Hugh Laurie's Blues Changes (Monday, 10pm, R2) begins with the star's rendition of Alan Price's Changes; not the most obvious starting place for a series setting out to trace the influence of Laurie's genre of choice on every area of popular music. The tune of Changes comes from What A Friend We Have In Jesus, which inspired a disrespectful song favoured by British soldiers in the trenches of Flanders and can also be heard in a country instrumental from Nashville. Music always resists the linear, and linear is broadcasting's preferred mode of dealing with history; a point underlined in a recording of field researcher John Lomax asking Muddy Waters if he remembers composing a particular blues. "I made it on the eighth of October in 1938," Muddy answers through the deadest of pans. Lomax is presumably too intent on making sure his ancient machine is recording to realise his leg's being pulled.
Shine Like Tokyo – Northern Soul Goes East! (Saturday, 10.30am, R4) looks for reasons for the enduring appeal of the pacy, jubilant music that came out of urban America in the 60s but avoids the obvious: the gospel-derived, tambourine-hastened sense of uplift. I'm grateful to pioneer Russ Winstanley for setting one thing straight by answering the question "What's the difference between northern soul and Motown?" with the overdue "not much".
The best music programme of the week is The Secret Life Of JS Bach (Tuesday, 11.30am, R4) in which Richard Coles pursues his youthful fascination with a composer whose music seemed to embody serenity, finding a cantankerous individual with personality problems. One interviewee suggests Bach's music offers something the composer may not have known himself: the fleeting moment of repose in the here and now. Cole knows how to talk about music – "In Bach you hear the fullness of life, the dance of God" – but he's also got a colloquial gear. When told that Bach had an "incident" with a woman in an organ loft he says, "We've all been there." In case you miss the programme I should pass on the old vicar's joke that the difference between an organist and a terrorist is you can reason with a terrorist.
Richard Coles is also one of the voices Praising Powell And Pressburger (Weekdays, 10.45pm, R3), part of the Sound Of Cinema season. His choice is A Matter Of Life And Death. Elsewhere, this series of The Essay offers the dancer Deborah Bull on The Red Shoes, film historian Ian Christie on The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp, Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw on Black Narcissus and novelist AL Kennedy on I Know Where I'm Going! "Watching their movies," Kennedy says, "will make you proud of your species."
The Art Of Radio Times (Thursday, 11.30am, R4) celebrates that organ's role in putting bread on the table of many of our most talented illustrators. They were particularly called upon in the days of radio, when their job was to visualise the invisible. The great Peter Day talks to veteran illustrators such as Val Biro, who would receive the script of an upcoming drama through the post and then have a couple of days to come up with something that was vivid, in keeping with both the programme and the august values of the BBC. "You can always call upon hidden reserves in an emergency," the nonagenarian says, "and I always treated a job for the Radio Times as an emergency."
