The picks of the best of this week’s radio

ENTERTAINMENT

Private Passions

SUNDAY, NOON, BBC RADIO 3 ★★★★

Irish Daily Mail columnist Bel Mooney talks to Michael Berkeley about the happiness and sorrows she has known, and picks the music that brings her comfort and joy.

Mairead Ronan

MONDAY-FRIDAY, 12PM, TODAY FM ★★★★ Mairead has slotted seamlessly into the role formerly held by Muireann O’Connell and her show is a mix of music, chat and laughs.

FACTUAL

There Goes Cré na Cille MONDAY, 4.10PM, RNAG ★★★★

The first in a series of three programmes from the archives about the influential writer, lecturer, political and civil rights activist Máirtín Ó Cadhain, born in 1906 near An Spidéal in the Connemara Gaeltacht.

The Great Gallery Tours MONDAY, 4PM, BBC RADIO 4 ★★★★

Simon Schama gives tours of four world-class art galleries, starting at London’s Courtauld with its collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist works by the likes of Cézanne, Manet and Gauguin.

DNA and Me

TUESDAY, 9AM, BBC WORLD SERVICE ★★★★ Some of us spend €80 on sending a saliva sample away for a DNA test, only to learn that we are 98 per cent Irish. Others find they have a far more interesting ancestry. Sophia Smith Galer asks if our identity is controlled by our genes.

Open Country

THURSDAY, 3PM, BBC RADIO 4 ★★★★

On the west coast of Scotland is a tiny village with an odd history. It has, as Helen Mark discovers, its own micro-climate – and a certain magic.

DRAMA

The Weekend

SUNDAY, 4PM, BBC RADIO 4 EXTRA ★★★★ Michael Palin’s only stage play is based on the oppressive relationship of his own parents. Palin stars alongside Penelope Wilton as the couple are visited by their daughter and family for the weekend, with tragic-comic results.

Drama On One

SUNDAY, 8PM, RTÉ RADIO ONE ★★★★

In A Pathetic Fallacy by Aidan Mathews, a woman of a certain age and of a most uncertain spirit frets in bittersweet free-fall over her two adult children as their mishaps mount.

A Month In Siena

MON-FRIDAY, 9.45AM, BBC RADIO 4 FM ★★★★

Be whisked away to the art and beauty of Siena in this reading of Hisham Matar’s memoir of his time in this ancient hilltop town, which celebrates the importance of great art to the human spirit.

Relativity

FRIDAY, 11AM, BBC RADIO 4

★★★★

Richard Herring draws on his own experience for this third series of the comedy drama about family life, here focusing on first-time parenting and how to keep a long marriage going. The cast includes Alison Steadman (pictured), Phil Davis and Herring himself.