The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
GABRIEL TATE
“Imagine Middlemarch. Imagine it in your mind’s eye.” The opening of Middlemarch (Saturday, Radio 4, 2.45pm), Katie Hims’s fine 12-part adaptation of the book that Virginia Woolf called “the only novel in English written for grown-ups” offers a tacit acknowledgement that radio is perhaps the finest medium of all for telling stories. Juliet Aubrey, who played Dorothea Brooke in the BBC’s definitive televised adaptation 25 years ago, here assumes the role of narrator, while Olivia Vinall succeeds her in the ostensible leading role of arguably the greatest ensemble novel in the English language.
Stephen Graham, one of the great contemporary storytellers on screens big and small, has had a year that feels stellar even by his high standards. After a shoutout from Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer during her Bafta acceptance speech came a gloriously opaque turn in Line of Duty, soulbaring in Shane Meadows’s unforgettable The Virtues and now a gig for Scorsese, holding his own against Messrs Pacino and De Niro in The Irishman. Then there was his sincere turn on Desert Island Discs last week. Now, in Sound and Vision (Sunday, 6 Music, 1.00pm) he talks with typical candour to Miranda Sawyer about where it all began, and working for everyone from Guy Ritchie to Arctic Monkeys.
Adam Buxton and the Human Horn (Monday, Radio 4, 1.00pm) begins like the tallest of tales.
The comedian-turnedpodcaster talks to historians, musicians and old friend Louis Theroux to piece together the strange life of William “Shooby” Taylor, whose peculiar line in scat singing graced the theme tune of Buxton’s cult Channel 4 treasure, The Adam and Joe Show. What happened to him? Was he for real? Is he still alive? Semi-apocryphal marginalia, and great fun.
The raison d’être is in the title of long-running series Telling Tales (Tuesday, Radio 4 Extra, 11.00am), which this week gives the floor to Nikesh Shukla, whose anthology The Good Immigrant showcased BAME writers including Riz Ahmed and Daniel York Loh. Shukla talks about why he did it, how it saved him from a career as a mediocre rapper, and the impact it has had.
The poet Lemn Sissay told his own story of a childhood spent in the care system in his bestselling 2019 autobiography,
My Name is Why. Lemn Sissay’s Social Enterprise (Wednesday, Radio 4, 11.30am) sees him channel those experiences into a conversation about charity work (of which he does plenty but doesn’t like to talk about it, “as I’ll explain over the next half an hour on national radio”). This frank, funny blend of stand-up, poetry and audience discussion begins with the concept of shelter.
Whither the printed book in the modern age? So Many Books, So Little Time (Thursday, Radio 4, 11.30am) finds Mark Hodkinson considering his collection of 3,500 books – unusual, certainly, but anachronistic too? Talking to fellow writers, booksellers and a joiner with grim tidings for fans of bespoke bookcases, he presents a compelling portrait of the book as reassurance, comfort and repository of memories; their more provocative, stimulating qualities are largely left to one side.
This week’s CrowdScience (Friday, World Service, 8.30pm) probes at the science in science fiction, as Anand Jagatia asks the experts how plausible it would be for humans to hibernate on long space voyages, without ageing.
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