... AND THE BEST RADIO

SUNDAY DRAMA ON 3: RODGERS AND HART AND HAMMERSTEIN, RADIO 3, 7.30PM

Before Rodgers and Hammerstein (The Sound Of Music, South Pacific, Oklahoma! etc), there was Rodgers and Hart, who penned such musical classics as Pal Joey and On Your Toes. Sara Woolley dramatises how one music partnership broke up and another began.

MONDAY BELIEVE ME BY EDDIE IZZARD RADIO 4 EXTRA, 2PM & 2AM

A fascinating insight into the early life of one of Britain’s most inventive and idiosyncratic actors and comedians, who now wishes to be known as ‘she’ or ‘her’. Growing up in Bangor, County Down, Izzard’s (below) mother died when he was six. Then, private school saw the teenager wrestling with dyslexia, sexuality and gender.

THE ULTIMATE CLASSIC FM HALL OF FAME CLASSIC FM, 10AM TO 7PM, MONDAY-FRIDAY

The top 300 pieces of music from the past 25 years voted for in an annual listeners’ chart. Likely chart-toppers are Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 2 and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.

WEDNESDAY CONVERSATIONS FROM A LONG MARRIAGE RADIO 4, 6.30PM

Promotion to an evening slot for this two-hander series by Jan Etherington. Joanna Lumley and Endeavour’s Roger Allam play a sparring middle-class couple whose zingy dialogue reveals what a long-term relationship is all about – a pointed male lesson on dishwasherstacking, for instance…

NEW YEAR’S EVE DRAMA: THAT DINNER OF ’67 RADIO 4, 2.15PM

Tracy-Ann Oberman’s play centres on the making of the 1967 film Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, a groundbreaking movie with Sidney Poitier (Adrian Lester) about racial tolerance at the height of the civil-rights struggle. It also highlights the relationship between the much-loved Hollywood stars Katharine Hepburn (Oberman) and the dying Spencer Tracy (Kenneth Branagh) in his final film.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE AUSTEN? RADIO 4, 11PM

Who can forget French and Saunders’ spoof on What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? The Thick Of It and Veep writer David Quantick’s drama finds them playing estranged sisters who meet when one launches her kissand-tell memoir. Hostilities and jealousy ensue, especially as the book doesn’t

mention one very dark secret…

NEW YEAR’S DAY THE ARCHERS ANNIVERSARY QUIZ RADIO 4, 7.15PM As the world’s longestrunning series drama turns 70, The Bull and Jolene and Kenton Archer host a quiz – all about Ambridge over its seven decades – pitting a team of Radio 4 presenters against one of superfans.