Sara’s guests are turning over a new leaf
Between the Covers
BBC2, 7.30pm
LOCKDOWN and the more recent restrictions may have made some hobbies more difficult – especially if your hobbies include going to the pub after 10pm or gathering in groups of seven or more – but reading is one pastime that hasn’t been affected.
So, it’s not surprising that the nation’s broadcasters are getting in on the action. Earlier this year, Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan brought us their Channel 4 series Keep Reading & Carry On, and now the BBC are launching their own TV book club, the more intriguingly named Between the Covers, hosted by Sara Cox.
In each episode, the presenter and Radio 2 DJ will be joined by four famous faces, who will each bring in their favourite book of all time to discuss with their fellow guests, along with the show’s novel of the week, which will be brought to life by a film of the author.
There’s also a second selected book of the week, which will have been written one of Cox’s guests.
But the host and the BBC don’t want this to be an exclusive club, where you have to be famous to get in. All the books featured will be labelled with Between the Covers stickers in stores, libraries and online, so that audiences can read them too and tweet along.
Cox says: “I can’t wait to delve between the covers of some fantastic books with some of my most favourite people. This show will be welcoming and warm – we want to celebrate books, recommend some absolute crackers and have a good giggle while we do it.”
She’s certainly bagged some impressive guests. The well-known authors who will be appearing on future episodes include Richard Osman, who talks about his book Thursday Murder Club, Will
Young who opens up about his autobiographical account of To Be A Gay Man and Graham Norton, whose latest novel is Home Stretch.
Alan Davies is also due to drop by to discuss his hard-hitting autobiography Just Ignore Him.
But the first celebrity author to be inducted into the Between the Covers book club is comedian Sara Pascoe, who talks about her book Sex Power Money. As the title suggests, it deals with some very big subjects, including the way human interactions are still underpinned by wealth and the stigma surrounding people who work in the sex industry. Her previous book, Animal, combined autobiography and evolutionary history to discuss the female body, so she’s no stranger to taking on ambitious subject matter. In fact, the biggest challenge might be keeping the discussion down to just 30 minutes, as there are other tomes – and other panellists.
Comedians Tom Allen and Phil Wang are also on board, as is singer Sophie Ellis Bextor, who has been keeping her fans entertained with her Friday night Kitchen Discos but is now swapping that for a Friday night book club. As well as sharing their thoughts on Pascoe’s offering, they will also be weighing in on the book of the week, Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library.