...AND THE BEST RADIO

SUNDAY DRAMA ON 3: THE SON RADIO 3, 7.30PM

French playwright Florian Zeller had three plays running in the West End a few years ago. The Son, which follows The Mother and The Father (now being made into a film with Anthony Hopkins), concerns a troubled family and sees Laurie Kynaston as the depressed teen of the title, reprising his award-winning London stage performance.

MONDAY

BOOK OF THE WEEK: TOM STOPPARD: A LIFE RADIO 4, 9.45AM & 12.30AM, MON-FRI

Britain’s greatest living playwright – author of such works as Travesties, The Real Thing and the Oscar-winning script for Shakespeare In Love – is the subject of a much-anticipated biography from Hermione Lee. Alex Jennings is the reader.

THE UNTOLD, RADIO 4, 11AM

The latest episode of this series on untold dramas of the 21st Century focuses on Sam, a former student who started an Instagram page rating dedicated public benches as a joke. Its fame has spread, with bereaved relatives asking him to score their loved one’s bench – presenting Sam with a dilemma…

TUESDAY

ROB NEWMAN’S HALF-FULL PHILOSOPHY HOUR, RADIO 4, 6.30PM

What’s the connection between Friedrich Nietzsche and James Bond? Find out about this and more as comedian Rob Newman returns with a four-part series on the eccentricities of philosophy.

RADIO 3 IN CONCERT: BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AT 90, RADIO 3, 7.30PM

The BBC Symphony Orchestra celebrates its anniversary later this month, and this programme comprises highlights from its concerts at the Barbican Hall over the past 20 years, with conductors including Sakari Oramo, Dalia Stasevska, Sir Andrew Davis and John Adams.

FRIDAY SOUNDS OF THE 80S RADIO 2, 8PM

Saturday is National Album Day, marked as Gary Davies counts down listeners’ top 40 LPs of the 1980s, chosen from a list of 50 picked by a panel of Radio 2 experts. The decade’s album tracks will also be played all day on Radio 2.

SATURDAY

A TRIBUTE TO NICHOLAS PARSONS, RADIO 4, FROM 7PM

In A Man Of Many Parts at 7pm, Paul Jackson tries to pin down the essence of the man (top, on Sale Of The Century). That’s followed by the 800th episode of

Just A Minute, at 7.30pm, and Parsons’ history of double acts, The Straight Man, at

8pm. In Doon The Watta, at 8.30pm, Parsons revisits

Glasgow, where he spent his teenage years. Finally, at

9pm, Kirsty Young presents his Desert Island Discs.