Jeremy Irons Reads TS Eliot (New Year’s Day, from 9am, Radio 4) is like being treated to the sound of a symphony orchestra after weeks of listening exclusively to mouth organs. He warmed up last year with the Practical Cats. Now he’s on to the heavy stuff. He starts with Prufrock and works his way through the poems at points during the day. At each interval, presenter Martha Kearney is joined by an interested guest. She begins with Jeanette Winterson, who remembers getting Murder In The Cathedral out of the library because her mother liked a good whodunnit.
The dictates of forward planning (and the feeling that the radio audience stand in need of some kind of intellectual roughage following Christmas) often means that programmes in the early part of the new year tend towards the improving rather than the indulgent. However, this is often no bad thing. In a series of essays yoked together under the name The New World (Weekdays, 9am, Radio 4), thinkers and writers take on the big issues of our time – many of which have all come home to roost in the last few months. It begins on Monday with Jo Fidgen asking what it means to live in a post-truth world and continues on Tuesday with Gideon Rachman on the axis of power. On Wednesday John Harris does Us Vs Them, on Thursday it’s David Willetts on demography and Friday sees Jim O’Neill tackle globalisation. Such an initiative can’t help but have a touch of the stable door about it: at the same time next year, the same people may well be exploring the topics that the thinking classes missed while catching up with these.
Before then, a New Year’s Eve Soul Party (New Year’s Eve, 8pm, Radio 2) in the company of Tony Blackburn. As foretold exclusively in this column some months ago, the BBC has come to its senses and re-engaged the presenter, who hosts four hours of tunes from the likes of the Supremes and the O’Jays leading up to the new year. Hot on his heels (and no doubt on far higher ones) comes Ana Matronic at 11pm to take the carousing through to 2017.
In Cameron Mackintosh From A To Z (New Year’s Day, 5pm, Radio 2), Graham Norton talks to the man who confesses that his key skill is to get the best out of other, more creative, people. Plus, there’s music from the shows that have played a part in his story, from Les Misérables and Half A Sixpence to Mary Poppins and Martin Guerre.
Rob Brydon is not merely an Elvis Presley fan. He also does a terrifyingly exact impression of him, making him the ideal compere for Elvis Dream Concert (Monday, 12noon, Radio 2), featuring extracts from the King’s best live performances from across his career. Also celebrated his week are REM, with singer Michael Stipe and co reuniting to mark the 25th anniversary of their breakthrough record in REM: Out Of Time (Monday, 10pm, Radio 2).
