghosts of Nicky, Mary, Tosker and Geordie to roam the streets of present-day Newcastle.
Ben Lewis’s award-winning thriller The System (Friday, Radio 4, 2.15pm) returns for a second run in the nerve-jangling Limelight strand, taking its main characters off in a new direction. Maya (Siena Kelly) and Jake (Alex Austin) are on the run after being framed for murder. They’re so hard-pressed as to be unaware when a group of businessmen are kidnapped by extremists. But are they somehow involved? Pip Torrens guest stars.