Recent events have forced Europe into a crisis of confidence that make two programmes rather timely. In British Liberalism: The Grand Tour (Weekdays, 1.45pm, Radio 4) Anne McElvoy describes the contribution made by thinkers such as John Locke, Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Clarkson to the truths that we now hold to be so self-evident that we’re amazed that not everybody shares them. In Postcards From The Village: An East-West Dialogue (Sunday, 4.30pm, Radio 4) two poets, Fiona Sampson in Coleshill and Ioana Ieronim in the Carpathians, exchange impressions of community life on the opposite edges of Europe. It’s easy to distinguish between the two because only in the latter spot do you have to watch out for bears.
Not that English village life is entirely without its traps and snares. The Archers (Weekdays, 7pm, Radio 4) is simmering nicely as it heads towards Christmas. Rob Titchener has thrown off his sunny disguise to reveal himself, to us listeners at least, as a malign presence; Ruth Archer has gone to New Zealand to reacquaint the locals with the stereotype of the whinging Pom; and Lynda Snell’s Christmas show is deep in rehearsals. Whoever had the idea that the Christmas pantomime should be Calendar Girls deserves a special award. This has allowed Lynda to cast the local actors in roles that reflect their characters’ backstory. It also allows us regular listeners to think about the people of Ambridge topless, which is not something we’ve ever had to worry about in the past. Roy Tucker reassured Elizabeth Archer that she, above all, had no reason to shrink from the camera’s gaze as she lined up for the obligatory saucy photo session. You should know, Roy.
I’m drawn north as I get older. Radio 3’s Northern Lights season celebrates that same impulse with a variety of programmes touching on the world’s most northerly territories, where people live closer to the landscape and the weather than anywhere else. In Sunday Feature: Above Sixty, Below Zero (Sunday, 6.45pm, Radio 3) the writer Lesley Riddoch looks at how this relationship may be changing, as these regions are now a magnet for industries drawn by the wealth of natural resources in those formerly frozen wastes. In Drama On 3: Finlandia (Sunday, 9pm, Radio 3) Tim Pigott-Smith plays Sibelius and Barbara Flynn his wife Aino in a play about the writer’s block that prevented him finishing his eighth symphony and the crisis of identity suffered by his native land after being caught between the Germans and the Russians. The decision to schedule The Idea Of North (Sunday, 11.30pm, Radio 3), Glenn Gould’s “contrapuntal radio documentary” from 1967, is what Sir Humphrey would call “most courageous”. Here the voices of an anthropologist, a civil servant, a nurse, a sociologist and a surveyor talk simultaneously about the idea and reality of the north.
Current affairs shows such as Today (Weekdays, 6am, Radio 4) understandably set themselves up as the place where the news is enacted. They get politicians to talk in the hope that they will move a story on. They want to make the news. Narrowcasters such as Monocle 24 (Monocle.com) don’t have that option, which is, like all apparent weaknesses, actually a strength. In the absence of politicians, Monocle get interesting people in to thoughtfully discuss subjects such as the Paris terror attacks. Being pan-European sophisticates, they use the word “trope” too airily for my taste. That said, there’s a lot here to like.
