Radio Head - Talking to Strangers & Liza Tarbuck

I wonder why Sally Phillips and Lily Bevan's series of comic monologues Talking to Strangers (Radio 4) didn't go for a second series. The first series is being repeated on Radio 4, with a stunner of cast, including Emma Thompson, Jessica Hynes and Olivia Coleman, and though adapted from a stage show, it's impossible to tell as it works so well.

A monologue featuring a hungover flute player trying to tune in the first episode is both wonderful and mad.

On the theme of very funny women, we all talk to ourselves, but I doubt most of us are as entertaining as Liza Tarbuck on BBC Radio 2. Recommended by Jane Garvey on the Fortunately podcast, I approached it with a bit of scepticism. Silly. Tarbuck hosts her Saturday show solo, but she bounces around the studio, reading out texts and having conversations with herself, never mind the audience.

I was first swung by the great music - a mixture of motown, northern soul, reggae, rock 'n' roll and pop, with big hitters, but also lesser-known treasures and oddities that immediately get saved on the iPlayer Radio app. And she knows the music - really knows it. My favourite music show hosts don't just rattle off facts about the music, they say what it is they like about it, why it gets to them. Tarbuck doesn't flaunt her knowledge (though she clearly has it), but it's obvious she  feels very personally about what's being played. The fact that after two to three episodes are her surreal ramblings begin to bring as much joy as the music is pretty special too. It's been a long-time since I felt anything on Radio 2 was unmissable, since Mark Lamarr left. I certainly didn't expect it to be this.

Radio Head - Shush! Radio Review

I'm so happy to see Shush! back on Radio 4.

Written by Rebecca Front and Morwenna Banks, it's set in a library, with two mad librarians and revels in nonsense.

The original starting point of Series 1 explored the library being under threat of closure, but it kindled into something more interesting when we learnt that Alice, played by Rebecca Front, was a child prodigy who had a nervous breakdown, and a budding romance grew between her and the ineffectual Simon, the man asked to review the library for closure.

It's almost recklessly silly, and I wonder if that's the confidence of these experienced comediennes coming through. I think a newer writer would balk at the idea of being so free and silly, and risk losing a future commission.

One particularly absurd moment in series 1 occurred when Alice and Simon ended up both naked and oiled on the floor by accident (yet NOT romantically), which now series 2 rather dementedly wants to repeat every episode.

It's mad but I love it.


Snoo: Alice, that's not like you - you're normanly such a social butterfly.
Alice: Did you just say normanly?
Snoo: Did I say what?
Alice: Did you say normanly instead of normally?
Snoo: I don't think so. I pronounce it the same way you do.
Alice: Which way is that?
Snoo: Perfectly normanly.

Radio Head - Mary, Mary by Martin Sorrel Radio Review

I'm always amazed by the number of Jane Austen spin-offs.

Apart from the obviously ironic ones, it's interesting that people can't let even the smallest characters go. There's even an anecdote from her family that they asked Austen what happened to Kitty after the end of Pride and Prejudice. I think she replied that Kitty married a clergyman. But even her family couldn't quite let go.

As part of my Austen immersion, I listened to an old radio play I had recorded - Mary, Mary by Martin Sorrel, that explored the life of Mary, the most ignored Bennet daughter, during the events of Austen's novel.

It was definitely clever - there are numerous references to things like de Clérambault's syndrome (Mary believes the men in P&P are all madly in love with her), and the treatment of female psychiatric disorders in Georgian Britain (yes, it's a comedy), but it felt a bit hollow for me.

Clever, I thought, but not good.

Radio Head - Pride and Prejudice

As part of my panic over my OU degree I am trying the path of total immersion. If I'm not reading OU texts then I have to be watching/listening to them in some capacity.

I'm not sure if this will lead me to a 2500 word essay, but we'll see.

Step in the BBC Classic Serial adaptation of Pride and Prejudice from 2014.

Pippa Nixon and Jamie Parker

Surprisingly I can't see another radio adaptation of it from the BBC, which is just mad, and I have done all of 5 minutes of research.

It's got a ridiculously great cast -  David Troughton, Lydia Wilson, Fenella Woolgar, Toby Jones - but the knock-outs are Samantha Spiro as the ridiculous Mrs Bennet, and Michelle Terry is particularly affecting as Charlotte Lucas.

The leads (Jamie Parker and Pippa Nixon) are excellent too - hearing Nixon's voice on radio is always magic.

And yet... the adaptation does seems to miss the facetiousness Elizabeth. Here she is bright, but not so cheeky. Darcy is nice but a little dull (but that seems a perennial problem).

Austen adaptations always struggle to get the silliness of her work (with the exception of Emma Thompson and Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility). Remove the irony and absurdity, and you're left with a mildly smart romantic comedy, and that's just not enough.

It's a shame especially with such rocking BBC radio adaptations as Gaskell's Mr Harrison's Confessions.

Ah well, we get a lovely cast, and nice music to pass the time, and - the more it stays on my mp3 player, the more I find myself going back to listen to bits.


It's like permanently being able to visit Spring in this shining novel.


To buy:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pride-Prejudice-Dramatisation-Jane-Austen/dp/191028131X
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jane-Austen-Radio-Drama-Collection/dp/1785292692

Radio Head: The Chastity Butterworth Show

There's something joyfully familiar about Gemma Whelan's Chastity Butterworth.

Maybe it's the Mrs Merton-esque fake chat show format, or the caricature of the aristocracy (with necessary invisible spouse 'Horace').

Perhaps it's that it brims with warmth, despite the satirical notes.

In her pilot episode she interviews Charles Dance, Lady Colin Campbell and Joe Lycett.

I can't wait for a series.

Radio Head: The Recordist

Hurrah!

Another fabulous Radio 4 play is getting repeated.

Sean Grundy's 'The Recordist' concerns a surveillance expert who finds out his wife is having an affair, and uses his professional skills, with that of his close friend (an interrogation expert) to find out more.

While missing the beautiful self-containment of his earlier Sony short-listed play Cavity, it instead dazzles with mad (in the best way) settings, while matching the former's darkness, weird humour and originality.  What could be a psychological thriller instead becomes a unique, sweet romance. Plus it stars the irresistible John Gordon Sinclair, Sharon Horgan and Gemma Jones.

Oh, Sean Grundy got nominated for a Sony Award for this too. Over-achiever.

Radio Head: Incredibly Guilty - A Comic Moral Fable

Wheee!

One of my favourite radio playwrights (award-winning with the brilliant Lunch) is getting a repeat with her most excellent play 'Incredibly Guilty - A Comic Moral Fable'.

Starring Stephen Mangan (also in Lunch with Claire Skinner), about a small mistake that soon becomes a snowballing disaster, the dialogue is vibrant and set in a wonderfully wonky world.

Bright escapism - listen before it falls off:

Radio Head: Rubbish

It's about to fall off iPlayer, but it's worth checking out.

Rubbish is a Radio 4 sitcom that I listened to but abandoned before, but 4Extra repeats have allowed its subtle charms a second chance to shine on me.

Written by Tony Bagley, it features a misanthropic recycling officer in local government, but neatly avoids the many clichés of 'workplace' and 'misanthrope' sitcoms. Martin is intelligent, but neurotic; alone, but not without attractions to other women; and he finds himself wavering across moral lines in a very human, very inconsistent way.

The satire is also sly, with dashes of the pleasingly surreal - Martin's inner conscience turns out to have the voice of a 10 year-old girl, and he is frequently visited by the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse - Embarrassment.

With an excellent cast (Reece Dinsdale, Kevin Eldon, Nicola Walker in series 1, Pippa Haywood in series 2, and cameos from Emma Kennedy, Katy Brand and Russell Tovey) it's fabulous.

"When you think about it, everyone's phobic about something. Look at Barney and his scratching in public phobia. No matter how much he itches, he can never bring himself to scratch in front of someone else. Then there's John Kedge - phobic about choking to death in his sleep... but that might be associated with the pressures of having a secret second family in Upfield."