Bbc

He is said to ‘have changed the sound of speech radio’, not just by giving voice to those who until then (the 1960s) had not been given air time, the richness of their county accents too far removed from Broadcasting House’s Received Pronunciation. He won awards for his pioneering use of the new midget tape recorders, taking his microphone out of the studio and down the mines, to the fishing harbours, into the boxing rings and talking to teenagers. He was also a genius at editing, able to cut away an errant ‘s’ or insert a single note into the soundscape with the rudimentary tools then available, a sharp razor

On Sunday a drama began with ED905 being stolen by an OCG who’d faked an RTC that required IR, little realising that they had a UCO in their midst. So yes, Line of Duty (BBC1) is back in all its jargon-laden glory — and, judging from the first episode, it’s lost none of its ability to grip either. For those a bit rusty on their police abbreviations, that opening scene featured the female member of an organised crime group pretending she’d crashed her car with a baby inside, causing the woman in charge of a passing police convoy to stop and help. The rest of the gang then appeared in

Which of the Beatles would you most like to have been? Not either of the dead ones, presumably. Nor the one continually derided for his alleged lack of talent. Definitely not the embarrassing, gurning, two-thumbs-up uncool one… Anyway, it’s a trick question. The correct answer, at least it is for me after watching The Beatles: Made on Merseyside (BBC4, Friday), is Pete Best — the drummer who got ousted just before the band got big because he was too good-looking, too quiet and, some say, because Brian Epstein couldn’t handle his mum’s pushiness. Best, I’d always imagined, was the unluckiest man in history. So when he was featured on the

‘You’re thinking these girls all wrong,’ Miss Mai tells Enid in Winsome Pinnock’s play Leave Taking, adapted from the recent Bush Theatre revival for Radio 3 (and produced by Pauline Harris). ‘They don’t know where they come from.’ Miss Mai continues: ‘These girls got Caribbean souls,’ but they’re living in south London. Viv and Del have been taken to see Miss Mai, known locally as an obeah woman, by their mother Enid for a palm reading, a prediction, or perhaps a casting out of demons. Del has got into bad company, has lost her job at the burger bar for being cheeky, and fears she must be pregnant. Viv was

Toby Jones shuffles into the café in Clapham where we are meeting. He’s wearing a duffle coat and a hat and carrying a rucksack. He looks just like one of those unsung characters that he specialises in, the kind of person you don’t take much notice of unless you have to. Today we are talking about his new ‘vehicle’ (sorry), Don’t Forget the Driver. It’s an everyday tale of an everyday coach driver (Peter Green) from Bognor Regis, his daughter Kayla, who turns ennui into an artform, and mother Audrey, who’s going downhill fast with Alzheimer’s. It is going to twang the nation’s heartstrings. What makes it different is that

BBC2’s MotherFatherSon announced its status as a classy thriller in the traditional way: by ensuring that for quite a long time we had no idea what was going on. At first it looked as if the focus would be on a missing teenager whose phone we saw abandoned in the woods. But then we cut to an American called Max (Richard Gere, no less) arriving in London by private jet on an apparent mission to choose our next prime minister. Then to a younger man running fast and screaming. Then to a veteran female journalist being sacked — and not only because she’d just lit a cigarette at her desk.

Steve Coogan is back as Alan Partridge but frankly who cares? Like Ali G, I’ve long thought, he’s one of those ‘classic’ 1990s comedy characters funnier in recollection than ever he was in reality. He should have been confined to brief sketches — like Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield mostly did with their cheesy has-been DJs Smashie and Nicey — not cruelly exposed in endless TV series where you’ve got the joke in the first five minutes and the rest is pure cringe. Actually, though, This Time with Alan Partridge (BBC1, Mondays) is genuinely funny, clever and enjoyable because finally he has scriptwriters who don’t hate him. For his original

With the upsurge of listeners to Classic FM (now boasted to be 5.6 million listeners each week) and the imminent launch of a new commercial station, Scala Radio, dedicated to classical music and fronted by the former Radio 2 DJ Simon Mayo (who has said about his new home: ‘Some of it will be familiar, some new and exciting but all timeless, beautiful and all absolutely relevant to today’), Radio 3 badly needs to regain our attention. Last weekend’s focus on Berlioz, ‘The Ultimate Romantic’, could have been such an opportunity, but either because of funding cuts or a confusion about its purpose (to find new audiences, to teach or

Terrible news for gay broadcasters —  the BBC has only one year to meet a diversity target which says that 8 per cent of roles on TV and radio must be occupied by homosexuals. This means a reduction in gay TV weathermen by at least three quarters, and they’ll also have to sack a good half of the gay chat-show hosts. This seems to me unfair, but that’s diversity targets for you. The 8 per cent figure has been appropriated by the BBC from the gay lobby, although there are activists who will tell you that a still greater proportion of our country is homosexual. This does not match with

Boy often likes to rebuke me for having impossibly high standards when it comes to TV. ‘Why can’t you just enjoy it?’ he says. This is disappointing. One reason I ruined myself to give him an expensive education is so I wouldn’t have to share my viewing couch with a drooling moron happy to gawp at any old crap. Worse, whenever I try to draw his attention to stuff I consider to be extra specially worth watching — Fauda, Babylon Berlin, etc. — he rejects it because it has been tainted by my recommendation. So the next brilliant thing he won’t get to see is Gomorrah (Sky). This relentlessly dour