The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
On My Wavelength
Asense of discovery is palpable in this week’s radio. Octopuses are the theme of the first episode in a new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage (tonight, Radio 4, 7.15pm), with Brian Cox and Robin Ince returning for more helpings of gold-standard scientific comedy, joined tonight by marine biologist Dr Tim Lamont, neuroscientist Dr Amy Courtney and comedian Russell Kane.
How high a ratio of pubs to politicians does Westminster need? And how many nurseries and childcare options do those politicians have in order to facilitate those pub trips? Irish comedian Catherine Bohart presents Who Runs the World (Sunday, Radio 4, 7.15pm), a comedy series about the subtle ways that the balance between the sexes in politics remains unequal. She’s joined by Conservative peer Baroness Warsi to discuss the current situation and how to improve things.
Why do we find some things just so darned cute? And how powerful is the essence of cuteness in convincing us to do things, buy things and conserve some adorable things at the expense of others? Book of the Week: Irresistible: How Cuteness Wired Our Brains and Conquered the World (Mon-Fri, Radio 4FM, 9.45am) is Joshua Paul Dale’s fascinating exploration of what it means to be cute, starting by exploring the “cutification” of Tokyo.
The future of the Italian economy forms the main theme of The Reinvention of Italy (Tuesday, Radio 4, 11am), Anne McElvoy’s exploration of what it means to be Italian today, particularly in the wake of the political shift to the right that has been seen through the election of Giorgia Meloni. Meloni, who has pledged to restore Italian national identity, is a controversial figure, but the tension between traditional and contemporary cultural values in Italy runs deep, as McElvoy discovers.
Speaking of Italy, in this week’s Being Roman with Mary Beard (Wednesday, Radio 4, 11.30am), the superstar classicist and historian introduces us to some real-life Romans. We’ll hear the extraordinary-sounding story of a woman named Turia, whose parents were murdered, fuelling her desire to trace their killers while fending off relatives fighting over her inheritance, all amid the brutal civil war that erupted following the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC.
“Forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards” was the inspiration, according to Ursula K Le Guin, behind her 1973 story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. Her writing is the subject of Free Thinking (Thursday, Radio 3, 10pm), in which presenter Matthew Sweet reflects on her influence with the help of guests Una McCormack and Naomi Alderman.
And the horrific relationship between Helen Archer and Rob Titchener in The Archers (Sun-Fri, Radio 4, 7pm) has proved to be one of the greatest and most disturbing storylines in British soap operas. It could have all ended back in 2016 when Helen stabbed Rob as a last resort after his long, abusive campaign of intimidation and control, and she stood trial for attempted murder before eventually being acquitted. But Rob came back into the frame earlier this year, complete with an apparent brain tumour, exploding Helen’s relatively settled world once more. On Friday, however, we are assured that their story will reach “the end of the line”. What horrors could possibly bring their tumultuous narrative to its final conclusion?