The best sound of the week is captured by Jarvis Cocker’s microphone as he sits in the midst of the Master Musicians of Joujouka while they limber up for one of their nocturnal performances in their small village in the Rif Mountains of Morocco. I’m never entirely sure what the term binaural sound denotes but that’s apparently the way this Wireless Nights (Monday, 11pm, Radio 4) was recorded. Nowadays, people are walking the street wearing headphones costing as much as most people used to spend on home hi-fi and here’s one programme that should give them a good workout.
In the week leading up to Comic Relief, Radio 2 has three sitcoms, all of which are set in, and aimed squarely at, its heartland. Barbara Nice (Monday, 10pm, Radio 2) stars Janice Connolly as a Stockport housewife wishing to reinvigorate her marriage. Just Grand (Wednesday, 10.30pm, Radio 2) concerns a retiring couple, also from Stockport, whose plan to let rip is stymied by the need to look after their estranged grandchildren, who have got used to an overprivileged life down south. Parental Guidance (Monday, 10.30pm, Radio 2) concerns Kate and Roshan who live in Crawley. He has a mother who thinks he should have married a Sri Lankan. She thinks they ought to get out more. So they go to a school reunion.
The last Jon Finnemore series featured the best Archers parody I’ve ever heard. It worked because it lampooned the form of the show rather than its content. This is inevitable. The splintering of the mass audience means you can no longer assume that listeners will know who you’re lampooning. In Parody Please (Saturday, 9am, Radio 4 Extra) Jan Ravens fronts a history of parodies on the radio with contributions from the targets, such as Charlotte Green and, inevitably, Felicity Finch, who plays Ruth in the Archers.
The Backlisted podcast describes itself as “giving new life to old books”. In each episode John Mitchinson and Andy Miller are joined by a guest from the world of books who brings along some overlooked gem to enthuse about. In a recent one, Max Porter talked about Joyce Cary’s novel The Horse’s Mouth. If you haven’t read the books, you can still enjoy the conversation, along with the light it sheds on the way people who work in bookshops look at their customers.
For a wide-ranging look at literary matters, the Book Review Podcast from the New York Times is still one of the best. Presented by Pamela Paul, each episode has an interview with an author – recent guests have included Neil Gaiman and Sana Krasikov – plus a roundup of the uppers, downers and hanging-arounders on the US bestsellers chart. It’s also good for staying abreast of trends in everything from food books to children’s stories and has a website with links to the books being discussed.
