Drama

What a load of manipulative, hysterical tosh is An Inspector Calls. It wasn’t a work with which I was familiar till I saw the latest TV adaptation. Now, of course, I see exactly why the luvvies — see, for example, Stephen Daldry’s highly acclaimed early 1990s National Theatre revival — adore it so. It confirms everything they think they know about the world: rich people bad, heartless, oppressive; poor people the long-suffering and saintly salt of the earth. In case you’ve not had the pleasure, J.B. Priestley’s play is like a socialist game of Cluedo: a lovely innocent young working-class woman has died and the toffs all dunnit. Self-made millionaire

Have you heard the one about girlfriend-killer Oscar Pistorius not having a leg to stand on? Or what about the Germanwings knock-knock joke? If you find gags like these funny, you could come and stand with me on the terraces at Brentford FC. When we played Leeds United earlier in the season, we chanted at them, ‘He’s one of your own, he’s one of your own, Jimmy Savile, he’s one of your own.’ The general public has never wasted much time making up jokes about tragic public events. Making light of high-profile tragedies is a perfectly understandable human reaction, even if it might be frowned upon by some. And what

Journalist, novelist, broadcaster and figurehead of British feminism Caitlin Moran, who writes most of the Times and even had her Twitter feed included on a list of A-Level set texts, is now bidding to break into the sitcom business. Can one woman shoulder this ever-increasing multimedia load, along with the fawning tide of adulation that follows her everywhere? Wisely, she enlisted the help of her sister Caroline to create Raised By Wolves (Channel 4, Monday), a wily reimagining of their home-schooled childhood (alongside six siblings) on a Wolverhampton council estate. After a 2013 pilot, it’s back for a six-part series, with the hyperactive, motormouthed Germaine (the fictionalised Caitlin) played by

Sky1’s new hospital drama Critical (Tuesday) can’t be accused of making a timid start. Within seconds, an urgent request had come over the loudspeaker system for ‘the trauma corps’ to head to the emergency department, causing the main members of the cast to sprint down various corridors at impressive speed. Meanwhile, a patient was briskly wheeled to the same department from a helicopter on the roof, pausing only to cough up blood all over the lift. Moments after that, the trauma corps were already exchanging the kind of rapid-fire medical speak — ‘Dullness to percussion on the left side!’— that most viewers mightn’t entirely comprehend but that clearly translates as

In January 1958, the British government began working on the significantly titled Operation Hope Not: its plans for what to do when Winston Churchill died. The plans, it turned out, wouldn’t be needed until January 1965 — but the intervening seven years were obviously well spent, because, as Churchill: A Nation’s Farewell (BBC1, Wednesday) made resoundingly clear, the farewell in question was a triumph. London came to a standstill and Big Ben fell silent as huge crowds watched the procession of the coffin from Westminster to the spectacular state funeral in St Paul’s — and its boat journey along the Thames afterwards. For the 50th anniversary, Jeremy Paxman talked us

Probably the two greatest advances in western culture in my lifetime have been the Sopranos-style epic serial drama and the advent of TV on demand and/or the DVD box set. I don’t think I’m saying anything weird or contentious — or indeed original — here. For example, I’m writing these words at the end of a week with the Fawn in the Canaries, a holiday which I just know wouldn’t have been half as pleasurable if we hadn’t been able to retire to our room every evening after another hard day’s beach work to the solace of two more episodes of the Nordic miseryfest that is The Bridge. And just

Channel 4’s Cyberbully (Thursday), written by Ben Chanan and David Lobatto, turned out to be a brilliantly gripping drama, even if the average middle-aged viewer might have found the early scenes as baffling as Finnegans Wake. Teenage Casey Jacobs (Maisie Williams) was alone in her bedroom, although not in the way we used to be: with an LP playing and the latest NME to hand. Instead, she was skyping her friend Megan (‘Hey, bitch,’ they greeted each other cheerfully), while also tweeting, texting, instagramming and wondering who’d hacked into her Spotify playlist and replaced all the good stuff with dreary old Led Zeppelin. But then she saw a tweet from

‘Don’t take it for granted,’ she warned. ‘It’s one of the few places where you can hear diverse voices, different points of view; where you can understand that the world is infinitely complex.’ Alana Valentine, an Australian writer, was talking about the BBC World Service with such passion it was inspiring. You might think she would say this, wouldn’t she. After all, Valentine was giving her acceptance speech having just won first prize in the World Service’s International Radio Playwriting Competition for her radio drama The Ravens. Yet what she said was striking because you could tell she really meant it. These were not just platitudes. She had prepared what

‘Prizes are for boys,’ said Charles Ives, the American composer, upon receiving the Pulitzer in 1947, ‘and I’ve grown up now.’ He was using humour to make a serious point, but it would be lost on many people today. Never has there been a lusher time for self-congratulation; when all, as in Alice in Wonderland, must have prizes. Not all prizes are bad. Nathan Filer, who collected the Costa last month for his first novel, The Shock of the Fall, was granted the kind of recognition that evades most first-time authors. The Costa, formerly the Whitbread, has a reputable tradition that values quality of writing above commercial considerations. Good for

Is it time to scrap the licence fee? That’s a question we’re going to hear more and more about in the next couple of years. Why should the BBC retain its archaic monopoly over the airwaves? Why not abolish the royal charter that grants the BBC the right to collect the fee (worth £3.6 billion a year) when it comes up for renewal in 2017? A change is long overdue, throwing open the broadcasting market, giving the independent production companies more opportunities to succeed and enabling the new digital online stations to expand, build audiences, create more original audio experiences. Or is it? Just imagine what would happen to radio

Just in time for Advent, that season of preparation, of getting ready, of making sure we are in the right mind to weather the excitements of Christmas, the World Service gave us a short programme designed to get us in the mood. In Heart and Soul on Sunday, Jane Little talked to Joshua Dubois who since 2008 has been sending daily ‘devotional’ messages to President Obama. Dubois began writing his emails during that first toughly fought election campaign. He was working for the Obama team in an outreach office, not close to the then senator but close enough to realise how tense and difficult the process of getting elected had

Our legal system is pure theatre and always has been. Many barristers stand accused of being failed actors and vice versa. Judges love the dressing-up box and a chance to give their gavel a good bang. With murmuring galleries, shocking verdicts, swooning witnesses, cries of ‘all rise’ and ‘take him down’, the flummery and drama of the courtroom has always supplied a rich genre for film, theatre and telly. Now there’s a chance to see one of the more serious courtroom classics in the West End. Twelve Angry Men — originally written for the screen and directed by Sidney Lumet — is about a grumpy New York jury deciding on

Having been away, I only got to Alexander Raskatov’s opera A Dog’s Heart at its fifth performance by ENO, by which time everyone knew that it was brilliantly mounted, but not of much musical substance. Having been away, I only got to Alexander Raskatov’s opera A Dog’s Heart at its fifth performance by ENO, by which time everyone knew that it was brilliantly mounted, but not of much musical substance. Actually, you could say the same for most of the new operas that ENO has mounted over the past decade, and from composers much better known than Raskatov. I’d be happy to volunteer a list. For me a good deal

Two dramas, two very different plots and personnel. One was political, the other intensely personal. Both were new, commissioned for radio, and defiantly worth paying the licence fee for. This was theatre at its riveting and thought-provoking best, and for which we as listeners didn’t have to leave the house or pay the price of a West End ticket. (The writers, meanwhile, will most probably not have a secure, cash-rich pension to look forward to, unlike the striking staff of the Corporation whose brief exodus produced a startling change to the morning routine just when it’s most needed at the beginning of dreary November.) I almost gave Matthew Solon’s Five