The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
On My Wavelength
There’s been a lot of apprehension about this year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo, and whether it will even go ahead given ongoing global circumstances. But let’s focus for a moment on some of the brighter aspects of the Games, including the fact that breakdancing, also known as breaking, is making its debut as an Olympic sport this year. In The Documentary (today, World Service, 12.06pm), four-time breaking world champion, BoxWon, relates the history of how breaking emerged at block parties in the Bronx before transferring to the New York City art scene in the Seventies and going worldwide.
Are all comedians doomed to be either left wing or right wing, or is there space for comedy somewhere in the middle? Alun Cochrane: Centrist Dad? (Sunday, Radio 4, 7.15pm) considers whether comedians can be non-partisan in their mockery. As a centrist, Cochrane wonders why the political landscape of the last few years has left him feeling like an extremist. Has he changed, or has the world?
Book of the Week: Vaxxers (Monday to Friday, Radio 4FM, 9.45am) is the extraordinary story of the making of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, and the account by Oxford vaccinology experts into how they leapt into action. Samantha Bond and Debra Baker read the words of Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green as they relate how it happened, the cutting-edge science behind the development of all the vaccines, and the hope for the end of the pandemic.
Genetic Dreams, Genetic Nightmares (Tuesday, Radio 4, 11am) is a series looking at the 50-year history of genetic engineering, as well as the possibilities for a future ethical hinterland of “designer babies”. Matthew Cobb, presenting, is a professor of biology at the University of Manchester. In this first episode, he tells the story of gene editing’s origins at Stanford University in 1971, and how ethics have been thorny for the science since the beginning.
What’s Funny About (Wednesday, Radio 4, 11.30am) is the series going behind the scenes of classic British TV comedies. It debuted on Radio 4 Extra, but makes a welcome transition to Radio 4, as it’s a rich insight into some favourite sitcoms. In each episode, TV comedy bigwigs Peter Fincham and Jon Plowman meet the brains behind a different TV comedy and hear the story of how it was made. The show in question this week is Absolutely Fabulous, and star and writer Jennifer Saunders spills the beans of Edina and Patsy’s world, darling.
Ingenious (Monday to Friday, Radio 4, 1.45pm) is Dr Kat Arney’s series exploring how much of who we are, and how we live our lives, is in our genes. After considering subjects including whether weight gain is genetic, on Thursday she considers the serious medical question of why some people seem to be immune to contracting HIV. Even more intriguingly, these people’s genes could be used to remove the virus from an ill patient’s body completely.
And in To Preserve the Health of Man (Monday to Friday, Radio 3, 10.45pm), David Suchet plays the English Renaissance composer William Byrd in a series of five imagined encounters in his life, written by DJ Britton. The focus is on Byrd’s composition of his great liturgical work, the Gradualia, a collection of 109 pieces written for each feast day in the Church calendar.