Radio
No red carpet was rolled out on Sunday night when the first ever Audio Drama Awards were presented to best actor (David Tennant), best actress (Rosie Cavaliero), best drama (The Year My Mother Went Missing)...in a Hollywood-Lite ceremony at Broadcasting House. No tears were shed as the winners sought desperately to find the right words — not too smug, neither too self-immolating. There were no cheesy jokes from a rancid comedian as compère (David Tennant took on the role formerly reserved for Ricky Gervais). But at last, after 89 years of plays on the BBC, the extraordinary fact that at...
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It was uncanny, discomfiting, even a little bit alarming. He seemed to be reading my mind, as if my thoughts were being hurled back at me through the ether. Why are we so tired? Why does it feel as though time itself is speeding up, making midlife so much more nerve-wracking an experience than it might otherwise be? Why do you never hear a middle-aged person talking about being bored? Toby Longworth was reading from Marcus Berkmann’s new book, A Shed of One’s Own: Midlife Without the Crisis, for Book of the Week on Radio 4 on Monday morning.
A...
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Where mostly do you listen to the radio? In the kitchen, on the M25 or M62, under the duvet, soaking in a bathtub? We’ve got used to moving around with the wireless, often listening with just half an ear, not really connecting at all, and with no opportunity to share the experience with anyone else. In the Dark, a band of radio enthusiasts who’ve got together to produce unusual audio documentaries, is trying to take us back to the sensation shared by those first listeners to radio, when families, friends, neighbours joined up to listen and laugh along to The...
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The trouble with Dickens is that there’s just far too much plot. How do you make sense of his incredibly complex stories in just three hours as the BBC tried to do at Christmas with its TV version of Great Expectations? It looked fabulous but the storyline made no sense because there was no depth to any of the characters. The melodrama was laughably inept, the plot so confusing you needed to have read the book to understand what was happening. Over on Radio 4, the writer Ayeesha Menon has also been given just three hours to retell one of...
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‘Do you feel like crying?’ asked Shaun Keaveny on his 6 Music breakfast show this week, before replying, ‘Text us your tears.’ It was Tuesday, the first day back at work for many listeners. And Keaveny was trying to cheer us up. Then he played ‘Grey Day’ by Madness.
Keaveny’s lucky. 6 Music reckons that its listeners, being creative types, don’t have to get up so early to leave for work. Their alarms will be set for later, and Keaveny doesn’t have to be in the studio for his three-hour show until 7 a.m. By which time, over on 5...
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Since the Home Service was relaunched as Radio 4 in September 1967, the station has established itself almost as the ‘heartbeat’ of the BBC. The chance to direct, shape and enhance such a treasure-house of programmes — ranging from Farming Today to ElvenQuest via Something Understood, Classic Serial and The World Tonight — must be endlessly fascinating. But therein lies the challenge. Radio 4 does sparkle with its intellectual brilliance, its flashes of humour, its ability to make sense of the moment through its reporters, interviewers and the editorial wizards who pull the news together in seconds. It can, though,...
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