Much as I admire BBC Radio 5 Live, even I have to wonder why entire prairies of its airtime are dedicated to covering a sporting activity that doesn’t actually exist. This is what it calls “the build-up”, which generally means an hour of pointless speculation about what is likely to happen in the match that’s coming up. This is just about acceptable if the match is an international involving one of the home nations in football’s European Championships such as Wales v Slovakia (Saturday, 4pm, 5 Live) or England v Russia (Saturday, 7pm, 5 Live), but when it’s Portugal v Iceland (Tuesday, 7pm, 5 Live) or Russia v Slovakia (Wednesday, 1pm, 5 Live), you have to wonder how much building up we are likely to require.
Almost since I could recall the names of actors, it seems that Eleanor Bron has been one of the ones I’ve remembered. She’s currently playing faintly sinister grande dame Carol Tregorran in The Archers (Weekdays, 7pm, Radio 4) and she also turns up as Christine in Unsuitable Men With Familiar Smiles (Weekdays, 10.45am, Radio 4). Christine’s daughter doesn’t know whether her mother is recounting the lurid details of a colourful past she didn’t previously know about or simply losing the ability to tell the difference between truth and fantasy. Written by David and Caroline Stafford, this is the kind of drama that we like to think Radio 4 does in its sleep, but in fact rarely manages these days.
In The Essay: The Shopping News (Weeknights, 10.45pm, Radio 3), Joanna Robertson argues that the act of shopping involves more than mere transactions. In Rome, she finds the traditional food suppliers under threat from organised crime, and from her experience of New York she argues that the act of buying a book can be a way of reaching back to the old European countries from which the immigrants sprang. In Tirana, meanwhile, she hears that the Albanians’ dreams of western-style wealth led them into getting involved in disastrous pyramid schemes, while in Paris she inevitably finds that when the French buy food they are asserting their national pride.
Behind Closed Doors (Monday, 2.15pm, Radio 4) is the first instalment of three educational dramas starring Clare Corbett as London barrister Rebecca Nyman, charged with representing a mother who wishes to restrict the access of the father, a friend who donated sperm. John Moffatt’s 1990 reading of The Remains Of The Day (Weekdays, 2.45pm, Radio 4 Extra) gets a welcome run out.
Plum House (Wednesday, 11.30am, Radio 4) is a new comedy by Ben Cottam and Paul McKenna about the staff of the stately home of the same name, the former house of poet George Pudding. It stars Simon Callow as the faltering curator, Miles Jupp as his deputy Julian, Jane Horrocks as Maureen in the gift shop, and Tom Bell as the man sent by the Trust to whip them into shape.
