...AND THE BEST RADIO

SUNDAY The late national comedy treasure June Whitfield talks about her radio success, from The Glums in the 1950s to Miss Marple (catch Murder At The Vicarage on Radio 4 Extra all this week at 1.30pm and 6.30pm), and working with comedy greats such as Ronnie Barker, Benny Hill and Frankie Howerd. Former Doctor Who Peter Capaldi stars as the composer, who is visited by a deaf traveller from another time, in a reality where Beethoven never lost his hearing but is haunted by the prospect. An exploration of Beethoven and his music by Timothy X Atack with a score by deaf composer Lloyd Coleman. MONDAY Marking the launch of her fifth Cormoran Strike novel, Troubled Blood, J.K. Rowling chooses the music that helped her through troubled times – Joni Mitchell (pictured, right), Emeli Sandé and Led Zeppelin – and reveals how Danny Boyle got her to take part in the London Olympics opening ceremony. TUESDAY Get Carter, the gritty 1971 film with Michael Caine, was originally a novel called Jack’s Return Home by Ted Lewis, set in a world of organised crime in the North-East. Matthew Sweet examines the influence of the book and the film with director Mike Hodges. WEDNESDAY Recorded at London’s Wigmore Hall last week, a programme of German lieder songs of love and longing by Berg and Schubert, performed by baritone Christian Gerhaher and pianist Gerold Huber. THURSDAY Barry Farrimond, who plays The Archers’ former bad boy Ed Grundy, takes Clare Balding on a walk on Dartmoor and talks about recording the long-running radio soap in lockdown, the knot he invented (the Farrimond Friction Hitch) and the organisation, Open Up Music, he co-founded

to help young disabled musicians. FRIDAY Return of the mockumentary series about One Foot In The Grave’s Richard Wilson, written by Jon Canter. Wilson narrates his largely fictionalised biography, in which such luminaries as Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Antony Sher and David Tennant appear in dramatised scenes.