Radio Week
The picks of the best of this week’s radio
ENTERTAINMENT The Lyric Feature
SUNDAY, 6PM, LYRIC FM ★★★★
Jays are colourful, vocal and highly intelligent woodland birds. Ecologist Anja Murray and musician Brían Mac Gloinn meet ornithologist Seán Ronayne in an autumn woodland to listen to stories these birds’ incredible capacity for mimicry. Jays’ accolade of being among the smartest birds in the world is explained by Professor Comparative Cognition at the University of Cambridge, Nickola Clayton. Brían also sources some Catalan folk associations and a song that brings these stories to life.
I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue
MONDAY, 6.30PM, BBC RADIO 4 ★★★★
It was launched back in 1972, and we may now have reached the start of series 81, but this remains a very funny show. The wonderfully lugubrious Jack Dee returns as the reluctant and dismissive host of the ‘antidote to panel games’. Being given silly things to do this week are Tony Hawks, Alexander Armstrong, Rachel Parris and the Reverend Richard Coles.
Rachel Parris is on I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue
Michael Sheen Gets Into Character
TUESDAY, 4PM, BBC RADIO 4 ★★★★
While on stage in 1906, actor Konstantin Stanislavski had a major crisis — he didn’t forget his lines or fall off the stage, he just felt he’d given a poor and mechanical performance. His reaction was to spend the summer devising his ‘System’ for actors that would encourage them to create believable characters and act in a more naturalistic and less melodramatic way. Michael Sheen starts his exploration of acting by looking into Stanislavski’s influence with the help of fellow actor Adrian Lester and legendary voice coach Patsy Rodenburg.
FACTUAL To Catch A Scorpion
WEDNESDAY, 9.30AM, BBC RADIO 4
★★★★
Who are the people smugglers making a fortune from migrants who pile onto boats to cross the English Channel, some of them perishing en route? Sue Mitchell and ex-army aid worker Richard Lawrie set out to find one of the big players, an Iraqi man, codenamed Scorpion who was himself a failed asylum seeker and was deported from the UK, but only after serving time for drug and firearm offences. Their first port of call is a backstreet corner shop in Nottingham. As she asks questions in the shop, four cars with blacked-out windows pull up in the street outside.
The Forgotten
WEDNESDAY, 9.30AM, BBC RADIO 4
★★★★★
The 1974 bombings in Dublin and Monaghan were the largest act of mass murder during the Troubles and in the history of the Republic. Thirty four people were killed and almost 300 were injured by four no-warning, rush hour car bombs. No one has ever been charged and initial investigations into the bombings were quickly wound down. Ahead of the 50th anniversary of the atrocity, The Forgotten retraces what happened that fateful day, continues its probe into the scenes of devastation in Dublin and Monaghan to how the perpetrators planned and carried out the attacks.
MUSIC Barrscéalta
THURSDAY, 11AM, RTÉ RNAG ★★★★★
The Barrscéalta team visits the Árainn Mhór island today and tomorrow, when Féile Róise Rua takes place on the island. Today, the inhabitants of the island will be heard on the show. On Friday, Nell Ní Chróinín, Breandán Ó Beaglaoich, Ruth Clinton, Griogar Labhruidh, Síle Friel, Ye Vagabonds and many more will be among the musicians featured.
Radio 3 in Concert
THURSDAY, 7.30PM, BBC RADIO 3
★★★★★
The highlight tonight is BBC Young Musician 2022 finalist Ethan Loch, who’s blind, playing Chopin’s dreamily romantic Second Piano Concerto, a love letter to his young sweetheart. He composed it when he was just 20 and gave its first performance himself in Warsaw in 1830. The concert, live from City Halls in Glasgow with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, blasts off with Aaron Copland’s energetic Fanfare for the Common Man and also features Dvorak’s exhilarating 9th Symphony From The New World.
The Alternative
THURSDAY, 11PM, 2FM ★★★★★
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Moby’s
Moby’s set at Rock Werchter features on 2fm
seminal album Play, Dan Hegarty brings us highlights of his set at the Rock Werchter Festival, which was recorded in July 2000. The album was released on May 17, 1999, and would go on to become one of the most influential albums of the 1990s.
Bowen and Betjeman DRAMA
FRIDAY, 3PM, 9PM, BBC RADIO 4 EXTRA
★★★★
Another chance to hear this drama featuring a top cast and written by the two-time Booker Prize-winning novelist John Banville. The setting is a hotel in neutral Dublin during the Second World
War w here Banville imagines an encounter over lunch between the poet John Betjeman, played by Toby Jones, and the novelist Elizabeth Bowen, played by Miranda Richardson. He is working in
Ireland as the British press attache and possibly also as a spy, while she is over from England to visit her ancient family pile.
The Man Who Fell To Earth
SUNDAY, 3PM, BBC RADIO 4 ★★★★
David Bowie memorably starred in Nicholas Roeg’s 1976 film version of this sci-fi story as the alien who lands in Kentucky on a doomed mission from his planet that is suffering a terrible drought. Harry Treadaway plays the lead here, with a cast including Christopher Eccleston and Laura Aikman.