...AND THE BEST RADIO

SUNDAY DRAMA ON 3: CONSTELLATIONS AND ELEGY, RADIO 3, 8PM

Two plays by Nick Payne. The award-winning Constellations stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw and George MacKay as a cosmologist and a beekeeper in a piece encompassing alternate universes and assisted suicide. Elegy (2016), featuring Juliet Stevenson, questions medical progress as it affects the relationship between two women.

MONDAY CLASSIC FM CONCERT WITH JOHN SUCHET CLASSIC FM, 8PM

The Royal Albert Hall is 150 years old on this day, and the show features some of the best live performances at this iconic venue, including pianist Lang Lang’s recital from 2013 and a 1982 gala held in honour of Luciano Pavarotti.

THE BATTERSEA POLTERGEIST RADIO 4, 11.30PM

Drama documentary in eight parts by Danny Robins about a paranormal cold case that combines a chilling story from South London in the 1950s – Dafne Keen plays a haunted young girl and Toby Jones is a ghost-hunter – and an investigation by Robins into the alleged haunting.

TUESDAY THE DAY THE MUZAK DIED RADIO 4, 9PM

Former US Major General George Owen Squier coined the term ‘muzak’ in the 1930s and set up a company to provide easy-listening background tracks for lifts, hotels and the like. This examination plays the aural wallpaper and raises deeper questions about the genre.

WEDNESDAY DRAMA: HAPPINESS! RADIO 4, 2.15PM

This ironically titled drama about Ken Dodd finds him in 1988 at the nadir of his long and colourful career, charged with tax evasion. Ian Billings’s play, starring David Threlfall, portrays the Liverpudlian comic during the year of the case, in which he was acquitted.

GOOD FRIDAY THE PRIME MINISTER AT 300 RADIO 4, 11AM

In 1721, Robert Walpole was the first, and longest-serving, prime minister. Sir Anthony Seldon talks to former PMs about the post and its challenges. What might Walpole and Boris Johnson have in common, he asks, and is it actually possible to do the job effectively today?