The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
Gerard O’Donovan On My Wavelength
Aweek brimming with great radio gets under way with a celebration of one of the UK’s best loved institutions. Archive on 4: RNLI at 200 (today, Radio 4, 8pm) finds Griff Rhys Jones rummaging through an atmospheric collection of contemporary testimony and archive material gathered from crews, supporters and some of the 142,000 lucky souls saved (thus far) by the courage of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s volunteers. Also today, the award-winning podcast Dear Daughter (World Service, 6.30pm) returns for a third series of heartfelt epistles from parents.
Daphne du Maurier fans won’t want to miss Drama on 4: Don’t Look Now (Sunday, Radio 4, 3pm), which kicks off a Radio 4 fortnight devoted to the writer’s life and work. Katie Hims’s adaptation of this supremely unsettling tale (probably best known from Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 film) strips the story right back, with strong performances from Jamie Parker and Aisling Loftus as grieving parents living in Venice. Beforehand, in Opening Lines (Radio 4, 2.45pm), writer John Yorke considers the story as a landmark moment in the evolution of the psychological thriller.
Journalist Jenny Kleeman’s
The Price of Life makes for a jaw-dropping Book of the Week (Monday to Friday, Radio 4FM, 9.45am). In it she explores how, in a world besotted by data, it’s possible to run a cost-benefit analysis on anything – including life itself – and sets out to meet people whose lives are spent coolly calculating the true financial impact of anything from murder to NHS treatments to kidnapping.
The shifting fortunes of artistic fame are the subject of Dead Famous (Tuesday, Radio 4, 11.30am), with Rosie Millard exploring the forces that shape the “afterlives” of great artists. Beginning with Vermeer, she pinpoints key moments on the Dutch painter’s posthumous journey from bankrupt unknown to a global brand whose paintings adorn everything from chocolate bars to fridge magnets.
Helena Bonham Carter and Bill Nighy make Double Exposure: Beside Myself (Wednesday, Radio 4, 2.15pm) another highlight of Radio 4’s Daphne du Maurier fortnight. Written by Moya O’Shea, the play introduces us to the author – or Lady Browning (Bonham Carter), as she’s chiefly referred to here – in her final years. Suffering from poor health and plagued by worry over her failing creative powers, she bumps into a mysterious stranger (Nighy) while walking along a clifftop in Cornwall.
There’s some fantastic live music ahead as schedules are handed over to the BBC Radio 6 Music Festival, from Thursday to Sunday. Lauren Laverne, Mary Anne Hobbs, Craig Charles and Huw Stephens all devote their shows to the opening on Thursday. But it is Deb Grant and Tom Ravenscroft who really get the party started, from 7pm, broadcasting headliners Young Fathers’ set at Manchester’s Victoria Warehouse.
All week Radio 3 builds up to International Women’s Day, culminating in Friday’s edition of Composer of the Week (noon) focusing on German composer Johanna Senfter, and a hugely enjoyable run of The Essay (10.45pm) musing upon the power of Édith Piaf. For the 10th year, the entire schedule is given over to music by women composers, culminating in a celebratory Radio 3 in Concert (7.30pm).