SATURDAY 30 DECEMBER 2017

SAT 00:00 Good Omens (b04vjll9)
Episode 5Events have been set in motion to bring about the End of Days. The armies of Good and Evil are gathering and making their way towards the sleepy English village of Lower Tadfield. The Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse - War, Famine, Pollution and Death - have been summoned from the corners of the earth and are assembling.
Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell and his assistant Newton Pulsifier are also en route to Tadfield to investigate some unusual phenomena in the area, while Anathema Device, descendent of prophetess and witch Agnes Nutter, tries to decipher her ancestor's cryptic predictions about exactly where the impending Apocalypse will take place.
Atlantis is rising, fish are falling from the sky; everything seems to be going to the Divine Plan.
Everything that is but for the unlikely duo of an angel and a demon who are not all that keen on the prospect of the forthcoming Rapture. Aziraphale (once an angel in the Garden of Eden, but now running an antiquarian bookshop in London), and Crowley (formerly Eden's snake, now driving around London in shades and a vintage Bentley) have been living on Earth for several millennia and have become rather fond of the place. But if they are to stop Armageddon taking place they've got to find and kill the one who will the one bring about the apocalypse: the Antichrist himself.
There's just one small problem: someone seems to have mislaid him...
With a cast led by Peter Serafinowicz and Mark Heap this is the first ever dramatization of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens.
Adaptation and sound design by Dirk Maggs.
Produced by Heather Larmour.
SAT 00:30 Soul Music (b085trlz)
Auld Lang SyneIt's gone from being an 18th century song about impotence to one of the best known songs all over the world. Most of us have sung Auld Lang Syne at some point in our lives on New Year's Eve, but how many of us know more than a few of the words and anything of its origin and meaning? Soul Music hears the stories behind the song, how it went from being a reflective melancholic Scottish air about the parting of the ways, to the jaunty tune we know today. There are also stories of love, sorrow, hope and joy, emotions that are especially heightened at this time of year.
Producer: Maggie Ayre.
SAT 01:00 Paul Temple (b015p864)
A Case for Paul Temple, In Which Paul Temple Meets ValentineEpisode 8 of a new production of a vintage serial from 1946.
From 1938 to 1968, Francis Durbridge's incomparably suave amateur detective Paul Temple and his glamorous wife Steve solved case after baffling case in one of BBC radio's most popular series. Sadly, only half of Temple's adventures survive in the archives.
In 2006 BBC Radio 4 brought one of the lost serials back to life with Crawford Logan and Gerda Stevenson as Paul and Steve. Using the original scripts and incidental music, and recorded using vintage microphones and sound effects, the production of Paul Temple and the Sullivan Mystery aimed to sound as much as possible like the 1947 original might have done if its recording had survived. The serial proved so popular that it was soon followed with equal success by two more revivals, Paul Temple and the Madison Mystery and Paul Temple and Steve.
Now, from 1946, it's the turn of A Case for Paul Temple, in which Paul and Steve brave great danger to reveal the identity of the mysterious West End drug dealer known only as 'Valentine'...
Episode 8: In Which Paul Temple Meets Valentine
Paul and Steve return to the Esplanade Hotel for a final showdown with a ruthless enemy.
Paul Temple CRAWFORD LOGAN
Steve GERDA STEVENSON
Sir Graham GARETH THOMAS
Major Peters GREG POWRIE
Supt. Wetherby RICHARD GREENWOOD
Sheila Baxter MELODY GROVE
Mary ELIZA LANGLAND
Charles Kelvin NICK UNDERWOOD
Serg. Hodson JOHN PAUL HURLEY
Supt. Bradley SIMON TAIT
Producer Patrick Rayner
Francis Durbridge, the creator of Paul Temple, was born in Hull in 1912 and died in 1998. He one of the most successful novelists, playwrights and scriptwriters of his day.
SAT 01:30 Beatrix Potter's Favourite Tale (b01pgg3x)
Philip Glassborow recounts the tale of the original version of The Tailor of Gloucester - Beatrix Potter's personal favourite - and learns about her attachment to the many traditional songs and carols which were included when the book was first published in 1901 but excised from the more familiar later version. With Finty Williams as Beatrix Potter.
It was after a visit to Gloucester that Beatrix Potter became fascinated by the true story behind the miraculous tale of grateful mice stitching the mayor's wonderful waistcoat after the tailor himself had fallen ill and there was no "no more twist".
Potter transformed this into The Tailor of Gloucester and sent it as a gift to Freda, the little daughter of her old governess. She published this privately, including many local songs and carols associated with the old legend that on the stroke of midnight on Christmas eve, the animals are able to speak.
As she had anticipated - and in spite of the astonishing success of her first book, Peter Rabbit - Frederick Warne declined to publish this and eventually brought out a version stripped of most of its music.
Philip Glassborow tracks down the sources of this music and explores Potter's passion for it and the traditions at the heart of the story.
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
SAT 02:00 Book at Bedtime (b04vjl7k)
The Diary of a Provincial Lady, EM Delafield - The Diary of a Provincial LadyE M Delafield was great friends with Margaret Mackworth, 2nd Viscountess Rhondda, and became a director of Time and Tide magazine. When the editor "wanted some light 'middles', preferably in serial form, she promised to think of something". And so it was, in 1930, that her most popular and enduring work The Diary of a Provincial Lady was written. It has never been out of print.
The Diary of a Provincial Lady charts the day-to-day life of a Devonshire-dwelling lady and her attempts to keep her somewhat ramshackle household from falling into chaos.
Husband Robert, when he's not snoozing behind The Times, does everything with grumbling reluctance. Her children are gleefully troublesome. A succession of tricky servants invariably seem to gain the upper hand. And if her domestic trials are not enough, she must keep up appearances - particularly with the maddeningly patronising Lady Boxe, with whom our Provincial Lady eternally (and unsuccessfully) endeavours to compete.
This largely autobiographical novel substituted the names of "Robin" and "Vicky" for her own children, Lionel and Rosamund.
Abridged by Libby Spurrier
Read by Claire Skinner
Produced by Joanna Green
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
SAT 02:15 Five Hundred Years of Friendship (b03yqyz9)
When William Met MarySocial networking appears to be expanding our circles of friendship just as our sense of community is contracting: Dr Thomas Dixon presents a timely history of how the meaning and experience of friendship have changed over the centuries.
Episode Five: When William Met Mary
The famous 1989 film, When Harry Met Sally, crystallised for modern viewers the key question of whether a man and woman can truly be friends without any sexual element.
This was a question which radical and educated people were beginning to ask in the 18th century, alongside its mirror image - can a husband and wife also be friends?
Thomas Dixon traces the changing face of friendship and the new idea of "companionate marriage" during this era, through the linked histories of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the radical philosopher William Godwin.
With the help of the historian Barbara Taylor, he considers three moving stories: Mary's early friendship with Fanny Blood, of whom she declared: "To live with this friend is the height of my ambition"; the halting start, close friendship and devoted but tragically short marriage of Wollstonecraft with Godwin, who described their relationship as "friendship melting into love"; and the marriage of their daughter, Mary, who wrote of her desolation after the death by drowning of her husband, the poet Percy Shelley: "I have now no friend."
Thomas Dixon brings together issues of friendship and marriage in this most contemporary of historical series.
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
SAT 02:30 Charles Dickens - Dombey and Son (b09k9vw3)
Episode 20As Florence and Walter embark on a new life, Dombey reaches the limits of despair. With Abigail Hollick and Robert Glenister. From December 2007.
SAT 02:45 The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi (b00xnddx)
Episode 5Crippled by his comedy antics, the superstar clown must bow out. Kenneth Cranham concludes Andrew McConnell Stott's account. From December 2009.
SAT 03:00 Virginia Woolf - Night and Day (b0076fym)
Episode 2Katharine is engaged, but her secret admirer is also in Norfolk, invited by torn suffrage campaigner Mary. With Dervla Kirwan. From July 2003.
SAT 04:00 The Motion Show (b0075wz8)
Series 2, Episode 4Dr Phil Hammond chairs the debating game with Gyles Brandreth, Hugh Dennis, Jeremy Hardy and Arthur Smith. From February 2000.
SAT 04:30 After Henry (b007k2z7)
Series 2, Bedside MannersPoorly Sarah's in hospital and must cope with visits from her mother and daughter.
Simon Brett's comedy about three generations of women - struggling to cope after the death of Sarah's GP husband - who never quite manage to see eye to eye.
Starring Prunella Scales as Sarah, Joan Sanderson as Eleanor, Gerry Cowper as Clare, Benjamin Whitrow as Russell and Deborah Findlay as the Sister.
Four radio series were made, but instead of moving to BBC TV - Thames Television produced 'After Henry' for the ITV network.
Producer: Pete Atkin
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 1986.
SAT 05:00 The Leopard in Autumn (b00bs464)
Series 1, The Caramba CampaignLudovico - the henpecked Prince of Monte Guano - hears two neighbouring states are set to go to war. His wife Plethora badgers him into leading his ragbag of conscripts in search of booty, accompanied by his sons and mistress Rosalie...
Neal Anthony's comedy drama set in Renaissance Italy.
Stars David Swift as Ludovico, Sian Phillips as Plethora, Graham Crowden as Francesco, Paul Bigley as Alessandro, Saskia Wickham as Rosalie, Nick Romero as Salvatori, Christopher Kelham as Guido and Kim Wall as Brother Michael.
Producer: Helen Williams
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2001.
SAT 05:30 Just William - Live! (b09jr62j)
Series 5, The Christmas TruceMartin Jarvis performs the first of two Just William stories by Richmal Crompton in front of an enthusiastic, invited audience at the Riverhouse Barn Theatre, Walton on Thames in Surrey.
In The Christmas Truce, William's arch-enemy Hubert Lane and his cronies sabotage William's Christmas party. William and his Outlaws are then forced by conniving mothers to attend Hubert's party in return. So can they execute a pleasing and satisfactory revenge?
Director: Rosalind Ayres
A Jarvis and Ayres production for BBC Radio 4.
SAT 06:00 Kenneth Grahame - The Golden Age (b00mcych)
Five orphans growing up in the idyllic English countryside are looked after by assorted aunts and uncles.
Their lives are filled with fun and games, as they transform their toys and surroundings into many magical fantasies and adventures. But the time will come when the toys will be sent away, and the dreaded threat of boarding school looms to put an end forever to the innocent pleasures of childhood...
Kenneth Grahame's collection of reminiscences of childhood dramatised by Martyn Wade.
Stars James Fleet as The Man, Jesse Jeune as The Boy, Marcia Warren as Miss Smedley, Alexandra Stone as Charlotte, Oliver Cookson as Edward, Harry Francis as Harold, Teresa Gallagher as Selina, David Timson as Uncle Thomas, Ann Beach as Aunt Eliza, Ian Masters as Mr Hodgitts, Patience Tomlinson as Aunt Maria, Gerard McDermott as Uncle William and Hannah Dee as Martha.
Music composed by Elizabeth Parker.
Producer: Cherry Cookson
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2002.
SAT 07:30 Michael Bentine - The Reluctant Jester (b01jhyd5)
The Reluctant Jester, The Reluctant JesterSpanning life, laughter and the paranormal - founding member of The Goon Show and one of the foremost comic minds of his generation - Michael Bentine shares stories of his incredible career in show business.
Michael Bentine CBE was born in 1922 and died in 1996.
Producer: Andy Aliffe
First broadcast on BBC Radio 2 in September 1993.
SAT 08:00 Archive on 4 (b049xldv)
Boy, Oh Boy, He's Going DownSean Street examines those moments where Radio forgets itself, when laughter, alcohol or sheer emotion well up.
Traditionally the wireless has been somewhat formal, but occasionally reporters have been overwhelmed by what they're witnessing, contributors so passionate in argument and commentators overcome by mirth - or drink - that the conventions are dropped.
Then communication comes pure, direct and unselfconscious: a Battle of Britain dogfight sounds like sport, sport like war, a naval fleet becomes fairyland, the author of a fairytale about rabbits attacks another guest.
Hear the moments when Radio reveals far more than what is said.
Producer: Julian May
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2000.
SAT 09:00 Andrew Lloyd Webber - Sunset Boulevard (b007kk17)
"I am big. It's the pictures that got small!"
Ageing silent film queen Norma Desmond hires a young writer to spark a comeback.
An exclusive concert performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1993 smash hit musical reworking of Billy Wilder's brilliant 1950 film - Sunset Boulevard.
Introduced by the late veteran broadcaster Desmond Carrington from a packed Cork Opera House - Petula Clark stars as Norma Desmond who hires young writer Joe Gillis (Michael Ball) to spark her movie comeback.
Composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber with lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton, Martin Yates conducts the BBC Concert Orchestra.
With Michael Bauer as Max Von Mayerling, Emma Williams as Betty Schaefer, Michael Xavier as Artie Green, Ian Burford as Cecil B De Mille, Melanie Marshall as Lisa, Sophia Thierens as Katharine, Theresa Kartell as Mary, Amanda Minihan as Joanna, Rohan Tickell as Sheldrake, Mark McKerracher as Myron, Matt Dempsey as John, Colin Zammit as Morino, Rebecca Louis as Harlem Girl, Poppy Tierney as Harlem Girl, Lee Ormsby as Finance Man, Roy Litvin as Finance Man and Graham Howes as Jonesy.
Producer: Helen Chetwynd
First broadcast on BBC Radio 2 in 1994.
SAT 11:15 Petula Clark: Downtown Girl (b09kk7x1)
Melanie Chisholm celebrates the seven decade career of "Our Pet" - Petula Clark CBE.
Featuring the memories and recollections of Michael Ball, Tony Hatch, Bill Kenwright, Herb Alpert, Honor Blackman, Helen Shapiro, Paul Gambaccini and Tony Blackburn; alongside archive interviews with Diana Dors, Fred Astaire, Alan Freeman and Anthony Newley.
A revealing and personal portrait of the UK's most enduring talent, Petula Clark, who has affectionately been known for over 70 years on British radio as simply "Our Pet".
Featuring the hits: Downtown, Don't Sleep in the Subway, My Love, This Is My Song, the Ya Ya Twist, I Know A Place, Sign of the Times and Colour My World.
Made for BBC Radio 2 by Trevor Dann's Company and first broadcast in 2012.
SAT 12:15 Jelly Mountain (b00fkp5z)
Episode 3A visit to the circus heralds arcane amusements. Songs and stories from Ivor Cutler, with Craig Murray-Orr. From May 1996.
SAT 12:30 Dad's Army (b007jqxp)
Series 3, High FinanceCaptain Mainwaring realises Corporal Jones's money troubles involve the whole platoon.
Starring Arthur Lowe as Captain Mainwaring, John Le Mesurier as Sergeant Wilson, Clive Dunn as Corporal Jones, John Laurie as Private Frazer, Arnold Ridley as Private Godfrey, Ian Lavender as Private Pike, Bill Pertwee as Hodges, Frank Williams as the Vicar and Pearl Hackney as Mrs Pike.
Adapted for radio from Jimmy Perry and David Croft's TV scripts by Harold Snoad and Michael Knowles.
Producer: John Dyas
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 1976.
SAT 13:00 Incredible Women - Omnibuses (b09k9ys6)
Series 6 OmnibusRebecca and Jeremy Front present a fun-packed retrospective of Dame Cicely Leyland's life as she approaches her 100th year.
SAT 14:10 Inheritance Tracks (b09k9ys8)
Roger MooreActor and James Bond star, Sir Roger Moore, selects 'Sobre Las Olas' by Juventino Rosas and Frank Sinatra's 'My Way'.
SAT 14:15 In the Psychiatrist's Chair (b06srxx3)
Yehudi MenuhinThe celebrated violinist Yehudi Menuhin tells Professor Anthony Clare about the influences that shaped his life.
Psychiatrist Dr Anthony Clare's in depth interviews with prominent people from different walks of life.
Born in Dublin, author Anthony Clare held a doctorate in medicine, a master's degree in philosophy and was a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. After becoming a regular on BBC Radio 4's Stop the Week in the 1980s, he became Britain's best-known psychiatrist and earned his own vehicle, In the Psychiatrist's Chair. Starting in 1982, this series ran until 2001 and also transferred to TV. Series highlights include conversations with Bob Monkhouse, Cecil Parkinson and Gerry Adams.
Anthony Clare died suddenly in Paris aged 64 in 2007.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 1996.
SAT 15:00 Archive on 4 (b049xldv)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:00 today]
SAT 16:00 Kenneth Grahame - The Golden Age (b00mcych)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 today]
SAT 17:30 Michael Bentine - The Reluctant Jester (b01jhyd5)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 today]
SAT 18:00 Good Omens (b04vjrjm)
Episode 6Events have been set in motion to bring about the End of Days. The armies of Good and Evil are gathering and making their way towards the sleepy English village of Lower Tadfield. The Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse - War, Famine, Pollution and Death - have been summoned from the corners of the earth and are assembling.
Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell and his assistant Newton Pulsifier are also en route to Tadfield to investigate some unusual phenomena in the area, while Anathema Device, descendent of prophetess and witch Agnes Nutter, tries to decipher her ancestor's cryptic predictions about exactly where the impending Apocalypse will take place.
Atlantis is rising, fish are falling from the sky; everything seems to be going to the Divine Plan.
Everything that is but for the unlikely duo of an angel and a demon who are not all that keen on the prospect of the forthcoming Rapture. Aziraphale (once an angel in the Garden of Eden, but now running an antiquarian bookshop in London), and Crowley (formerly Eden's snake, now driving around London in shades and a vintage Bentley) have been living on Earth for several millennia and have become rather fond of the place. But if they are to stop Armageddon taking place they've got to find and kill the one who will the one bring about the apocalypse: the Antichrist himself.
There's just one small problem: someone seems to have mislaid him...
With a cast led by Peter Serafinowicz and Mark Heap this is the first ever dramatization of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens.
Adaptation and sound design by Dirk Maggs.
Produced by Heather Larmour.
SAT 19:00 Somebody Laughed: Eddie Braben Brings You Sunshine (b007lm74)
"What do you think of it so far?"... "RUBBISH!" - you're exceptionally unlikely to be thinking that throughout this three-hour tribute to one of Britain's most celebrated comedy writers.
Famed for his close working relationship with evergreen double act Morecambe & Wise, Eddie Braben penned some of their most famous lines. Or to put it another way, all the right words, not necessarily in the right order.
Of course, that wasn't the only string to his bow - other beneficiaries of his strong comic writing include Ken Dodd and Jimmy Cricket, whose work will also be featured. Eddie himself also steps into the spotlight to helm his own vehicle, The Worst Show On The Wireless, where he is joined by Alison Steadman. In between, he reminisces about radio and what it has meant to him.
Eddie began his writing career penning jokes on the back of paper bags on a fruit and veg stall. When he passed away at the age of 82 in May 2013, Bruce Forsyth was among the famous faces keen to pay tribute.
First broadcast on Radio 4 Extra in 2007.
SAT 22:00 Old Harry's Game (b00wr9vv)
Christmas Special, Ring in the NewSatan decides he needs a holiday away from hell.
Written by and starring Andy Hamilton.
With Annette Crosbie as Edith, Robert Duncan as Scumspawn, Jimmy Mulville as Thomas.
And Felicity Montagu, Nick Revell, Philip Pope and Michael Fentons Stevens.
Producer: Paul Mayhew-Archer
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2010.
SAT 22:30 The Jason Byrne Show (b01p6pxc)
Series 3, I Won't Eat Bread From a PuddleThe award-winning funny man hears about his audience's worst fears. With Daisy Haggard and Laurence Howarth. From November 2010.
SAT 23:00 Les Kelly's Britain (b017mws9)
Episode 4Les Kelly (Kevin Bishop) hosts a magazine show from hell. Les is a cross between Jeremy Kyle and a slap in the face. He claims this is the only radio show for 'normal, decent people'. 'If you aren't normal or decent, this is not the show for you,' says Les.
This week Les talks to Britain's only male nun, a man who only speaks using sound fx and answers the question: what is the world coming to?
Written by Bill Dare with Julian Dutton.
SAT 23:30 Tom Wrigglesworth's Open Letters (b01hl29y)
Series 2, Compensation CultureSony Award-winning comedian Tom Wrigglesworth delivers an open letter to Ken Clarke MP and asks whether compensation culture is actually directly opposed to the theory of evolution.
Written by Tom Wrigglesworth, James Kettle and Miles Jupp
Produced by Simon Mayhew-Archer.

SUNDAY 31 DECEMBER 2017

SUN 00:00 Good Omens (b04vjrjm)
[Repeat of broadcast at 18:00 on Saturday]
SUN 01:00 Incredible Women - Omnibuses (b09k9ys6)
[Repeat of broadcast at 13:00 on Saturday]
SUN 02:10 Inheritance Tracks (b09k9ys8)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:10 on Saturday]
SUN 02:15 In the Psychiatrist's Chair (b06srxx3)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:15 on Saturday]
SUN 03:00 Archive on 4 (b049xldv)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:00 on Saturday]
SUN 04:00 Kenneth Grahame - The Golden Age (b00mcych)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 on Saturday]
SUN 05:30 Michael Bentine - The Reluctant Jester (b01jhyd5)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 on Saturday]
SUN 06:00 Charles Dickens - Dombey and Son (Omnibus) (b09k9yyp)
Episode 4Cast out of her home, who can Florence turn to?
Originally published in monthly parts from 1846, Charles Dickens's novel appeared in one volume in 1848. Adapted by Mike Walker.
Charles Dickens...........Alex Jennings
Dombey.......................Robert Glenister
Edith............................Helen Schlesinger
Florence.......................Abigail Hollick
Captain Cuttle..............Trevor Peacock
Mr Carker.................. .Adrian Lukis
Major..........................Nicky Henson
Walter.........................Joseph Arkley
Mrs Brown..................Geraldine James
Alice...........................Claire Rushbrook
Susan.........................Nadine Marshall
Toots..........................Sam Pamphilon
Harriet........................Katy Cavanagh
Rob............................Lloyd Thomas
Other parts played by Ben Crowe, Alex Lanipekun and Simon Treves.
Music by Nicolai Abrahamsen.
Directed by Jeremy Mortimer and Jessica Dromgoole.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2007.
SUN 07:15 Alan Bennett - Two in Torquay (b0076f3m)
A middle-aged man and woman chat politely in a hotel. Neither is quite what they seem to be. Stars Alan Bennett and Judi Dench. From May 2003.
SUN 07:30 Clare in the Community (b061tppy)
Series 10, Family ValuesEpisode Two - Family Values
A family funeral reveals some uncomfortable home truths for the Barker family. Brian meanwhile has enthusiastically embraced a new fitness regime.
Sally Phillips is Clare Barker the social worker who has all the right jargon but never a practical solution.
A control freak, Clare likes nothing better than interfering in other people's lives on both a professional and personal basis. Clare is in her thirties, white, middle class and heterosexual, all of which are occasional causes of discomfort to her.
Each week we join Clare in her continued struggle to control both her professional and private life In today's Big Society there are plenty of challenges out there for an involved, caring social worker. Or even Clare.
Written by Harry Venning and David Ramsden
Producer Alexandra Smith.
SUN 08:00 Lines From My Grandfather's Forehead (b008kmkg)
From 09/07/1972Reshuffling Patron Saints, the art of piano moving and spoofing 'Under Milk Wood'.
A sequential entertainment for radio starring Ronnie Barker.
With Terence Brady and Pauline Yates. Pianist: Gordon Langford.
Written by Miles Kington, Roy Lomax, John Graham, Peter Spence, Chris Miller, Chris Allen, Jim Eldridge, Chris Bell and Laurie Holloway and Peter N Christie
Producer John Fawcett-Wilson
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 1972.
SUN 08:30 One Minute Please (b09k9zzk)
It's hard to imagine BBC Radio 4's 'Just a Minute' being hosted by anyone other than the legendary Nicholas Parsons.
Yet the iconic panel game had a more elaborate forerunner - One Minute Please.
Devised by its producer Ian Messiter and making its debut in 1951, the original series format was a trial of wits between teams of three male and three female celebrities - and a jury!
Contestants still had to speak alternately on different subjects without pausing, without repeating themselves and without side-tracking. But unlike its successor, One Minute Please had a further twist of secret passwords that only listeners at home were told in advance. The first mention of the password gained three points - but every time it was mentioned again a point was deducted.
If one team member felt someone wasn't sticking to the rules, he or she could buzz in and appeal to the jury - which could either reject it or award a point.
A running total of winning teams was kept, so that either the men's or women's teams triumphed at the end of the series.
In this surviving episode - Desert Island Discs' Roy Plomley is the host and "The Ladies" are Margot Holden, Martina Mayne and Violetta Farjeon who take on "The Gentlemen" - Gerard Hoffnung, Eric Sykes and Jack Train.
The Jury consists of Laidman Browne, Hugh Burden and Humphrey Lestocq.
One Minute Please ran for three series in the 1950s. After the corporation claimed the rights to the format, it was the first ever BBC show sold to an American radio network.
With the format tweaked and streamlined, Just a Minute arrived on the BBC airwaves in December 1967 and is still going strong...
First broadcast on the BBC Light Programme on 21st September 1952.
SUN 09:00 David Attenborough - Adventures of a Young Naturalist (Omnibus) (b09k9zzm)
An alarming encounter with a caiman in Guyana.
In the 1950s, David Attenborough, the naturalist and broadcaster grasped a life changing opportunity which led him to travel the world finding rare and elusive animal species for London Zoo and filming the expeditions for the BBC TV series, Zoo Quest.
Abridged in five parts by Richard Hamilton. Omnibus edition.
Producer: Elizabeth Allard.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2017.
SUN 10:10 The Listening Project (b02qt7vr)
Biggy and Barry - Dogs We Have KnownFi Glover introduces a conversation from Belfast which includes cautionary tales about encounters with large and not so large dogs, in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can upload your own conversations or just learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.
SUN 10:15 Desert Island Discs Revisited (b09k9zzp)
Absent Friends, John Hurt4 Extra Debut. From Johannes Brahms to Eric Clapton. Stage and screen actor John Hurt shares his castaway choices with Roy Plomley. From September 1984.
SUN 11:00 The Moth Radio Hour (b09k9zzr)
Series 6, The 2017 Elko, Nevada National Cowboy Poetry GatheringTrue stories told live in the USA: Dame Wilburn from the annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko Nevada.
The Moth is an acclaimed not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling based in the USA. Since 1997, it has celebrated both the raconteur and the storytelling novice, who has lived through something extraordinary and yearns to share it. Originally formed by the writer George Dawes Green as an intimate gathering of friends on a porch in Georgia (where moths would flutter in through a hole in the screen), and then recreated in a New York City living room, The Moth quickly grew to produce immensely popular events at theatres and clubs around New York City and later around the USA, the UK and other parts of the world.
The Moth has presented more than 15,000 stories, told live and without notes, to standing-room-only crowds worldwide. The Moth podcast is downloaded over 27 million times a year.
Featuring true stories told live on stage without scripts, from the humorous to the heart-breaking.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Jay Allison and Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and is distributed by the Public Radio Exchange.
SUN 11:50 Inheritance Tracks (b09k9zzt)
Arlene PhillipsDancer and choreographer Arlene Phillips chooses 'I'm Still Standing' by Elton John and Andrew Lloyd-Webber's 'Starlight Express'.
SUN 12:00 Lines From My Grandfather's Forehead (b008kmkg)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:00 today]
SUN 12:30 One Minute Please (b09k9zzk)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:30 today]
SUN 13:00 Charles Dickens - Dombey and Son (Omnibus) (b09k9yyp)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 today]
SUN 14:15 Alan Bennett - Two in Torquay (b0076f3m)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:15 today]
SUN 14:30 Matt Haig - How to Stop Time (b09k9zzw)
OmnibusA rare condition means Tom ages so slowly that while he looks about 41, he is in fact over 400 years old. Read by Tom Hollander.
SUN 15:40 Big Ben's Chimes (b04xrgm4)
A Poetic TributeIan McMillan pays poetic tribute to the sound of Big Ben's New Year chimes, from the first broadcast on BBC Radio, through the dark days of the war, to today. From January 2015.
SUN 16:00 Brothers Grimm - White Snow (b09kjq9c)
In this re-imagining of the Grimm brother's fairy-tale, we find ourselves at one with a fun loving and light hearted Queen, who having been wooed by an emotionally arrested king, soon finds that her main rival is his somewhat spooky and unhealthily translucent daughter, Snow White.
It isn't clear what hold this eerily passive child has over the King but the implication is that the trauma of being cuckolded by his first wife, has been transformed into the myth of a flawless child. A child - who keenly aware of her power over him - determines nothing, especially not a mere stepmother is going to come between them.
By any reasonable assessment of the situation, Snow White has to die...but will she?
Livia........Lizzy McInnerny
Mirror........David Horovitch
King........Richard Dormer
Snow........Lizzy Watts
Rumour........Julia Dearden
Maid........Barri Adair
Hunt........Chris McHallem
Dwarf 1........Patrick Fitzsymons
Dramatised by Frances Byrnes.
Director: Eoin O'Callaghan
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2013.
SUN 17:00 Poetry Extra (b09kb01j)
Edinburgh At The Year's Midnight: A Winter Journey In PoetryFor New Year's Eve, poet Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's radio poetry archive with 'Edinburgh at the Year's Midnight'.
One of Scotland's most highly-regarded poets, Stewart Conn takes a winter journey in poetry, sound and music through the capital city with actors Gordon Kennedy and Siobhan Redmond.
A fragment from Under The Ice by Stewart Conn, inspired by Raeburn's portrait which hangs in the National Gallery in Edinburgh:
"...Was Raeburn's skating parson
a man of God, poised
impeccably on the brink;
or his bland stare
no more than a decorous front?
If I could keep my cool
like that. Gazing straight ahead,
not at my feet. Giving
no sign of knowing
how deep the water, how thin the ice."
Music arranged and played by Aly Macrae.
Producer: Gordon Kennedy
Director: Marilyn Imrie.
Made for BBC Radio 4 by Absolutely productions and first broadcast in 2016.
SUN 17:30 Clare in the Community (b061tppy)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 today]
SUN 18:00 Fear on 4 (b007jpxl)
Dark FeathersThe Man in Black introduces the dark mystery of a less than idyllic return for Fay to the West Country.
Another in a series of nerve-tinglers from Fear on 4.
Starring Joanna Myers as Fay and Edward de Souza as the Man in Black.
With Emily Richard as Jenny, Melinda Walker as Jenny's Mum, Jonathan Adams as Mr Batcombe, Matthew Morgan as Paul, Katie Jenkins as Young Fay and Siriol Jenkins as Young Jenny.
Written by Denise Sims.
Producer: Martin Jenkins
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1993.
SUN 18:30 MR James - Oh, Whistle and I'll Come To You (b06sqq9z)
"Easy enough to whistle, but there's no telling what will answer..."
Professor Parkins uncovers a very curious artefact.
MR James's ghostly story adapted by Michael and Mollie Hardwick.
Starring Michael Hordern as Professor Parkins.
With Earle Grey as Brown, James Thomason as Purdon, Austin Trevor as Colonel Wilson, Hilda Kriseman as Mrs Spenlow, Rolf Lefebvre as Rogers, Sheila Grant as the Chambermaid, Anthony Hall as the Waiter and Malcolm Hayes as the Thing.
Special effects by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Producer: Charles Lefeaux
First broadcast on the BBC Home Service in December 1963.
SUN 19:00 The Moth Radio Hour (b09k9zzr)
[Repeat of broadcast at 11:00 today]
SUN 19:50 Inheritance Tracks (b09k9zzt)
[Repeat of broadcast at 11:50 today]
SUN 20:00 David Attenborough - Adventures of a Young Naturalist (Omnibus) (b09k9zzm)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 today]
SUN 21:10 The Listening Project (b02qt7vr)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:10 today]
SUN 21:15 Desert Island Discs Revisited (b09k9zzp)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:15 today]
SUN 22:00 Clare in the Community (b061tppy)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 today]
SUN 22:30 Hamish and Dougal: You'll Have Had Your Tea (b008kl37)
Hogmanay SpecialHumphrey Lyttelton and James Naughtie join Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden's 'Clue' alter egos for a New Year's Eve celebration. From December 2004.
SUN 23:00 What Does the K Stand For? (b03k21ns)
Series 1, My Mum Is Shirley BasseyA school fete incident. Stephen K Amos's teenage years in 1980s south London. By Jonathan Harvey with Stephen K Amos. From December 2013.
SUN 23:30 Jelly Mountain (b00fr1z3)
Episode 4Musing on old cuppas and paying with Fool's Gold. Songs and stories from Ivor Cutler, with Craig Murray-Orr. From May 1996.
SUN 23:45 Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (b00s6n86)
A Christmas Eating at Rawlinson EndSurreal saga of a dynasty delicately balanced on the edge of sanity. Written by and stars Viv Stanshall. From December 1996.

MONDAY 01 JANUARY 2018

MON 00:00 Fear on 4 (b007jpxl)
[Repeat of broadcast at 18:00 on Sunday]
MON 00:30 MR James - Oh, Whistle and I'll Come To You (b06sqq9z)
[Repeat of broadcast at 18:30 on Sunday]
MON 01:00 Charles Dickens - Dombey and Son (Omnibus) (b09k9yyp)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 on Sunday]
MON 02:15 Alan Bennett - Two in Torquay (b0076f3m)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:15 on Sunday]
MON 02:30 Matt Haig - How to Stop Time (b09k9zzw)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:30 on Sunday]
MON 03:40 Big Ben's Chimes (b04xrgm4)
[Repeat of broadcast at 15:40 on Sunday]
MON 04:00 Brothers Grimm - White Snow (b09kjq9c)
[Repeat of broadcast at 16:00 on Sunday]
MON 05:00 Poetry Extra (b09kb01j)
[Repeat of broadcast at 17:00 on Sunday]
MON 05:30 Clare in the Community (b061tppy)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 on Sunday]
MON 06:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b0081w49)
The Resolution that Went WrongFinlay encounters a local hard-nut and vows to get even.
Sue Rodwell's six-part dramatisation of AJ Cronin's stories about the early years of the celebrated doctor.
Ready with his black bag, Dr Finlay sets out to remedy all manner of ailments suffered by his patients in the Scottish Highland town of Levenford.
Stars John Gordon Sinclair as Dr Finlay, Brian Pettifer as Dr Cameron, Katy Murphy as Janet, Alex Ferns as Charlie Bell, Ellie Haddington as Mrs Bell and David Ashton as Archie Galt.
Producer: Jeremy Howe
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2001.
MON 06:30 The Quietest New Year on Earth (b055jy1k)
Black-clad security men stalk the streets hunting down people making noise and silencing them.
No music, no laughter, no engines, no computer games.
Instead maybe a barking dog, a fly buzzing against a window pane, or a mother stifling a child's cry. In the paddy fields the crickets, the frogs and the beetles chirrup on, but the roads are empty, the skies free from vapour trails.
No human noise at all. Just silence.
This is not a scenario from some chilling science-fiction tale, but New Year's Day on the Hindu island of Bali, where Nyepi, as the day is known, is welcomed in by a day of silence - a day to fool the evil spirits into believing that everyone has gone and their work is done.
Of course, in one of the fastest growing property markets in the world, there is pressure for change, as overseas visitors exert more influence, and Muslim influence from the Indonesian mainland increases. But somehow Nyepi still has a powerful hold on the lives and imaginations of the Balinese, as the entire population falls silent for 24 hours - an island population known for one of the noisiest music traditions in the world - gamelan.
It's a tradition that most locals take part in gladly, taking a chance to contemplate the year to come and using the time to meditate - whilst increasingly tourists are drawn to experience this unique atmosphere. Would you prefer a day of contemplating or a hangover to start the New Year?
From the exorcisms the night before, through the day of silence itself, we hear the tensions mount - till the morning after.
Producer: Sara Jane Hall
With additional material gathered by
Maria Bakkalapulo - reporter
Niall Macaulay - field recordist
Wayan Tilik - assistant and translator
John Stanmeyer - audio contributor, Melasti and Ogoh Ogoh.
MON 07:00 Winston (b007svwq)
Winston Comes to Town, The Best Place for ThemWith Father set for an old folk's home - can old rogue Winston save the day for Nancy?
Peter Tinniswood's bawdy comedy serial stars Bill Wallis as Winston, Maurice Denham as Father, Shirley Dixon as Nancy, Liz Goulding as Rosie and Christian Rodska as William.
Director: Shaun MacLoughlin.
First broadcast on BBC Radio in February 1990.
MON 07:30 Just a Minute (b09jrxpt)
Just a Minute: 50 Years in 28 MinutesA special edition of Just a Minute to celebrate the 50th anniversary, featuring some of your favourite panellists from across the years, with regular voices and a few surprises.
Nicholas Parsons presents a one-off programme in which guests from across the programme's history are brought together for one night only. Listeners of a sensitive nature should be warned that wanton hesitation, repetition and deviation will feature from the start.
Produced by Gareth Gwynn
A BBC Studios Production.
MON 08:00 Hancock's Half Hour (b007k0gt)
The DiaryIt's New Year's Eve and the lad is pondering what could have been. Features the famous Test Pilot scene.
Starring Tony Hancock.
With Bill Kerr, Sidney James, Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Williams.
Written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.
Theme and incidental music composed and conducted by Wally Stott.
Producer: Dennis Main Wilson
First broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in December 1956.
MON 08:30 Dad's Army (b007jqzq)
Series 3, The RecruitWith Captain Mainwaring in hospital, the Vicar and the Verger spark unrest in the Home Guard platoon.
Starring Arthur Lowe as Captain Mainwaring, John Le Mesurier as Sergeant Wilson, Clive Dunn as Corporal Jones, John Laurie as Private Frazer, Arnold Ridley as Private Godfrey, Ian Lavender as Private Pike, Bill Pertwee as Hodges, Frank Williams as the Vicar, Edward Sinclair as the Verger and Larry Martyn as Private Walker.
Adapted for radio from Jimmy Perry and David Croft's TV scripts by Harold Snoad and Michael Knowles.
Producer: John Dyas
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 1976.
MON 09:00 The 99p Challenge (b06r022t)
Series 4, Episode 3Crazy panel show capers as host Sue Perkins grills Simon Pegg, Armando Iannucci, Jon Holmes and Peter Serafinowicz.
The game where someone stands to leave the studio 99p richer than when they came in.
Producer: David Tyler
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in February 2003.
MON 09:30 The Party Line (b0129c7j)
Series 2, Episode 1After a turbulent week at the Labour Party conference, MP Duncan Stonebridge is hoping for a quiet weekend at his constituency home. But local politics - in the shape of Britain's ugliest building - intrudes as usual.
Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis's topical sitcom from 2006 about a hapless backbench MP.
Stars James Fleet as Duncan Stonebridge.
With Simon Greenall, Geoffrey McGivern, Geraldine McNulty, Matilda Ziegler and Neil Edmond.
Producer: Adam Bromley
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in October 2006.
MON 10:00 Edna Ferber - Show Boat (b01nt0gv)
Episode 1When Magnolia Hawks climbs aboard the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre, a whole new world opens up and so her remarkable life begins...
Edna Ferber's epic controversial novel dramatised by Moya O'Shea.
Kim.....................Lysette Anthony
Magnolia..............Samantha Spiro
Parthy..................Laurel Lefkow
Andy....................Morgan Deare
Young Magnolia....Shahrazad Matthews
Gaylord................Ryan McCluskey
Julie.....................Samantha Dakin
Steve....................Henry Devas
Elly.......................Leah Brotherhead
Schultzy................Jude Akuwudike
Jo.........................Nonso Anozie
Queenie................Tracy Ifeachor
Sophy...................Joanna Monro
Windy...................Sean Baker
Pete......................Mark Caven
Mr. Mowson...........Iain Batchelor
Music by Neil Brand and banjo played by Mike Hammond.
Director: Tracey Neale
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2011.
MON 11:00 Introductions (b044gkbf)
Naz, by Iman Qureshi'Introductions' is a fresh exploration of what an introduction means for British South Asian culture in contemporary society, where the internet, cultural diversity, and freedoms previously unavailable to members of that society bounce off established traditions of arranged matches or family marriages.
Written by three authors from The Whole Kahani, a British South Asian writers group, the stories in 'Introductions' explore what it means to be mixed race, the tensions between modern independence and family traditions, and the impact of really going it alone in the face of family expectations.
In Naz by Iman Qureshi, Naz forges a life alone, except for her precious dog Doris. Rejecting her own parents' compromised marriage, she shuns relationships until one day Doris takes a shine to the most unlikely of people...
Reader: Rita Das
Producer: David Roper
A Heavy Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.
MON 11:15 Afternoon Drama (b01ppmrl)
Elizabeth Lewis - JanuaryBy Elizabeth Lewis.
Daphne and Ben met as teenagers; theirs was a love story of passion and poetry. Now, more than 20 years later, they meet again and return to the coastal cottage where they first found love. But when they arrive at Dragon's Back Bay, they are haunted by the ghosts of a past that it's impossible to recapture.
A strange and haunting hymn to lost love and the inevitability of passing time.
Directed by James Robinson
A BBC Cymru/Wales Production.
MON 12:00 Hancock's Half Hour (b007k0gt)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:00 today]
MON 12:30 Dad's Army (b007jqzq)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:30 today]
MON 13:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b0081w49)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 today]
MON 13:30 The Quietest New Year on Earth (b055jy1k)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:30 today]
MON 14:00 George Orwell - Animal Farm (b00c13tx)
Episode 1A pig called Old Major has a dream and speaks to the other animals. The world-famous cautionary fable read by Bill Nighy. From June 2003.
MON 14:15 Five Hundred Years of Friendship (b03z91x6)
Felons and OddfellowsAs the nature and depth of our friendships comes under scrutiny in an era of Social Networking, Dr Thomas Dixon presents a major new history of the changing meaning of friendship over the centuries.
Episode 6: Felons and Oddfellows
Thomas Dixon traces the idea of friendship as a form of practical self-help back to the Friendly Societies of the 18th and 19th centuries. At their peak, there were 9000 of these grass-roots institutions - many with quaint, archaic names, such as The Manchester Unity of Oddfellows - and it is estimated that 40% of the adult male population belonged to one - mobilising the power of friendship in a sort of forerunner of the Welfare State.
The importance of the idea of friendship emerges through the colourful vocabulary of friendship in the period - from cronies, trumps and bloaters to culliles, marrows and rib-stones, and the more familiar, chums and pals.
With contributions from Dr Helen Rogers and Professor Hugh Cunningham.
Producer Beaty Rubens
Dr Thomas Dixon is Director of the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary, University of London, with a particular expertise in the histories of emotions, science, philosophy and religion.
MON 14:30 Armistead Maupin - Tales of the City (b01q8l37)
Tales of the City, Episode 1It's 1976 - San Francisco . Mary Ann Singleton arrives from Cleveland for a vacation . She'shoping for adventure. Decising to stay she needs to find a home and a job .
Directed by Susan Roberts
Set in 1976 in San Francisco, Tales of the City is the first of a sequence of novels about the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane; Tales is both a sparkling comedy of manners and a portrait of a free and easy era with the drug and sex counter-culture in full swing.
Mary Ann Singleton, a naive young woman from Cleveland, Ohio arrives in San Francisco, finding an apartment at 28 Barbary Lane, the domain of the eccentric marijuana growing landlady Anna Madrigal. Mary Ann becomes friends with other tenants of the building: the hippyish bisexual Mona Ramsey; the strange Norman Neal Williams; and Michael Tolliver, a sweet and personable gay man known to friends as Mouse.
Beyond the house, lovers and friends guide Mary Ann through her San Franciscan adventures. Edgar Halcyon, Mary Ann's and Mona's boss, Edgar's socialite daughter DeDe Halcyon-Day, and her scheming husband Beauchamp Day all provide a glimpse into a more affluent Californian class. Mona's ex-lover D'orothea Wilson, returns from a modelling assignment in New York, while Michael's lover and DeDe's gynaecologist, Jon Fielding, become part of the group.
MON 14:45 Book of the Week (b01pnmwy)
The Examined Life, Stephen Grosz - The Examined LifeThe world bedevils us. To make sense of it, we tell ourselves stories. In a series of short, vivid, dramatic tales, using psychoanalytic insight without psychoanalytic jargon, The Examined Life tracks the collaborative journey of therapist and patient as they uncover the hidden feelings behind apparently ordinary behaviour patterns.
Written with precision and insight, these case studies are all based on actual people. While factually true, they demonstrate a novelist's sense of an ending and empathetic understanding of the subterfuges of the human mind.
In his work as a practising psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz has spent the last twenty-five years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behaviour. The Examined Life distils over 50,000 hours of conversation into pure psychological insight, without the jargon.
This extraordinary book is about one ordinary process: talking, listening and understanding. Its aphoristic and elegant stories teach us a new kind of attentiveness. They also unveil a delicate self-portrait of the analyst at work, and show how lessons learned in the consulting room can reveal as much to him as to the patient.
Episode 1 of 5
Stephen Grosz has been studying and working as a psychoanalyst in the UK for over twenty-five years. From over 50,000 hours of conversation he distils a series of true stories about the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behaviour. In the first of these he recounts an early experience when a patient's actions were unpredictable and shocking.
Read by Peter Marinker
Abridged and produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Partnership production for BBC Radio 4.
MON 15:00 Edna Ferber - Show Boat (b01nt0gv)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:00 today]
MON 16:00 The 99p Challenge (b06r022t)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 today]
MON 16:30 The Party Line (b0129c7j)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:30 today]
MON 17:00 Winston (b007svwq)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:00 today]
MON 17:30 Just a Minute (b09jrxpt)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 today]
MON 18:00 JB Priestley - The Demon King (b007jqny)
The Boxing Day panto was going to be a flop - even for Bruddersford - but then the Demon King came on.
JB Priestley's comic drama adapted for radio by Michael Hardwick and Mollie Hardwick.
Stars Ian Wallace and Marjorie Westbury.
Other parts played by members of the BBC Drama Repertory Company.
Special effects by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Signature tune composed by Ron Grainer.
Music composed, arranged, and conducted by Christopher Whelen.
Producer: Charles Lefeaux
First broadcast on the BBC Home Service in December 1962.
MON 18:30 A Good Read (b09kb2m6)
Nick Hornby and Simon FanshaweSue MacGregor and her guests - writer Nick Hornby and broadcaster Simon Fanshawe - discuss favourite books by Anne Tyler, Michael Frayn and Nancy Mitford. From 2005.
The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler
Publisher: Vintage
Spies by Michael Frayn
Publisher: Faber
Noblesse Oblige Edited by Nancy Mitford
Publisher: Oxford Language Classics.
MON 19:00 Hancock's Half Hour (b007k0gt)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:00 today]
MON 19:30 Dad's Army (b007jqzq)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:30 today]
MON 20:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b0081w49)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 today]
MON 20:30 The Quietest New Year on Earth (b055jy1k)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:30 today]
MON 21:00 Introductions (b044gkbf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 11:00 today]
MON 21:15 Afternoon Drama (b01ppmrl)
[Repeat of broadcast at 11:15 today]
MON 22:00 Just a Minute (b09jrxpt)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 today]
MON 22:30 Absolute Power (b007vkmz)
Series 2, Episode 4The prime minister wants Charles and Martin to discredit the chancellor. Stars Stephen Fry and John Bird. From February 2001.
MON 22:55 The Comedy Club Interviews (b09m8g32)
Ed Night 1/2The best in contemporary comedy. Deborah Frances-White chats to Ed Night.
MON 23:00 Dead Ringers (b09jxd2g)
Christmas Specials 2017, Episode 2Topical impressions show that offers a satirical take on politics, media and celebrity.
MON 23:30 The Museum of Everything (b007k498)
Series 2, Under New ManagementThe Mock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame inducts fresh members, and there's a new curator. Stars Marcus Brigstocke. From April 2005.

TUESDAY 02 JANUARY 2018

TUE 00:00 JB Priestley - The Demon King (b007jqny)
[Repeat of broadcast at 18:00 on Monday]
TUE 00:30 A Good Read (b09kb2m6)
[Repeat of broadcast at 18:30 on Monday]
TUE 01:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b0081w49)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 on Monday]
TUE 01:30 The Quietest New Year on Earth (b055jy1k)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:30 on Monday]
TUE 02:00 George Orwell - Animal Farm (b00c13tx)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:00 on Monday]
TUE 02:15 Five Hundred Years of Friendship (b03z91x6)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:15 on Monday]
TUE 02:30 Armistead Maupin - Tales of the City (b01q8l37)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:30 on Monday]
TUE 02:45 Book of the Week (b01pnmwy)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:45 on Monday]
TUE 03:00 Edna Ferber - Show Boat (b01nt0gv)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:00 on Monday]
TUE 04:00 The 99p Challenge (b06r022t)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 on Monday]
TUE 04:30 The Party Line (b0129c7j)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:30 on Monday]
TUE 05:00 Winston (b007svwq)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:00 on Monday]
TUE 05:30 Just a Minute (b09jrxpt)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 on Monday]
TUE 06:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b0082j2t)
Who Laughs LastFinlay meets his match in Meg Mirlees - the stingiest, meanest most cunning widow in Scotland.
Sue Rodwell's six-part dramatisation of AJ Cronin's stories about the early years of the celebrated doctor.
Ready with his black bag, Dr Finlay sets out to remedy all manner of ailments suffered by his patients in the Scottish Highland town of Levenford.
Stars John Gordon Sinclair as Dr Finlay, Brian Pettifer as Dr Cameron, Katy Murphy as Janet, Claire Nielson as Meg Mirlees and Sharon Small as Nurse Peggy.
Producer: Jeremy Howe
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2001.
TUE 06:30 Dr Hepcat and the Hepster's Dictionary (b04mcmnl)
In 1938, the singer and band leader Cab Calloway became the first known African American to publish a book and call it a dictionary. His book of jive talk, Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary, translated some of the lively and inventive slang being used among musicians and entertainers in New York's Harlem, for a new audience of jazz fans who weren't yet 'hep to the jive'.
The poet Lemn Sissay finds out how Calloway, famous for his hit song Minnie the Moocher, came to write the dictionary, and how it became the official reference book of jive in the New York Public Library at a time when black people in America were still highly segregated from the white mainstream.
Lemn speaks to Cab Calloway's eldest daughter Camay Murphy who remembers Harlem in the 1930s and 40s, and Cab's grandson Christopher Calloway Brooks who is a bandleader himself.
Jive grew out of older African American vernaculars which had their roots in slave plantations in the nineteenth century. As people came up from the southern states to the northern cities to look for work, jive developed around the world of jazz music, entertainment and night life in Harlem. It was a private 'in the know' language, a form of protection and a way to get past the authorities, but it was also fun and incredibly creative.
Some words survive, like hip, chick, groovy, dig, cool and beat. Other jive terms may no longer be in use - like collar to comprehend, pounders for policemen, or a rug cutter for a good dancer - but the words of jive remain a revealing portrait of Harlem in its heyday.
Produced by Jo Wheeler
A Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4.
TUE 07:00 Guests Are Like Fish (b04416s0)
Episode 3Guests are like Fish by Shelagh Stephenson
When ANNA and JIM left London to move to the country, they blithely issued invitations to come up and see us any time! to all and sundry.
Unfortunately, most of those who take them at their word are the ones they never in a million years dreamt would turn up, with predictably disastrous results.
Each weekend, over 4 episodes, a different couple pitches up on their doorstep demanding food, more food, wine and roaring fires, when what they really need is prolonged therapy. And each week Anna and Jim swear they'll never do it again...Guests, like fish, tend to go off after three days.
Produced and directed by: Eoin O'Callaghan
A Big Fish production for BBC Radio 4.
TUE 07:30 Mark Steel's in Town (b09jvhgh)
Series 8, PortisheadMark Steel's In Town - Portishead
"When the siren sounds - Go in, close doors and windows and stay in"
Mark Steel returns to Radio 4 with the 8th series of his award winning show that travels around the country visiting towns that have nothing in common but their uniqueness. After thoroughly researching each town, Mark writes and performs a bespoke evening of comedy for the local residents.
In this episode Mark visits Portishead in Somerset
Portishead is near Bristol, but it definitely isn't Bristol. You can get to Bristol from there if you like, but it isn't that easy. It has a lovely Marina, a boating lake, a lido and peculiar stationers shop with too many rooms. It also has a plethora of groups and societies including a marvellous bunch of people who save toads and frogs from getting run over. Oh, and newts.
Eddie Large and Mike Baldwin from Coronation Street live there as well.
*(Not together)
Written and performed by ... Mark Steel
Additional material by ... Pete Sinclair
Production co-ordinator ... Hayley Sterling
Sound Manager ... David Thomas
Producer ... Carl Cooper
Picture Credit ... Tom Stanier.
TUE 08:00 The Ken Dodd Show (b00hwyq9)
From 19/07/1964The creature of Invercockieleekie wreaks a special kind of havoc when confronted with Doddy's singing.
Starring Ken Dodd.
With Judith Chalmers, John Laurie, Patricia Hayes, Peter Hudson, Wallas Eaton and Percy Edwards.
Music from The Migil Five.
BBC Revue Orchestra, conducted by Malcolm Lockyer.
Script by Ken Dodd and Eddie Braben.
Producer: Bill Worsley
First broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in July 1964.
TUE 08:30 The Men From the Ministry (b013dzmy)
Food for ThoughtThe antics of the bungling bureaucrats attract some sinister interest from abroad...
A weekly tribute to all those who work in government departments.
Stars Richard Murdoch and Deryck Guyler. With Norma Ronald, Ronald Baddiley and John Graham.
Written by Edward Taylor and John Graham.
'The Men from the Ministry' ran for 14 series between 1962 and 1977. Deryck Guyler replaced Wilfrid Hyde-White from 1966. Sadly many episodes didn't survive in the archive, however the BBC's Transcription Service re-recorded 14 shows in 1980 - never broadcast in the UK, until the arrival of BBC Radio 4 Extra.
Producer: Edward Taylor
First broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 in April 1973.
TUE 09:00 Dead Ringers (b09jxd2g)
[Repeat of broadcast at 23:00 on Monday]
TUE 09:30 The Small World of Dominic Holland (b007vjfl)
Sport and LeisureThe comedian shares his thoughts on how we spend our leisure time.
Six-part series illustrating the Domedic minutiae of life.
Stand-up and sketches with Simon Greenall, Sally Grace and Dave Lamb.
Producer: Maria Esposito
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2000.
TUE 10:00 Edna Ferber - Show Boat (b01nt4px)
Episode 2Parthy has shocking news about Gaylord, as Kim receives a telegram in her cotton blossom dressing room. Stars Samantha Spiro. From February 2011.
TUE 11:00 Introductions (b0457fqm)
Three Singers, by Kavita A Jindal'Introductions' is a fresh exploration of what an introduction means for British South Asian culture in contemporary society, where the internet, cultural diversity, and freedoms previously unavailable to members of that society bounce off established traditions of arranged matches or family marriages.
Written by three authors from The Whole Kahani, a British South Asian writers group, the stories in 'Introductions' explore what it means to be mixed race, the tensions between modern independence and family traditions, and the impact of really going it alone in the face of family expectations.
In Kavita A Jindal's Three Singers mixed race twins Himani and Sonali escape the tensions of setting up their own fashion business by joining a classical Indian singing class, but what they get from the class is not what they expected.
Reader: Deni Francis
Producer: David Roper
A Heavy Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.
TUE 11:15 Heinrich Boll - Murke's Collected Silences (b0075xqh)
Murke is a radio producer obsessed with silences who constantly seeks the spiritual even in the clanking of the paternoster lift. One day he is asked to edit out the use of the word 'God' in a radio documentary.
Heinrich Boll won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972. He was born in 1917 and he published continuously from 1949 and his last work was published posthumously in 1985. In 1967 he won the Büchner Prize - Germany's highest literary honour. He was revered as an author and social commentator. In the early 1970s he was president of the International P.E.N. organization. Before his death in 1985, Boll's work had been translated already into more than 30 languages. He remains one of Germany's most widely known authors.
He fought as a private in the Second World War and much of his early work was about war and how people coped in its aftermath.
Dominic Letts stars as Murke. Dramatised by Jonathan Holloway. Directed by David Hunter.
TUE 12:00 The Ken Dodd Show (b00hwyq9)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:00 today]
TUE 12:30 The Men From the Ministry (b013dzmy)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:30 today]
TUE 13:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b0082j2t)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 today]
TUE 13:30 Dr Hepcat and the Hepster's Dictionary (b04mcmnl)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:30 today]
TUE 14:00 George Orwell - Animal Farm (b00c0r24)
Episode 2Snowball has big plans for the farmyard revolution, but how will fellow pig Napoleon react? Read by Bill Nighy. From June 2003.
TUE 14:15 Five Hundred Years of Friendship (b03zb4b2)
Education of the HeartAs the nature and depth of our friendships comes under scrutiny in an era of Social Networking, Dr Thomas Dixon presents a major new history of the changing meaning of friendship over the centuries.
Episode 7: Education of the Heart
Today, we tend to view friendships among children as a good thing, but in the 18th century, improving "conduct manuals" tended to warn children off friendship, seeing it as fraught with danger. In an era of large families, friendships among siblings were considered far safer.
Thomas Dixon learns from the distinguished expert on the history of childhood, Professor Hugh Cunningham, how the reduction of family size and the spread of mass education in the 19th century began, inevitably to challenge this notion.
But the idea of the dangers of friendship for children persisted.
Thomas Dixon goes on to explore with children's literature specialist, Dr Matthew Grenby, how the classic school stories of the 19th century - from Matthew Arnold's Tom Brown's Schooldays to Angela Brazil's A Fourth Form Friendship - continued to provide moral advice about friendship, buried within their depiction of algebra, lacrosse and midnight feasts in the dorm.
Producer Beaty Rubens.
TUE 14:30 Armistead Maupin - Tales of the City (b01q98lw)
Tales of the City, Episode 2Anna and Edgar share some afternoon delight. Mary Ann loves her new life . She settles into her apartment and job , and there's a surprise visitor for Mona .
It's 1976 - San Francisco . Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City is a portrait of a free and easy era with the drug and sex counter-culture in full swing.
Dramatised by Bryony Lavery and directed by Susan Roberts
Set in 1976 in San Francisco , Tales of the City is the first in a sequence of novels about the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, Tales is both a sparkling comedy of manners and an indelible portrait of an era that changed the way we live forever.
TUE 14:45 Book of the Week (b01px4px)
The Examined Life, Stephen Grosz - The Examined LifeThe world bedevils us. To make sense of it, we tell ourselves stories. In a series of short, vivid, dramatic tales, using psychoanalytic insight without psychoanalytic jargon, The Examined Life tracks the collaborative journey of therapist and patient as they uncover the hidden feelings behind apparently ordinary behaviour patterns.
Written with precision and insight, these case studies are all based on actual people. While factually true, they demonstrate a novelist's sense of an ending and empathetic understanding of the subterfuges of the human mind.
In his work as a practising psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz has spent the last twenty-five years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behaviour. The Examined Life distils over 50,000 hours of conversation into pure psychological insight, without the jargon.
This extraordinary book is about one ordinary process: talking, listening and understanding. Its aphoristic and elegant stories teach us a new kind of attentiveness. They also unveil a delicate self-portrait of the analyst at work, and show how lessons learned in the consulting room can reveal as much to him as to the patient.
Episode 2 of 5:
Continuing his series of true stories from the analyst's consulting room, Stephen Grosz examines secrets and the ways that people can protect themselves with lies and bluster.
Read by Peter Marinker
Abridged and produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Partnership production for BBC Radio 4.
TUE 15:00 Edna Ferber - Show Boat (b01nt4px)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:00 today]
TUE 16:00 The Food Quiz (b0728z3b)
Series 1, Episode 4On Jay Rayner's menu are Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Jekka McVicar, Clarissa Dickson Wright and Heston Blumenthal. From October 2003.
TUE 16:30 Semi Circles (b007jtxf)
Series 2, Charity Begins at HomeHelen and Ben fight the forces of materialism. Can they win when promotion beckons? Starring Paula Wilcox. From December 1982.
TUE 17:00 Guests Are Like Fish (b04416s0)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:00 today]
TUE 17:30 Mark Steel's in Town (b09jvhgh)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 today]
TUE 18:00 Richard Matheson - I Am Legend (b007k0s3)
Episode 1Immune to a plague which has decimated the population, Earth's last living man, Robert Neville, takes on hordes of survivors turned into monstrous vampires.
1954 cult classic set in the United States of America in 1976. Read by Angus McInnes.
One of the 20th century's most significant vampire novels, Richard Matheson's 'I Am Legend' combines the worlds of sci-fi and horror.
Abridged by Scott Stainton Miller.
Producer: Eilidh McCreadie
Made for BBC Radio 4 Extra by BBC Scotland and first broadcast in 2006.
TUE 18:30 Dad Made Me Laugh (b00d7h6q)
Maureen BeattieJohnny Beattie's daughter chats to Sally Magnusson about life with the Glaswegian comedian. From September 2006.
TUE 19:00 The Ken Dodd Show (b00hwyq9)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:00 today]
TUE 19:30 The Men From the Ministry (b013dzmy)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:30 today]
TUE 20:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b0082j2t)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 today]
TUE 20:30 Dr Hepcat and the Hepster's Dictionary (b04mcmnl)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:30 today]
TUE 21:00 Introductions (b0457fqm)
[Repeat of broadcast at 11:00 today]
TUE 21:15 Heinrich Boll - Murke's Collected Silences (b0075xqh)
[Repeat of broadcast at 11:15 today]
TUE 22:00 Mark Steel's in Town (b09jvhgh)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 today]
TUE 22:30 Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World (b007tm8f)
Series 2, MagicThe sci-fi star and his crew cast a spell to summon the Devil. With Tom Baker, Richard Herring and Stewart Lee. From July 1995.
TUE 23:00 Elvenquest (b00k9d80)
Series 1, Episode 5The Oracle enlightens in the quest for the Sword of Asnagar. Fantasy comedy starring Darren Boyd and Dave Lamb. From May 2009.
TUE 23:30 The Consultants (b007k2vv)
Series 1, Episode 1A lifestyle presentation conference - and sketch show, with Neil Edmond, Justin Edwards and James Rawlings. From February 2003.
TUE 23:45 Where Did It All Go Wrong? (b0076gmh)
Series 1, The True Confessions of Sherlock HolmesSimon Munnery debunks the image of some iconic characters, starting with the 'science man' of Baker Street. From August 2003.

WEDNESDAY 03 JANUARY 2018

WED 00:00 Richard Matheson - I Am Legend (b007k0s3)
[Repeat of broadcast at 18:00 on Tuesday]
WED 00:30 Dad Made Me Laugh (b00d7h6q)
[Repeat of broadcast at 18:30 on Tuesday]
WED 01:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b0082j2t)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 on Tuesday]
WED 01:30 Dr Hepcat and the Hepster's Dictionary (b04mcmnl)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:30 on Tuesday]
WED 02:00 George Orwell - Animal Farm (b00c0r24)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:00 on Tuesday]
WED 02:15 Five Hundred Years of Friendship (b03zb4b2)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:15 on Tuesday]
WED 02:30 Armistead Maupin - Tales of the City (b01q98lw)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:30 on Tuesday]
WED 02:45 Book of the Week (b01px4px)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:45 on Tuesday]
WED 03:00 Edna Ferber - Show Boat (b01nt4px)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:00 on Tuesday]
WED 04:00 The Food Quiz (b0728z3b)
[Repeat of broadcast at 16:00 on Tuesday]
WED 04:30 Semi Circles (b007jtxf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 16:30 on Tuesday]
WED 05:00 Guests Are Like Fish (b04416s0)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:00 on Tuesday]
WED 05:30 Mark Steel's in Town (b09jvhgh)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 on Tuesday]
WED 06:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b0084rs7)
The Day Dandini Came to TownFinlay finds that a touring Cinderella has more in common with La Traviata than a pantomime.
Sue Rodwell's six-part dramatisation of AJ Cronin's stories about the early years of the celebrated doctor.
Ready with his black bag, Dr Finlay sets out to remedy all manner of ailments suffered by his patients in the Scottish Highland town of Levenford.
Stars John Gordon Sinclair as Dr Finlay, Brian Pettifer as Dr Cameron, Katy Murphy as Janet, Beverley Klein as Lettie Le Brun, Shaun Scott as Samuels, David Bannerman as Doggy and David Tennant as Jackson.
Producer: Jeremy Howe
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2001.
WED 06:30 The Lost Art of Churches (b01hl41c)
Large amounts of important, modernist visual art commissioned by the Church in the twentieth century are in danger of being forgotten. No central record exists of these artworks - paintings, sculptures, stained glass, murals, tapestries and icons - many of which have even been shut away, victims of a change in fashion or worries about their vulnerability.
Paul Bayley of the ACE Trust (Art and Christian Enquiry, promoting contemporary art in UK churches) locates examples that illustrate the variety of art that can be found if you look for it.
In Hayes, Middlesex, at the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, he finds Annigonni's late 1950s painting of the Madonna and Child featuring an atomic explosion rendered in gold leaf in the background. At St Johns, Waterloo, he examines two paintings by the German Jewish refugee from the Nazis, Hans Feibusch, who became probably the most prolific church artist in Britain in the last century. And in Soho, in the French-speaking Church of Notre Dame, Paul meets art restorers who have been rescuing unique murals painted by Jean Cocteau, which were damaged by graffiti and spilt soft drinks.
One of the discoveries that most excites Paul is a large crucifixion painted by Graham Sutherland in St Aidan's East Acton, in the early 1960s. But not all church art, Paul discovers, is situated in church buildings. The Methodist Art Collection was set up to be taken around the country and exhibited in different venues, and is still commissioning new work. Paul also travels to Northumberland, where, at the tiny church of St John, Healey, he sees award-winning new work in two windows created by James Hugonin and the Danish-born Anne Vibeke Mou.
Producer: Bob Dickinson
A Pennine Production for BBC Radio 4.
WED 07:00 Like They've Never Been Gone (b009prt3)
Series 1, Episode 5Duo Tommy and Sheila's comeback faces jeopardy - from his dodgy past.
Winners of the 1962 Eurovision Song Contest, sweethearts Tommy Franklin and Sheila Parr are back in the limelight. The only snag is they can't stand the sight of each another...
Mike Coleman's sitcom stars June Whitfield and Roy Hudd.
With Pat Coombs, Julian Eardley, Joshua Henderson, Edward Halsted, Chris Pavlo, Paul Rogan and Ned Sherrin.
Singers: John Barr and Lisa Peace.
Music by Frido Ruth.
Producer: Steve Doherty
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 1998.
WED 07:30 Jeremy Hardy Feels It (b09jvn0m)
Series 1, Jeremy Hardy Feels... FearJeremy Hardy returns with his new series that not only seconds that emotion, but explains it too. In this show, Jeremy feels... fear.
Radio 4's most passionate polemicist returns to the airwaves with a new format which promises to be both personal and profound, and to present sides of Jeremy you won't have heard before. He may even sing. (He won't sing.)
The News Quiz and I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" regular, proud progenitor of ten series of Jeremy Hardy Speaks To The Nation, and winner of numerous awards and almost certainly the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, Jeremy is famous for lines like:
"Kids should never be fashion slaves, especially in the Far East. My 12-year old daughter asked me for a new pair of trainers. I told her she was old enough to go out and make her own."
and -
"Islam is no weirder than Christianity. Both are just Judaism with the jokes taken out."
His unique world view once lead him to be likened to "an incendiary vicar". Gillian Reynolds called him, "an idealist, a dissenter, a polemicist and moralist - he's a salutary reminder that jokes can, and should, be about big things."
The show is produced by Jeremy's long-standing accomplice, David Tyler, whose radio credits include Cabin Pressure, Thanks A Lot, Milton Jones!, Marcus Brigstocke's The Brig Society, Kevin Eldon Will See You Now, Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive, Giles Wemmbley Hogg Goes Off, The Castle, The 99p Challenge, Deep Trouble, My First Planet, Radio Active and Bigipedia. His TV credits include Paul Merton - The Series, Spitting Image, Absolutely, The Paul Calf Video Diary, Coogan's Run and exec producing Victoria Wood's dinnerladies.
Written by Jeremy Hardy
Produced by David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
WED 08:00 The Navy Lark (b00zw33y)
Pertwee Posted to PortsmouthThe Chief Petty Officer makes waves with his request to join Captain Povey's staff.
Starring Leslie Phillips as the Sub-Lieutenant, Jon Pertwee as the Chief Petty Officer, Stephen Murray as Number One, Richard Caldicot as Commander Povey, Ronnie Barker as AS Johnson, Heather Chasen as Heather, Michael Bates as Edgar Pertwee and Tenniel Evans as Uncle Ebenezer Pertwee.
The Navy Lark ran for an impressive 13 series on BBC Radio between 1959 and 1976.
Scripted by Lawrie Wyman.
Producer: Alastair Scott Johnston.
First broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in February 1960.
WED 08:30 Round the Horne (b00j05vh)
Series 1, Episode 1The bona beginnings of one of the BBC's most popular comedies. The story so far, the BBC's Backroom Boys and part one of The Clissold Saga.
Starring Kenneth Horne. With Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden and Bill Pertwee.
Recorded at the BBC's Paris Studio in Lower Regent Street, London. Announcer: Douglas Smith
Round The Horne was born out of the demise of BBC radio comedy Beyond Our Ken, after the end of writer Eric Merriman's involvement. Using the same cast and producer, Barry Took and Marty Feldman were persuaded to write the scripts - which led to four series that ran between 1965 and 1968 - packed full of parodies, recurring characters, catchphrases and double-entendres.
Music by Edwin Braden and the Hornblowers and The Fraser Hayes Four.
Producer: John Simmonds
First broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in March 1965.
WED 09:00 The Write Stuff (b01sd23j)
The BrontesRadio 4's literary panel show, hosted by James Walton, with team captains Sebastian Faulks and John Walsh and guests Mark Watson and Sue Limb.
Produced by Alexandra Smith.
WED 09:30 Life, Death and Sex with Mike and Sue (b01nql85)
Series 2, Episode 6The lifestyle show hosts focus on "education" and "money".
Series 2 of Bill Dare's sitcom stars Robert Duncan and Jan Ravens.
With Roger Blake, Alistair McGowan, Sally Philips and Bill Dare.
Music by Mark Burton.
Producer: Jo Clegg
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 1997.
WED 10:00 Classic Serial (b01mtsm3)
Thomas Hardy - Far From the Madding Crowd, A Farmer Just BeginningBy Thomas Hardy, adapted by Graham White. 1/3 - Young farmer Gabriel Oak sees an ideal wife in Bathsheba Everdene, but she turns him down, believing in true romance. As she becomes rich, he is ruined, and the tables turn.
Musicians ... Colin Guthrie, Chris Davies, Lauren Swift
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole
This episode will be available to listen to until 14th October 2012.
WED 11:00 Introductions (b045y0t4)
We Are All Made of Stars, by Rohan KarA fresh exploration of what an introduction means for British South Asian culture in contemporary society where the internet, cultural diversity, and freedoms previously unavailable to members of that society bounce off established traditions of arranged matches or family marriages.
Written by three authors from The Whole Kahani, a British South Asian writers group, the stories in 'Introductions' explore what it means to be mixed race, the tensions between modern independence and family traditions, and the impact of really going it alone in the face of family expectations.
In this third programme, We Are Made of Stars by Rohan Kar, single, thirtysomething Rupinder finally succumbs to her mother's belief that astrological charts can find her the perfect match. But, as Rupinder discovers, life on Earth is a lot more complicated than that in the heavens.
Reader: Vayu Naidu
Produced by David Roper
A Heavy Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.
WED 11:15 Afternoon Drama (b01r55ws)
Sarah McDonald Hughes - Take Me to RedcarBy Sarah McDonald Hughes
The first in a short series of stories that each take us to a different part of the UK.
Student Fiona can't wait to show her Mancunian boyfriend around her hometown of Redcar, although as soon as she arrives home she realises something isn't right. Her parents have vanished and the whole town seems to have closed up for the day. A surprising and unexpected answer to the mystery awaits her on the beach.
Written by Sarah McDonald Hughes
Produced by Charlotte Riches.
WED 12:00 The Navy Lark (b00zw33y)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:00 today]
WED 12:30 Round the Horne (b00j05vh)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:30 today]
WED 13:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b0084rs7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 today]
WED 13:30 The Lost Art of Churches (b01hl41c)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:30 today]
WED 14:00 George Orwell - Animal Farm (b00c0grc)
Episode 3The windmill is smashed, with Squealer blaming Snowball, as Napoleon cements his position on the farm. Read by Bill Nighy. From June 2003.
WED 14:15 Five Hundred Years of Friendship (b03zby89)
Darwin's Best FriendDr Thomas Dixon presents a timely new history of the changing meaning and experience of friendship over the centuries
Episode 8: Darwin's Best Friend
Charles Darwin loved his dog and praised her in letters to friends as "the beloved and beautiful Polly". He believed that dogs shared qualities such as a sense of shame, honour and affection with humans, and wrote about them in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
It was in this era that dogs were, for the first time, given the title of "man's best friend".
Thomas Dixon traces the impact of Darwin's own relationship with animals on his theory of evolution, and compares it with his ideas about other, "savage" human beings, whom he encountered in Tierra Del Fuego, during his trip on the Beagle.
He also considers Darwin's deeply affectionate and intimate friendship with his fellow-scientist, Joseph Hooker, at a time when it is often believed men were disinclined towards displays of emotion.
With contributions from Emma Townshend, author of Darwin's Dogs, and Hooker expert Dr Jim Endersby.
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
WED 14:30 Armistead Maupin - Tales of the City (b01q98qw)
Tales of the City, Episode 3Disillusioned, Mary Ann Singleton's considering moving back to Cleveland. Mona and Michael cook up a scheme to pay the rent.
Directed by Susan Roberts
For more than 3 decades, Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City has blazed its own trail through popular culture-from ground-breaking newspaper serial to classic novel. This is the first time it has appeared on radio, dramatised by Bryony Lavery.
Set in 1976 in San Francisco , Tales of the City is the first in a sequence of novels about the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, Tales is both a sparkling comedy of manners and an indelible portrait of an era that changed the way we live forever.
WED 14:45 Book of the Week (b01px4pz)
The Examined Life, Stephen Grosz - The Examined LifeThe world bedevils us. To make sense of it, we tell ourselves stories. In a series of short, vivid, dramatic tales, using psychoanalytic insight without psychoanalytic jargon, The Examined Life tracks the collaborative journey of therapist and patient as they uncover the hidden feelings behind apparently ordinary behaviour patterns.
Written with precision and insight, these case studies are all based on actual people. While factually true, they demonstrate a novelist's sense of an ending and empathetic understanding of the subterfuges of the human mind.
In his work as a practising psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz has spent the last twenty-five years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behaviour. The Examined Life distils over 50,000 hours of conversation into pure psychological insight, without the jargon.
This extraordinary book is about one ordinary process: talking, listening and understanding. Its aphoristic and elegant stories teach us a new kind of attentiveness. They also unveil a delicate self-portrait of the analyst at work, and show how lessons learned in the consulting room can reveal as much to him as to the patient.
Episode 3 of 5:
We make stories to make sense of our lives. But it is not enough to tell tales. There must be someone to listen. Analyst Stephen Grosz recounts a session with a patient who revealed his inner life over the phone with a meticulous description of his house.
Read by Peter Marinker
Abridged and produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Partnership production for BBC Radio 4.
WED 15:00 Classic Serial (b01mtsm3)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:00 today]
WED 16:00 The Write Stuff (b01sd23j)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 today]
WED 16:30 Life, Death and Sex with Mike and Sue (b01nql85)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:30 today]
WED 17:00 Like They've Never Been Gone (b009prt3)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:00 today]
WED 17:30 Jeremy Hardy Feels It (b09jvn0m)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 today]
WED 18:00 Richard Matheson - I Am Legend (b007k0tb)
Episode 2Earth's last living man, Robert Neville, discovers that his wife's tomb is a lair for vampires. Read by Angus McInnes. From January 2006.
WED 18:30 Musical Legends (b01h63d7)
Duane EddyDuane Eddy is a Grammy Award-winning American guitarist who had a string of hit records which were produced by Lee Hazlewood and were noted for their characteristically 'twangy' sound.
Rebel Rouser, Peter Gunn and Because They're Young were all UK chart records and Duane was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
Ahead of his UK tour which includes a gig in Glasgow on the 16th of May, Duane talks to Tom Morton about his music, the artists who have influenced him and how he still gets a kick out of performing.
WED 19:00 The Navy Lark (b00zw33y)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:00 today]
WED 19:30 Round the Horne (b00j05vh)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:30 today]
WED 20:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b0084rs7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 today]
WED 20:30 The Lost Art of Churches (b01hl41c)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:30 today]
WED 21:00 Introductions (b045y0t4)
[Repeat of broadcast at 11:00 today]
WED 21:15 Afternoon Drama (b01r55ws)
[Repeat of broadcast at 11:15 today]
WED 22:00 Jeremy Hardy Feels It (b09jvn0m)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 today]
WED 22:30 The Secret World (b012b1z6)
Series 2, Episode 2Alan Titchmarsh - quaint gardener or ruthless murderer? Jon Culshaw and friends probe the private lives of the famous. From July 2010.
WED 22:55 The Comedy Club Interviews (b09m8gp0)
Ed Night 2/2The best in contemporary comedy. Deborah Frances-White chats to Ed Night.
WED 23:00 Mr and Mrs Smith (b01b9kdj)
Sally's BirthdayEpisode 2 - Sally's Birthday
An audience sitcom about a couple in marriage counselling. Will and Annabelle attend her mum's 60th Birthday Party. Will makes an effort to get on with his straight talking father-in-law John.
FULL CAST DETAILS:
Will Smith ..... Will Smith
Annabelle Smith ..... Sarah Hadland
Guy ..... Paterson Joseph
John ..... Geoffrey Whitehead
Sally ..... Susie Blake
Shop Assistant ..... Tracy Wiles
Written by ..... Will Smith
Produced by ..... Tilusha Ghelani
ABOUT THE SERIES:
A year into married life and already things are a little creaky. So, following Will's unimaginative anniversary present (a draining rack), Annabelle has signed them up for a course of marriage counselling.
Each week, counsellor Guy mediates a recent dispute between Will and Annabelle, with flashbacks to the events that spawned the argument, and by the end, the couple find marital equilibrium once more. Sort of.
Guy arbitrates, usually leaning towards Annabelle's more sensible point of view. In contrast to Will's uptightness, Guy is laconic and urbane and clearly irritates Will.
The writer and comedian Will Smith leads the starry cast of Mr and Mrs.Smith. Will's writing credits include Armstrong and Miller (BBC1), Harry and Paul (BBC1), Moving Wallpaper (ITV1), Time Trumpet (BBC2), the multi-award winning The Thick Of It (BBC2) in which he also appears as Phil Smith, and the upcoming Veep (HBO).
WED 23:30 Children's Hour with Armstrong and Miller (b008yrwy)
Episode 1Number One for young people - Martin Bain-Jones and Craig Children present their frightfully clever pop culture show.
Ben Miller and Alexander Armstrong write and star in their first full-length radio comedy series.
With Charlie Condou and Melissa Lloyd.
Producer: Jon Rolph
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 1998.

THURSDAY 04 JANUARY 2018

THU 00:00 Richard Matheson - I Am Legend (b007k0tb)
[Repeat of broadcast at 18:00 on Wednesday]
THU 00:30 Musical Legends (b01h63d7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 18:30 on Wednesday]
THU 01:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b0084rs7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 on Wednesday]
THU 01:30 The Lost Art of Churches (b01hl41c)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:30 on Wednesday]
THU 02:00 George Orwell - Animal Farm (b00c0grc)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:00 on Wednesday]
THU 02:15 Five Hundred Years of Friendship (b03zby89)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:15 on Wednesday]
THU 02:30 Armistead Maupin - Tales of the City (b01q98qw)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:30 on Wednesday]
THU 02:45 Book of the Week (b01px4pz)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:45 on Wednesday]
THU 03:00 Classic Serial (b01mtsm3)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:00 on Wednesday]
THU 04:00 The Write Stuff (b01sd23j)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 on Wednesday]
THU 04:30 Life, Death and Sex with Mike and Sue (b01nql85)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:30 on Wednesday]
THU 05:00 Like They've Never Been Gone (b009prt3)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:00 on Wednesday]
THU 05:30 Jeremy Hardy Feels It (b09jvn0m)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 on Wednesday]
THU 06:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b00874cp)
Wee RobertsonFinlay gets caught in the middle when a henpecked husband escapes his fussing wife by losing his memory...
Sue Rodwell's six-part dramatisation of AJ Cronin's stories about the early years of the celebrated doctor.
Ready with his black bag, Dr Finlay sets out to remedy all manner of ailments suffered by his patients in the Scottish Highland town of Levenford.
Stars John Gordon Sinclair as Dr Finlay, Brian Pettifer as Dr Cameron, David McKail as Robert Robertson, Phylis Logan as Sarah Robertson, Aline Mowat as the Landlady, Harry Ward as the Ticket Collector and David Tennant as Jackson.
Producer: Jeremy Howe
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2001.
THU 06:30 I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing (b00n0wyy)
Janet Ellis heads to Cornwall, Preston and Macclesfield to speak to authors, storytellers and academics about the power of the mermaid image and its origins.
She hears from the man who came up with the Starbucks logo, perhaps the most prevalent mermaid in modern culture, and finds out the identity of the 'girl next door' on whom it was based. Janet also trawls through the myriad mermaid references in art and literature, from Robert Graves and TS Eliot to the Pre-Raphaelites, who used the mermaid as a powerful image of voluptuous sexuality.
The legend of the mermaid is said to date back to the days when sailors far from home would mistake sea mammals like manatees and dugongs for semi-human creatures. Since the days of Homer, the image of the mysterious female luring sailors to their deaths has remained extremely powerful in the popular imagination, and has survived numerous reinventions over the centuries. With the help of the likes of Hans Christian Andersen and Walt Disney, mermaids have become as much a mainstay of modern childhood as pirates and princesses.
THU 07:00 Fat Chance (b019fwxg)
Weigh in with WendyGraham joins the members of a slimming club run by Wendy Bottomley.
Jenny McDade's high-fat bittersweet comedy for those believing there's a thin person inside them begging to get out.
Starring Janine Duvitski, Anne Reid, Julia Deakin, Tilly Gaunt, Harry Myers, Frances Jeater, Gareth Corke and Michael Troughton.
Producer: Sally Avens
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in February 1999.
THU 07:30 Susan Calman - Keep Calman Carry On (b09jvvny)
Series 2, BirdwatchingSusan Calman is the least relaxed person she knows. She has no down time, no hobbies (unless you count dressing up your cats in silly outfits) and her idea of relaxation is to sit on her sofa playing Assassin's Creed, an hour into which she is in a murderous rage with sky high blood pressure. Her wife had to threaten to divorce her to make her go on holiday, and she's been told by the same long-suffering wife that unless she finds a way to switch off, and soon, she's going to be unbearable.
Susan decided her best bet was to try to immerse herself in the pursuits that her friends find relaxing, to find her inner zen and outer tranquillity. In the first series of this show she attempted to ditch the old Susan Calman and attempted to find the new Susan Calm, by watching Cricket; going Hillwalking; visiting an Art Gallery and being spontaneous. She enjoyed these pursuits, but all too soon found herself slipping back into her old ways. So she's trying again. This week she goes birdwatching with the writer and comedian Emma Kennedy.
In other episodes Susan will learn about gardening with Val McDermid, go to a music festival with Robin Ince and try baking with the Great British Bake Off's Selasi Gbormittah.
Keep Calman Carry On is an audience stand up show in which Susan reports on how successful she's been - both at relaxing and at the pursuit itself - as well as playing in and discussing a handful of illustrative clips from her efforts. It's an attempt to find out how people find solace or sanctuary in these worlds and how Susan can negotiate her own place in them.
Written by Susan Calman and Jon Hunter.
Produced by Lyndsay Fenner.
A BBC Studios Production.
THU 08:00 Not in Front of the Children (b05r7w7g)
Series 1, Spare Time JobJen's scheme to make money runs into red tape - and worse. Stars Wendy Craig and Francis Matthews.
The comedy mishaps of the Corner family: Jennifer and Henry and their three children Trudi, Amanda and Robin. Family sitcom, Not in Front of the Children originally ran for four series from 1967 to 1970 on BBC TV. Richard Waring adapted his own scripts for this radio version, now fully restored from the original reel-to-reel tapes.
Wendy Craig won a Best Actress BAFTA award for the TV version of Not in Front of the Children in 1969. This was the first of several housewife roles that Wendy Craig was to play on television. Later series included And Mother Makes Three and Butterflies.
Music by Ronnie Hazlehurst.
Producer: Trafford Whitelock.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 1969.
THU 08:30 The Goon Show (b00qyqd7)
The Man Who Won the War (Seagoon MCC)How Neddie 'invented' the barrage balloon and other wartime (mis)adventures. Stars Spike Milligan. From September 1955.
THU 09:00 The Unbelievable Truth (b01rqnj3)
Series 11, Episode 1David Mitchell hosts the panel game in which four comedians are encouraged to tell lies and compete against one another to see how many items of truth they're able to smuggle past their opponents.
Lloyd Langford, Henning Wehn, Katherine Ryan and Graeme Garden are the panellists obliged to talk with deliberate inaccuracy on subjects as varied as Sharks, Photography, Sugar and Jeremy Clarkson.
The show is devised by Graeme Garden and Jon Naismith, the team behind Radio 4's I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.
Producer: Jon Naismith
A Random Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.
THU 09:30 King Street Junior (b007jnfn)
Series 8, Beginnings and EndingsHe's newly retired, but Mr Holliday is soon back at school for a day of drama.
Created by Jim Eldridge, ten series of this comedy about a junior school ran between 1985 and 1998. King Street Junior Revisited ran from 2002 to 2005.
Written by Ivan Shakespeare and Dave Single.
Stars Karl Howman as Mr Sims, James Grout as the Headmaster, Tom Watson as Mr Holliday, Margaret John as Mrs Stone, Paul Copley as Mr Long, Deirdre Costello as Mrs Patterson, Vivienne Martin as Mrs Rudd, Marlene Sidaway as Miss Lewis, Moya O'Shea as Adele McAfee and Ian Gostling as Anwar.
Producer: John Fawcett Wilson
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 1995.
THU 10:00 Classic Serial (b01n0vh4)
Thomas Hardy - Far From the Madding Crowd, Cuts and PointsBy Thomas Hardy, adapted by Graham White. 2/3 - Bathsheba discovers that sending William Boldwood a valentine card was a terrible mistake. But Boldwood is not Gabriel's only rival for Bathsheba's heart.
Musicians ..... Colin Guthrie, Chris Davies, Lauren Swift
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole
This episode will be available to listen to until 14th October 2012.
THU 11:00 Writing Lives (b046j87f)
Treats, by Natalie SmithWriting Lives is a series of short stories by writers new to Radio 4 and based on personal experience.
In 'Treats' by Natalie Smith, a 21 year old woman is leaving home in Manchester for a new job in Southampton in the early Eighties. As the bus moves out of the city, she opens a letter that makes her re-evaluate her past.
Natalie Smith is a South-West based playwright and short story writer. This is her first commission for BBC Radio 4.
Read by Christine Bottomley
Producer: Paul Dodgson
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
THU 11:15 Afternoon Drama (b01r5ln1)
Meic Povey - Take Me to Hafod OwenBy Meic Povey
The second in a short series of dramas that each take us to a different part of the UK.
It's many years since Ellis Roberts has been back to Hafod Owen, his childhood home, in the shadow of the mountains of Snowdonia. Now he's returned to confront the reasons his family were driven out of the area nearly 50 years ago, and to reclaim what's rightly his. But as Ellis begins to unpick the past, he discovers that not everything is as he remembers it.
Directed by James Robinson
A BBC Cymru Wales Production.
THU 12:00 Not in Front of the Children (b05r7w7g)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:00 today]
THU 12:30 The Goon Show (b00qyqd7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:30 today]
THU 13:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b00874cp)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 today]
THU 13:30 I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing (b00n0wyy)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:30 today]
THU 14:00 George Orwell - Animal Farm (b00c0c38)
Episode 4The farmyard's commandments continue to change. Meanwhile, Napoleon gains a new title. Read by Bill Nighy. From June 2003.
THU 14:15 Five Hundred Years of Friendship (b03zdbrl)
Comrades and LoversDr Thomas Dixon presents a timely new history of the changing meaning and experience of friendship over the centuries
Episode 9: Comrades and Lovers
Drawing on the intriguingly ambiguous relationship of Frances Power Cobbe with Mary Lloyd and the more open relationship of Edward Carpenter with George Merrill, Thomas Dixon explores the Victorian borderland between Platonic friendship and homosexual love.
Professor Barbara Caine discusses Frances Power Cobbe, the largely forgotten Anglo-Irish feminist and journalist, who wrote articles with titles such as, "The Woman Question", "What Shall We Do With Our Old Maids" and "Wife Torture in England". She explains how Cobbe reclaimed friendship for women after centuries of classical and renaissance assumptions that only men had a true capacity for it.
Dr Matt Cook tells the story of Edward Carpenter, whose own unconventional lifestyle and 1908 book, The Intermediate Sex, brought homosexual love out into the open and even introduced the contemporary notion, celebrated in tv series such as Will and Grace, of women enjoying having a "gay best friend".
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
THU 14:30 Armistead Maupin - Tales of the City (b01q98r8)
Tales of the City, Armistead Maupin - Tales of the CityAnna Madrigal has an empty rooftop apartment in her lodgings at 28 Barbary Lane . Norman . a travelling salesman may be the perfect tenant . It's nearly Thanksgiving and romance is in the air -but nor for Dede who gets some unexpected news .
Directed by Susan Roberts
Set in 1976 in San Francisco , Tales of the City is the first in a sequence of novels about the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, Tales is both a sparkling comedy of manners and an indelible portrait of an era that changed the way we live forever.
THU 14:45 Book of the Week (b01px4q1)
The Examined Life, Stephen Grosz - The Examined LifeThe world bedevils us. To make sense of it, we tell ourselves stories. In a series of short, vivid, dramatic tales, using psychoanalytic insight without psychoanalytic jargon, The Examined Life tracks the collaborative journey of therapist and patient as they uncover the hidden feelings behind apparently ordinary behaviour patterns.
Written with precision and insight, these case studies are all based on actual people. While factually true, they demonstrate a novelist's sense of an ending and empathetic understanding of the subterfuges of the human mind.
In his work as a practising psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz has spent the last twenty-five years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behaviour. The Examined Life distils over 50,000 hours of conversation into pure psychological insight, without the jargon.
This extraordinary book is about one ordinary process: talking, listening and understanding. Its aphoristic and elegant stories teach us a new kind of attentiveness. They also unveil a delicate self-portrait of the analyst at work, and show how lessons learned in the consulting room can reveal as much to him as to the patient.
Episode 4 of 5:
The collaborative conversations of the psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz, and his patients as they excavate the hidden feelings behind the stories we tell about ourselves.
Read by Peter Marinker
Abridged and produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Partnership production for BBC Radio 4.
THU 15:00 Classic Serial (b01n0vh4)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:00 today]
THU 16:00 The Unbelievable Truth (b01rqnj3)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 today]
THU 16:30 King Street Junior (b007jnfn)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:30 today]
THU 17:00 Fat Chance (b019fwxg)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:00 today]
THU 17:30 Susan Calman - Keep Calman Carry On (b09jvvny)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 today]
THU 18:00 Richard Matheson - I Am Legend (b007k0wz)
Episode 3Tortured by memories, Robert Neville, Earth's last living man, steps up his fight against the vampires. Read by Angus McInnes. From January 2006.
THU 18:30 Great Lives (b00t7307)
Series 22, John Lennon4 Extra Debut. Cultural commentator, John Harris champions John Lennon. With Matthew Parris and expert witness Barry Miles. From August 2010.
THU 19:00 Not in Front of the Children (b05r7w7g)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:00 today]
THU 19:30 The Goon Show (b00qyqd7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:30 today]
THU 20:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b00874cp)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 today]
THU 20:30 I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing (b00n0wyy)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:30 today]
THU 21:00 Writing Lives (b046j87f)
[Repeat of broadcast at 11:00 today]
THU 21:15 Afternoon Drama (b01r5ln1)
[Repeat of broadcast at 11:15 today]
THU 22:00 Susan Calman - Keep Calman Carry On (b09jvvny)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 today]
THU 22:30 Sean Lock - 15 Storeys High (b09kct7r)
Series 1, Episode 5A romantic neighbour and a group of aggressive eight-year-olds try to disturb Sean's peace. With Hattie Hayridge. From December 1999.
THU 23:00 Sarah Millican's Support Group (b011ppyc)
Series 2, Episode 6Award winning comedian Sarah Millican is back for a second series playing Sarah, modern day agony aunt dishing out real advice for real people.
Solving the nations problems with her Support Group, she wants you to live life to the utmost, and she's got tons of ideas of how to help. Together with her team of experts of the heart - man of the people local cabbie Terry, and self qualified counsellor Marion - Sarah tackles the nation's problems head on and has a solution for everything, (which normally encompasses cake, tea and hugs).
This week the team tackle two problems - "Bullying at work - a trapeze artist who's been pushed off her perch" and "I've finally found what I'm looking for...Terry, it's you!"
Sarah Millican Sarah
Ruth Bratt Marion
Simon Day Terry
Anna Crilly Judy
Elis James Evan.
THU 23:30 The Show What You Wrote (b036w3pn)
Series 1, Kitchen SinkThe Show What You Wrote is a brand new sketch show, which is made up entirely from sketches sent in by the public. Recorded in Manchester in front of a live audience, and starring John Thomson, Helen Moon, Fiona Clarke and Gavin Webster.
We've picked the best sketches from thousands of submissions to make each show, and every week we'll be covering a different theme, from sci fi and fantasy, to historical. This week's episode is Kitchen Sink.
Script editor ...... Jon Hunter
Producers ..... Carl Cooper and Alexandra Smith
Writers ..... Chris Allen, Elise Bramich, Alex Buchanan, Steve Bugeja, Alex Clissold-Jones, Alex Collier, Andy Fury, Jez Gee, Lucy Guy, Mike Haskins, Katherine Knowles, Maeve Larkin, Sarah Page, Ash Williamson.

FRIDAY 05 JANUARY 2018

FRI 00:00 Richard Matheson - I Am Legend (b007k0wz)
[Repeat of broadcast at 18:00 on Thursday]
FRI 00:30 Great Lives (b00t7307)
[Repeat of broadcast at 18:30 on Thursday]
FRI 01:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b00874cp)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 on Thursday]
FRI 01:30 I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing (b00n0wyy)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:30 on Thursday]
FRI 02:00 George Orwell - Animal Farm (b00c0c38)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:00 on Thursday]
FRI 02:15 Five Hundred Years of Friendship (b03zdbrl)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:15 on Thursday]
FRI 02:30 Armistead Maupin - Tales of the City (b01q98r8)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:30 on Thursday]
FRI 02:45 Book of the Week (b01px4q1)
[Repeat of broadcast at 14:45 on Thursday]
FRI 03:00 Classic Serial (b01n0vh4)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:00 on Thursday]
FRI 04:00 The Unbelievable Truth (b01rqnj3)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 on Thursday]
FRI 04:30 King Street Junior (b007jnfn)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:30 on Thursday]
FRI 05:00 Fat Chance (b019fwxg)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:00 on Thursday]
FRI 05:30 Susan Calman - Keep Calman Carry On (b09jvvny)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 on Thursday]
FRI 06:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b0089bws)
The Wife of a HeroThere's an outbreak of cup fever on the eve of Levenford United's semi-final against Glasgow Rangers, but Dr Finlay must cope with more serious sickness.
Sue Rodwell's six-part dramatisation of AJ Cronin's stories about the early years of the celebrated doctor.
Ready with his black bag, Dr Finlay sets out to remedy all manner of ailments suffered by his patients in the Scottish Highland town of Levenford.
Stars John Gordon Sinclair as Dr Finlay, Brian Pettifer as Dr Cameron, Katy Murphy as Janet, Irvine Allan as Ned Sutherland, Annie George as Jenny Sutherland, David McKail as Paxton, Sharon Small as Nurse Angus and Roddy Forsyth as the Match Commentator.
Producer: Jeremy Howe
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2001.
FRI 06:30 Looking for Ripley (b00hrk2v)
Crime writer Mark Billingham investigates Tom Ripley, the suave and amoral central character in Patricia Highsmith's novel The Talented Mr Ripley.
Mark tracks down those with a real insight into Ripley's ambiguities. Opera director Jonathan Kent once played Ripley and was thought to be perfect in the role by Highsmith herself. Professor Dinesh Bhugra, President of The Royal College of Psychiatrists, is an avid fan and uses the Ripley books to teach medical students about psychopathy.
Andrew Wilson, Highsmith's biographer, thinks the elusive Ripley is to be found in the unpublished notebooks of his creator. The readings are by Ian Hart.
FRI 07:00 The Leopard in Autumn (b00761mn)
Series 1, The Pilgrim IndustryFollowing a fleeting visit from a cardinal, Plethora initiates plans to put Monte Guano on the pilgrimage map.
Neal Anthony's comedy drama about the chaotic lives of the ruling family of Renaissance Italy's most inconsequential city-state.
Stars David Swift as Ludovico, Sian Phillips as Plethora, Graham Crowden as Francesco, Paul Bigley as Alessandro, Saskia Wickham as Rosalie, Nick Romero as Salvatori, Christopher Kelham as Guido and Kim Wall as Brother Michael.
Producer: Helen Williams
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2001.
FRI 07:30 Just William - Live! (b09k0p7k)
Series 5, Violet Elizabeth Runs AwayMartin Jarvis performs the second of two Just William stories by Richmal Crompton in front of an enthusiastic, invited audience at the Riverhouse Barn Theatre, Walton on Thames in Surrey.
In Violet Elizabeth Runs Away, Martin tells the tale of six year old control-freak Violet Elizabeth Bott and her determination to latch onto William Brown and his faithful friends, the Outlaws. If they don't let her stick with them following her escape from school, she'll "scweam and scweam and scweam 'til she's sick". She can too. Reluctantly, William allows her to spend the afternoon with them. But then fate takes an unexpected turn.
Director: Rosalind Ayres
A Jarvis and Ayres production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 08:00 I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again (b00w6bws)
Series 5, Episode 9A cricket lament - and Wild West drama 'The Lone Stranger'.
More quick-fire sketches, terrible puns, humorous songs and parodies.
Stars Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, David Hatch, Bill Oddie and Jean Hart.
Written by Eric Idle, David Hatch, Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor.
Originating from the Cambridge University Footlights revue 'Cambridge Circus', ISIRTA ran for 8 years on BBC Radio and quickly developed a cult following.
Music and songs by Dave Lee, Leon Cohen and Bill Oddie.
Producer: Humphrey Barclay
First broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in June 1967.
FRI 08:30 Albert and Me (b007jzwr)
Series 1, Where There's a WillWith a trip to hospital looming, single dad Bryan must make contingency plans.
Stars Richard Beckinsale as Bryan Archer, Pat Coombs as Mum/Albert and John Comer as Dad. With John Arnatt as the Bank Manager.
Written by Jim Eldridge.
Producer: John Fawcett Wilson
First broadcast on BBC Radio 2 in December 1977.
FRI 09:00 The Motion Show (b06s1bnp)
Series 2, Episode 5Dr Phil Hammond chairs the debating game with Hugh Dennis, Jon Plowman, Jenny Eclair and Nick Revell. From February 2000.
FRI 09:30 After Henry (b007jnl5)
Series 2, The KittenSarah and her mother disagree over tidiness of the house - until a visitor arrives...
Simon Brett's comedy about three generations of women - struggling to cope after the death of Sarah's GP husband - who never quite manage to see eye to eye.
Starring Prunella Scales as Sarah, Joan Sanderson as Eleanor, Benjamin Whitrow as Russell, Gerry Cowper as Clare, Michael Hadley as the Policeman and Simon Brett as Percy Bradshaw.
Four radio series were made, but instead of moving to BBC TV - Thames Television produced 'After Henry' for the ITV network.
Producer: Pete Atkin
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 1986.
FRI 10:00 Classic Serial (b01n606d)
Thomas Hardy - Far From the Madding Crowd, A Successful RivalBy Thomas Hardy, adapted by Graham White. 3/3 - one man proves constant in his love for Bathsheba, while she gives up on all hopes of happiness.
Musicians ... Colin Guthrie, Chris Davies, Lauren Swift
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole
This episode will be available to listen to until 14th October 2012.
FRI 11:00 Writing Lives (b0475590)
Swimming LessonsWriting Lives is a series of short stories by writers new to Radio 4 and based on personal experience.
In the countryside beyond Moscow, during the time of perestroika, a young Englishwoman learns about life and love in the new Russia. Then late one night, her and a companion slip into a river and drift downstream.
Victoria Field is a Kent-based writer and poetry therapist. This is her first commission for BBC Radio 4.
Read by Jane Whittenshaw
Producer: Paul Dodgson
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 11:15 Afternoon Drama (b01r5ngj)
Ed Harris - Take Me to the North Laineby Ed Harris.
The last in a short series of stories that each take us to a different part of the UK.
He hasn't told anyone, but today is Charles' last early shift, sweeping the streets of the North Laine in Brighton. This afternoon he's leaving. Forever. All he wants to do is get to the Pavilion Gardens for dawn, to say goodbye properly. But it's not going to be that simple.
Directed by Abigail le Fleming
The Writer
Ed Harris is a young Brighton-based playwright and poet. His plays include MONGREL ISLAND (Soho Theatre), THE COW PLAY and NEVER EVER AFTER (shortlisted for the 2008 Meyer-Whitworth Award). He has also written numerous radio plays including TROLL which won The Writers' Guild Award for best radio drama, and THE MOMENT YOU FEEL IT (BBC Radio 4) which was nominated for the Tinniswood award.
FRI 12:00 I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again (b00w6bws)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:00 today]
FRI 12:30 Albert and Me (b007jzwr)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:30 today]
FRI 13:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b0089bws)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 today]
FRI 13:30 Looking for Ripley (b00hrk2v)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:30 today]
FRI 14:00 George Orwell - Animal Farm (b00c02sc)
Episode 5As Boxer becomes gravely ill, are all the residents of the farmyard really equal? Concluded by Bill Nighy. From June 2003.
FRI 14:15 Five Hundred Years of Friendship (b03zdkkc)
A Battalion of PalsDr Thomas Dixon presents a timely new history of the changing meaning and experience of friendship over the centuries
Episode 10: A Battalion of Pals
Dr Thomas Dixon tells two contrasting stories for this examination of the impact of World War One on male friendship.
He begins and ends with the pacifist Bloomsbury Group, focusing on E.M Forster and his famous remark, "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country". Dr Matt Cook places this remark - shocking at the time - in the context of Forster's hidden sexual orientation.
Forster began his masterpiece, A Passage to India, before the war, in optimism about the possibility of friendships and love across the nations. As Dr Santanu Das explains, he completed it, after the War, in a far bleaker mood.
Meanwhile, amongst the less highly educated classes, groups of work-mates were being conscripted into the army. Thomas Dixon explores this new role for friendship - as a recruiting sergeant - and its tragic consequences.
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
FRI 14:30 Armistead Maupin - Tales of the City (b01q98rv)
Tales of the City, Episode 5Christmas is coming to Barbary Lane, but what will it bring for Mrs Madrigal's special people ? Something shocking for Mary Ann ? Something heartbreaking for Anna ? What about Mona and Mouse ?
Directed by Susan Roberts
Set in 1976 in San Francisco , Tales of the City is the first in a sequence of novels about the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, Tales is both a sparkling comedy of manners and an indelible portrait of an era that changed the way we live forever.
FRI 14:45 Book of the Week (b01px4q3)
The Examined Life, Episode 5The world bedevils us. To make sense of it, we tell ourselves stories. In a series of short, vivid, dramatic tales, using psychoanalytic insight without psychoanalytic jargon, The Examined Life tracks the collaborative journey of therapist and patient as they uncover the hidden feelings behind apparently ordinary behaviour patterns.
Written with precision and insight, these case studies are all based on actual people. While factually true, they demonstrate a novelist's sense of an ending and empathetic understanding of the subterfuges of the human mind.
In his work as a practising psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz has spent the last twenty-five years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behaviour. The Examined Life distils over 50,000 hours of conversation into pure psychological insight, without the jargon.
This extraordinary book is about one ordinary process: talking, listening and understanding. Its aphoristic and elegant stories teach us a new kind of attentiveness. They also unveil a delicate self-portrait of the analyst at work, and show how lessons learned in the consulting room can reveal as much to him as to the patient.
Episode 5 of 5:
Analysts don't always have all the answers, sometimes they have questions and sometimes they have dreams. Stephen Grosz examines his own night time anxieties.
Read by Peter Marinker
Abridged and produced by Jane Waters
A Waters Partnership production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 15:00 Classic Serial (b01n606d)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:00 today]
FRI 16:00 The Motion Show (b06s1bnp)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 today]
FRI 16:30 After Henry (b007jnl5)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:30 today]
FRI 17:00 The Leopard in Autumn (b00761mn)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:00 today]
FRI 17:30 Just William - Live! (b09k0p7k)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:30 today]
FRI 18:00 Richard Matheson - I Am Legend (b007k0y9)
Episode 4Earth's last living man, Robert Neville, edges closer to a cure, but then he gets distracted. Read by Angus McInnes. From January 2006.
FRI 18:30 Soul Music (b07x2zd2)
Series 23, A Change Is Gonna Come, by Sam CookeSoul Music explores a song that has become synonymous with the American Civil Rights Movement, Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come released in December 1964 two weeks after he was shot dead in Los Angeles. Contributors include Sam Cooke's brother LC, singer Bettye Lavette who sang it for Barack Obama at his inaugural ceremony and civil rights activists from the Freedom Summer of 64, Jennifer Lawson and Mary King.
Producer: Maggie Ayre.
FRI 19:00 I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again (b00w6bws)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:00 today]
FRI 19:30 Albert and Me (b007jzwr)
[Repeat of broadcast at 08:30 today]
FRI 20:00 Doctor Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag (b0089bws)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:00 today]
FRI 20:30 Looking for Ripley (b00hrk2v)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:30 today]
FRI 21:00 Writing Lives (b0475590)
[Repeat of broadcast at 11:00 today]
FRI 21:15 Afternoon Drama (b01r5ngj)
[Repeat of broadcast at 11:15 today]
FRI 22:00 Hey Hey We're The Monks (b09mxld6)
An unlikely new recruit at Buckley Abbey means life for the brothers will never be the same. Starring Bill Bailey and Catherine Tate. From January 2000.
FRI 22:30 On the Hour (b007jmkm)
Series 2, Episode 1Pre-natal beauty therapy hits the headlines. Chris Morris hosts the incisive news satire. With Steve Coogan. From April 1992.
FRI 22:55 The Comedy Club Interviews (b09m5g07)
Mackenzie Crook 1/3Arthur Smith chats to star of The Office, The Detectorists and many a Hollywood film, Mackenzie Crook.
FRI 23:00 The Harpoon (b09kcwcy)
Winter SpecialWinter Special: 4 Extra Debut. A bumper 'winter' issue of the Empire's favourite magazine. Stars Alistair McGowan and Peter Baynham. From December 1991.
FRI 23:30 Life: An Idiot's Guide (b01qkmpl)
Series 2, Midlife CrisisStephen K Amos and comedian guests Fred MacAulay, Angela Barnes and Greg Proops compile an Idiot's Guide to having your midlife crisis.