Even the prettiest communities in the former Confederate states of America have, as travel writer Paul Theroux has observed, “a haunted substratum of darkness”. In Deep South: Four Seasons On Back Roads (Weekdays, 9.45am, Radio 4) actor Henry Goodman’s reading of Theroux’s travelogue conjures that combination of menace and manners as Theroux journeys to Tuscaloosa, Alabama; the city’s quaint name belying the fact that 100,000 partisans visit there regularly to roar on the Crimson Tide, the most bloodcurdlingly named American football team on Earth. He also visits Greensboro, North Carolina, where he finds the poverty and idleness on the wrong side of the tracks remind him of parts of Africa; and Hollandale, Mississippi, a small town washed up by history, segregated in living memory where, as he says, the welcome is warm but the stifling heat has a human odour in it.
Another great voice presents Archive On 4: New Orleans – The Crescent And The Shadow (Saturday 8pm, Radio 4). Here, actor and Simpsonian Harry Shearer, who lives in the Crescent City, looks at what has happened in the 10 years since hurricane Katrina. One hundred thousand people who used to live there no longer do. The federal government isn’t clear where they all went, which is some admission for the planet’s richest country. Marking the same anniversary, Science Of The Storm (Sunday, 10am, 5 Live) turns up on the Corporation’s news and sport channel, as Simon King goes to the hurricane research hub of Miami to find out what, if anything, has been learned since and what can be done to limit the impact of a similar event in the future.
In a burst of what somebody in W1A would have hailed as “synergy”, BBC Radio 4 Extra is poised to surf the wave of Agatha Christie enthusiasm engendered by the TV series Partners In Crime with a drawing room full of Agatha-related material from the archive. Among this is The 8:55 To Baghdad (Weekdays, 2.30pm, Radio 4 Extra), in which Andrew Eames retraces a journey that the author took in 1928; and Crooked House (Tuesday to Friday, 1pm, Radio 4 Extra), where Rory Kinnear and Anna Maxwell Martin star in a classic piece of her work from the postwar period.
Also welcome is a repeat of With Nobbs On (Monday to Wednesday, 6.30pm, Radio 4 Extra), in which we hear David Nobbs, the recently passed genius behind Reginald Perrin and many other characters, looking back on his comedy career in front of a studio audience.
Johnnie Walker Meets Rod Stewart (Monday, 8pm, Radio 2) really ought to touch on the fact that Johnnie was already famous when Rod was still the support act, while Mickey Dolenz and Peter Tork of the Monkees are Simon Mayo’s guests (Tuesday, 5pm, Radio 2) as they begin a UK tour, a barely believable 50 years since they were first put together in a TV producer’s Petri dish. Mayo needs no interviewing help from me or anyone else, but I do hope he asks them whether they realise that they are now the most influential pop group of all time.
In the return of Bringing Up Britain (Wednesday, 9am, Radio 4), Mariella Frostrup invites experts to debate what, if anything, parents can do to improve their children’s IQs. What they say, of course, is that exposing children to musical instruments, reasoned argument and subtle language may improve their performance; they also point out that children who pay attention long enough to listen to what you’re trying to teach them are likely to improve, no matter the subject.
