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88 Articles

From the executive editor

Roald Dahl has touched all our lives. For me, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a distant memory until I had children of my own. Then it was read endlessly, along with the rest of Dahl’s delightful books, my three boys never growing weary of the word play, the escapades, the cocking a snook at authority and the mischief. But what happens when his books are put on screen? Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was watched on an endless loop in my house; Johnny Depp’s version was deemed a nightmare. Literally. Now Steven Speilberg has brought The BFG to life with Mark Rylance in the lead role. It’s a brave man who takes on children’s imaginations, although if anyone can make a fist of Dahl on screen…

From the executive editor

Roald Dahl has touched all our lives. For me, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a distant memory until I had children of my own. Then it was read endlessly, along with the rest of Dahl’s delightful books, my three boys never growing weary of the word play, the escapades, the cocking a snook at authority and the mischief. But what happens when his books are put on screen? Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was watched on an endless loop in my house; Johnny Depp’s version was deemed a nightmare. Literally. Now Steven Speilberg has brought The BFG to life with Mark Rylance in the lead role. It’s a brave man who takes on children’s imaginations, although if anyone can make a fist of Dahl on screen it should…

WHAT I’M WATCHING… JANE LUSH ‘At the moment for obvious reasons I’ve become addicted to news in all its forms, and finding channels I was previously unaware of, such as France 24,” says the former Controller of Daytime TV at the BBC and now Chair of Bafta. “Newsnight invariably ends my TV day, Question Time and Any Questions are a must and I’m a big fan of Ian Dale on LBC radio.’ Jane Lush’s point of view — page 9 XAND VAN TULLEKEN ‘I live in the US so I’m a bit behind, but I’m bingeing on Line of Duty,” says the TV presenter. “I’m also rewatching The Thick of It to try to understand the current political mess. Gogglesprogs is my favourite thing on telly at the moment and I’ll watch anything with my…

WHAT I’M WATCHING… JANE LUSH ‘At the moment for obvious reasons I’ve become addicted to news in all its forms, and finding channels I was previously unaware of, such as France 24,” says the former Controller of Daytime TV at the BBC and now Chair of Bafta. “Newsnight invariably ends my TV day, Question Time and Any Questions are a must and I’m a big fan of Ian Dale on LBC radio.’ Jane Lush’s point of view — page 9 XAND VAN TULLEKEN ‘I live in the US so I’m a bit behind, but I’m bingeing on Line of Duty,” says the TV presenter. “I’m also rewatching The Thick of It to try to understand the current political mess. Gogglesprogs is my favourite thing on telly at the moment and…

WHAT GETS US TALKING…

KEEPING UP WITH JONES Benedict Cumberbatch hit drama Sherlock is returning for a three-part series, probably on New Year’s Day 2017. And with the demise of Andrew Scott’s chilling Moriarty (or so we think), there’s a new baddie in town — and he’s played by Detectorists star Toby Jones, who’s also in The Secret Agent this week (Sunday BBC1). “About the only thing I’m allowed to reveal is that I’m indeed a baddie,” Jones told me of his Sherlock character. WHEN RICKY GERVAIS WAS SERIOUS Ben Bailey Smith, aka rapper Doc Brown, is the star of the new Ricky Gervais film Life on the Road as David Brent’s put-upon sidekick Dom Johnson. Gervais has always been a good talent spotter (Extras star Ashley Jensen take a bow) and he telephoned Smith a few…

WHAT GETS US TALKING…

WHAT GETS US TALKING…

KEEPING UP WITH JONES Benedict Cumberbatch hit drama Sherlock is returning for a three-part series, probably on New Year’s Day 2017. And with the demise of Andrew Scott’s chilling Moriarty (or so we think), there’s a new baddie in town — and he’s played by Detectorists star Toby Jones, who’s also in The Secret Agent this week (Sunday BBC1). “About the only thing I’m allowed to reveal is that I’m indeed a baddie,” Jones told me of his Sherlock character. WHEN RICKY GERVAIS WAS SERIOUS Ben Bailey Smith, aka rapper Doc Brown, is the star of the new Ricky Gervais film Life on the Road as David Brent’s put-upon sidekick Dom Johnson. Gervais has always been a good talent spotter (Extras star Ashley Jensen take a bow) and he telephoned…

WHAT GETS US TALKING…

Crash, bang wallop!

It’s been a decade since Robot Wars, the studio set-to between amateurs’ machines and fearsome House Robots, was on our screens. But a new series is coming soon to BBC2 — and things have changed. “Imagine what a computer was like ten years ago,” says executive producer Andrew Robertson. “Well, it’s the same with engineering.” Not that this has stopped old contestants, such as team Behemoth (main picture), returning for one more shot at glory. But don’t put money on the old timer. “If you put the old House Robots in the pit with the ones that feature now,” says co-host Dara O Briain, “they’d last about eight seconds.”…

Crash, bang wallop!

Crash, bang wallop!

It’s been a decade since Robot Wars, the studio set-to between amateurs’ machines and fearsome House Robots, was on our screens. But a new series is coming soon to BBC2 — and things have changed. “Imagine what a computer was like ten years ago,” says executive producer Andrew Robertson. “Well, it’s the same with engineering.” Not that this has stopped old contestants, such as team Behemoth (main picture), returning for one more shot at glory. But don’t put money on the old timer. “If you put the old House Robots in the pit with the ones that feature now,” says co-host Dara O Briain, “they’d last about eight seconds.”…

Crash, bang wallop!

Don’t be a TV snob

What are the most difficult television programmes to produce? Unexpectedly, perhaps, it’s the most popular ones. Anyone who has tried to organise a night for a few friends knows how hard it is to get everyone to agree on any aspect of it. Producing a hit TV show is the same, but involves trying to satisfy millions of people week after week. Perhaps hardest of all is creating successful Saturdaynight shows of the shiny floor variety. You can probably count the number of new hits made in the last ten years on the fingers of one hand. During my time as controller of entertainment and comedy for the BBC I was responsible for launching Dragons’ Den, The Apprentice and Have I Got News For You. While poor imitations have come and…

Don’t be a TV snob

Don’t be a TV snob

What are the most difficult television programmes to produce? Unexpectedly, perhaps, it’s the most popular ones. Anyone who has tried to organise a night for a few friends knows how hard it is to get everyone to agree on any aspect of it. Producing a hit TV show is the same, but involves trying to satisfy millions of people week after week. Perhaps hardest of all is creating successful Saturdaynight shows of the shiny floor variety. You can probably count the number of new hits made in the last ten years on the fingers of one hand. During my time as controller of entertainment and comedy for the BBC I was responsible for launching Dragons’ Den, The Apprentice and Have I Got News For You. While poor imitations have come…

Don’t be a TV snob

The producers of Top Gear say they have no plans to add another presenter after the departure of Chris Evans. But behind the scenes they have been discreetly approaching other candidates, as the following leaked interview assessments demonstrate… NOEL EDMONDS Edmonds was full of ideas for improving the show. Unfortunately, shortly after the interview, Matt LeBlanc exercised his veto in an email headed NO DEAL FOR THE DEAL OR NO DEAL GUY. When we told Edmonds, he said he had a system for making his wishes become reality, and that he had effectively already given himself the job. BORIS JOHNSON The good news is, he gets on well with Matt, and is available to start now. He said he’s a big fan of the show, a genuine petrolhead who looks forward to any kind…

THERE IS DEFINITELY a bromance going on here. Like an old couple, the actor and the director have their mole-brown felt hats companionably cosied up to each other (trilby for Mark Rylance, homburg for Steven Spielberg), on the arm of their sofa. They are fascinated by what one another has to say and, from time to time, ask each other questions, which feels as though they are auditioning to be the interviewer’s understudy. Spielberg says that it’s unusual for him to become friends with an actor after a film: “We became pals [at the end of making Bridge of Spies], which I don’t often do. You know, we’re all gypsies and we move into other worlds, but I didn’t want Mark to leave my world at all.” They’re now promoting their latest…

The producers of Top Gear say they have no plans to add another presenter after the departure of Chris Evans. But behind the scenes they have been discreetly approaching other candidates, as the following leaked interview assessments demonstrate… NOEL EDMONDS Edmonds was full of ideas for improving the show. Unfortunately, shortly after the interview, Matt LeBlanc exercised his veto in an email headed NO DEAL FOR THE DEAL OR NO DEAL GUY. When we told Edmonds, he said he had a system for making his wishes become reality, and that he had effectively already given himself the job. BORIS JOHNSON The good news is, he gets on well with Matt, and is available to start now. He said he’s a big fan of the show, a genuine petrolhead who looks…

Biffsquiggled by the BFG

TOM SOLOMON WAS a 24-year-old junior houseman on the haematology ward of the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford in the late autumn of 1990. He had read The BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but had never expected to meet the man who wrote them. Then, one evening on the ward, Solomon became aware of a presence. “I was working at the computer and this enormously tall man with big sticking-out ears, wrapped in a big dressing gown and with very twinkly, curious eyes, was watching me. It was almost like looking up at the BFG. Of course, it wasn’t the BFG, it was the BFG’s author.” ‘The BFG’s language is like that of many stroke victims’ Roald Dahl had been admitted to John Radcliffe with the blood disease myelodysplastic syndrome. It…

Biffsquiggled by the BFG

THERE IS DEFINITELY a bromance going on here. Like an old couple, the actor and the director have their mole-brown felt hats companionably cosied up to each other (trilby for Mark Rylance, homburg for Steven Spielberg), on the arm of their sofa. They are fascinated by what one another has to say and, from time to time, ask each other questions, which feels as though they are auditioning to be the interviewer’s understudy. Spielberg says that it’s unusual for him to become friends with an actor after a film: “We became pals [at the end of making Bridge of Spies], which I don’t often do. You know, we’re all gypsies and we move into other worlds, but I didn’t want Mark to leave my world at all.” They’re now promoting…

Secrets & spies

The Secret Agent Sunday 9.00pm BBC1 I’M SITTING IN a small, wood-panelled house in London’s East End discussing Victorian sex toys with Vicky McClure. The actress with her cropped dark hair, jeans and trainers looks out of place in this Dickensian setting, rented out for period dramas and photo shoots. From This Is England to Line of Duty, we’re used to seeing McClure in council estates and police stations, not corsets and bonnets. But that’s about to change. At 33, McClure is appearing in her first period drama, a three-part adaptation of Joseph Conran’s literary classic The Secret Agent. It’s a political thriller set in 19th-century London, but there are parallels with today. Europe is gripped by a fear of terrorism, and relations between London and the other European capitals are under…

Secrets & spies

Freud or fraud?

Fake or Fortune? Sunday 8.00pm BBC1 ‘I want you to publicly humilate Lucian Freud…’ DENIS WIRTH-MILLER IN 1997 JON LYS TURNER was given a Lucian Freud painting by his friends and mentors, the artists Richard “Dickie” Chopping and Denis Wirth-Miller. “I’ll treasure it,” said a deeply moved Turner when Wirth-Miller handed him the portrait of a young man in a black cravat. “No!” said Wirth-Miller. “I want you to sell this painting as publically as possible. I want you to humiliate Lucian Freud.” “We got in an actual tug of war with the picture,” says Turner, now 56. “Dickie wouldn’t let go of it until I agreed to do as he said.” Turner had just entered one of the British art world’s bitterest feuds. Beginning in a Suffolk art school in 1939, and rumbling on…

Freud or fraud?

Biffsquiggled by the BFG

TOM SOLOMON WAS a 24-year-old junior houseman on the haematology ward of the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford in the late autumn of 1990. He had read The BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but had never expected to meet the man who wrote them. Then, one evening on the ward, Solomon became aware of a presence. “I was working at the computer and this enormously tall man with big sticking-out ears, wrapped in a big dressing gown and with very twinkly, curious eyes, was watching me. It was almost like looking up at the BFG. Of course, it wasn’t the BFG, it was the BFG’s author.” ‘The BFG’s language is like that of many stroke victims’ Roald Dahl had been admitted to John Radcliffe with the blood disease…

Biffsquiggled by the BFG

The Refugee Camp Thursday 9.00pm BBC2 (Wales: 9.30pm) We all live in a bubble, an alternative reality very different from other people’s lives. For three months last year I lived in the alternative reality that is the Strictly Come Dancing bubble, but once I finished dancing I knew I was going to experience a very different environment – that of a refugee camp. Currently there are more than 21 million refugees worldwide, not including the tens of millions of people who have been displaced from their homes. I’d been watching the footage on the news like everyone else, of people being treated like animals at various borders, and was sickened by some of the rhetoric used to describe fellow humans in their most extreme hour of need. So when the chance came…

Secrets & spies

The Secret Agent Sunday 9.00pm BBC1 I’M SITTING IN a small, wood-panelled house in London’s East End discussing Victorian sex toys with Vicky McClure. The actress with her cropped dark hair, jeans and trainers looks out of place in this Dickensian setting, rented out for period dramas and photo shoots. From This Is England to Line of Duty, we’re used to seeing McClure in council estates and police stations, not corsets and bonnets. But that’s about to change. At 33, McClure is appearing in her first period drama, a three-part adaptation of Joseph Conran’s literary classic The Secret Agent. It’s a political thriller set in 19th-century London, but there are parallels with today. Europe is gripped by a fear of terrorism, and relations between London and the other European capitals…

Secrets & spies

The new Castaways…

Eden Monday 9.00pm Channel 4 EDEN: “A PLACE of great happiness; an unspoilt paradise”. Not, then, a place of shoe-sucking bogs, skin-scouring gales and soul-sapping midges. This particular isolated spot in the western Highlands of Scotland isn’t a place that many people would choose to live for a week, let alone a year – yet 13 men and ten women have done exactly that for a new Channel 4 reality TV show. Eden isn’t typical of the genre. There are no fiendish tasks, manufactured discord or scheduled evictions. Instead, the participants have been allowed to take only what they can carry, with the tools of their respective trades and some basic provisions and equipment provided on-site to get them started. The 600-odd acres of land, ranging from dunes to woodland to marsh, are enclosed…

The new Castaways…

THE ALL-ROUNDER Jack, 31, former army officer While his army training gives him an excellent grounding in outdoor skills (“I could quite happily chop firewood all day long”), Jack believes his mental endurance will prove even more valuable. “I’ve got a very long fuse, so I don’t lose my temper easily,” he says. “I’m looking forward to harnessing people’s energy when they’re on good form and cheering them up when they’re miserable.” THE PRAGMATIST Lloyd, 37, fisherman Essex man Lloyd is eager to learn the skills of his fellow community members while keeping the peace. “Everyone’s been specifically chosen to make this successful,” he says, “so it’s in everyone’s interests to not argue. Anyone who doesn’t go by that rule isn’t going to be very useful to us and that’ll have to be dealt with.” THE…

Freud or fraud?

Fake or Fortune? Sunday 8.00pm BBC1 ‘I want you to publicly humilate Lucian Freud…’ DENIS WIRTH-MILLER IN 1997 JON LYS TURNER was given a Lucian Freud painting by his friends and mentors, the artists Richard “Dickie” Chopping and Denis Wirth-Miller. “I’ll treasure it,” said a deeply moved Turner when Wirth-Miller handed him the portrait of a young man in a black cravat. “No!” said Wirth-Miller. “I want you to sell this painting as publically as possible. I want you to humiliate Lucian Freud.” “We got in an actual tug of war with the picture,” says Turner, now 56. “Dickie wouldn’t let go of it until I agreed to do as he said.” Turner had just entered one of the British art world’s bitterest feuds. Beginning in a Suffolk art school…

Freud or fraud?

Rebel with a cause

The Rebel Wednesday 10.00pm Gold THE BATTLE IS over before it begins. When a tray bearing fresh tea arrives in the hotel room at the same time I do, Simon Callow asks, “Did you want tea?” Before I can answer he says, “You take the stronger one, I like it weak.” He pours me a mug of stewed stuff from the old pot. He pours the fresh into a delicate china cup. Callow sips, I slurp. We have established how things will go – he will issue bons mots, epigrams and pearls of wisdom. I will listen. And why not? The actor, director and writer’s voice is as charmingly fruity as ever and he looks absolutely sensational. Clearskinned, sparkly-eyed, and wearing a closecut suit of electric blue, there’s not an ounce of…

Rebel with a cause

No gain, no pain

Horizon: Sports Doping — Winning at Any Cost? Tuesday 8.00pm BBC2 TIM MONTGOMERY IS charming, friendly and surprisingly slight, bearing in mind that he was, briefly, the fastest man in history. I watched him win the men’s 100m in 2002 at the IAAF grand prix final in Paris. It took him 9.78 seconds, but he was stripped of the record three years later when he was found guilty of drug-taking in a US Anti-Doping Agency investigation. Of the eight runners in that race, three were banned for doping offences, one for supplying drugs and a fifth received a warning after a positive test. Montgomery admitted, and described in detail, the many banned substances he used, including testosterone and human growth hormone; at one point he was taking 25 to 30 pills a…

No gain, no pain

The Refugee Camp Thursday 9.00pm BBC2 (Wales: 9.30pm) We all live in a bubble, an alternative reality very different from other people’s lives. For three months last year I lived in the alternative reality that is the Strictly Come Dancing bubble, but once I finished dancing I knew I was going to experience a very different environment – that of a refugee camp. Currently there are more than 21 million refugees worldwide, not including the tens of millions of people who have been displaced from their homes. I’d been watching the footage on the news like everyone else, of people being treated like animals at various borders, and was sickened by some of the rhetoric used to describe fellow humans in their most extreme hour of need. So when the…

The new Castaways…

Eden Monday 9.00pm Channel 4 EDEN: “A PLACE of great happiness; an unspoilt paradise”. Not, then, a place of shoe-sucking bogs, skin-scouring gales and soul-sapping midges. This particular isolated spot in the western Highlands of Scotland isn’t a place that many people would choose to live for a week, let alone a year – yet 13 men and ten women have done exactly that for a new Channel 4 reality TV show. Eden isn’t typical of the genre. There are no fiendish tasks, manufactured discord or scheduled evictions. Instead, the participants have been allowed to take only what they can carry, with the tools of their respective trades and some basic provisions and equipment provided on-site to get them started. The 600-odd acres of land, ranging from dunes to woodland…

The new Castaways…

From Berlin to Rio

Hitler’s Olympics Saturday 9.00pm Yesterday IN A FEW weeks’ time, the world will be tuning into the planet’s greatest spectacle – the Olympic Games. A razzmatazz of pageantry, sporting drama, high politics and doubtless some lowdown corruption, the Olympic fortnight celebrates humanity at both its best and its worst. Although many rightly believe that the event has its roots in ancient Greece, today’s Olympics owe more to a rather more modern time and place – Nazi Germany. For it was in Berlin 80 years ago that the Games acquired their bombastic triumphalism, complete with backhanders, drug-taking, and “female” athletes whose gruff baritones indicated they were competing in the wrong events. Today, it is not appreciated quite how much of the ritual of the Olympics was pioneered by the Nazis. It was they who…

From Berlin to Rio

Don’t miss... Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy continues with The Desolation of Smaug premiering on Saturday ITV The Lion King Sunday 6.15pm C4 THIS IS THE week when The Lion King, previously seen only on paid-for channels, is to be shown for the first time on Freeview and the Walt Disney Company celebrates the 61st birthday of Disneyland at Anaheim, California. At such a time, it’s possible to think of the organisation merely as rather warm, family-friendly purveyors of fun for the masses and gentle, charming animated movies for the young at heart. But it’s not quite like that. In fact, the Disney outfit is one of the most powerful, and probably richest, players in Hollywood, commercially ruthless in its acquisition of companies with a wide variety of interests. Nowadays, films are a comparatively…

THE ALL-ROUNDER Jack, 31, former army officer While his army training gives him an excellent grounding in outdoor skills (“I could quite happily chop firewood all day long”), Jack believes his mental endurance will prove even more valuable. “I’ve got a very long fuse, so I don’t lose my temper easily,” he says. “I’m looking forward to harnessing people’s energy when they’re on good form and cheering them up when they’re miserable.” THE PRAGMATIST Lloyd, 37, fisherman Essex man Lloyd is eager to learn the skills of his fellow community members while keeping the peace. “Everyone’s been specifically chosen to make this successful,” he says, “so it’s in everyone’s interests to not argue. Anyone who doesn’t go by that rule isn’t going to be very useful to us and that’ll…

Move! You fools

I AM A GENTLE soul, not quick to temper unless my ire is aroused by cyclists riding on pavements, or I’m kept waiting at the till by shop assistants as they fold jumpers. What are they doing with them, woolly origami? But since the EU Referendum result I’ve hopped around the living room, shrieking at the telly: “Get out of the way, you bloody fools, you witless wastes of space. MOVE!” Surely it’s not beyond the wit of any government (although, on the other hand…) to introduce a by-law along the lines of “If there’s a TV crew filming MPs, members of the public must not shuffle into the back of the shot and wave at the camera.” I know this has always happened – jubilant football supporters always crowd around the…

Move! You fools

Rebel with a cause

The Rebel Wednesday 10.00pm Gold THE BATTLE IS over before it begins. When a tray bearing fresh tea arrives in the hotel room at the same time I do, Simon Callow asks, “Did you want tea?” Before I can answer he says, “You take the stronger one, I like it weak.” He pours me a mug of stewed stuff from the old pot. He pours the fresh into a delicate china cup. Callow sips, I slurp. We have established how things will go – he will issue bons mots, epigrams and pearls of wisdom. I will listen. And why not? The actor, director and writer’s voice is as charmingly fruity as ever and he looks absolutely sensational. Clearskinned, sparkly-eyed, and wearing a closecut suit of electric blue, there’s not an…

Rebel with a cause

NEW SEASON 1 Mr Robot Amazon Prime The most exciting US drama of 2015 returns. Last year it ended with our friends the computer hackers causing the collapse of capitalist society, a narrative hole the show confidently takes its time escaping from. When it does, once again it’s a daring vision of a digital dystopia that’s just close enough to reality to chill the blood — and there isn’t a more visually stylish show on TV, anywhere. Thursdays from 14 July. Episodes air a week later on Universal: see p103 OLD COMEDY GOLD 2 The Dick Van Dyke Show Netflix All 158 episodes of the seminal American sitcom, which ran between 1961 and 66, are now on Netflix. Van Dyke is comedy writer Rob, who flits between coining gags for TV and home life with his wife…

No gain, no pain

Horizon: Sports Doping — Winning at Any Cost? Tuesday 8.00pm BBC2 TIM MONTGOMERY IS charming, friendly and surprisingly slight, bearing in mind that he was, briefly, the fastest man in history. I watched him win the men’s 100m in 2002 at the IAAF grand prix final in Paris. It took him 9.78 seconds, but he was stripped of the record three years later when he was found guilty of drug-taking in a US Anti-Doping Agency investigation. Of the eight runners in that race, three were banned for doping offences, one for supplying drugs and a fifth received a warning after a positive test. Montgomery admitted, and described in detail, the many banned substances he used, including testosterone and human growth hormone; at one point he was taking 25 to 30…

No gain, no pain

One room, one family, one of the greatest sitcoms

Good sitcoms capture something; great ones capture something fundamental. The Royle Family, by and with Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash, was an instant hit in 1998 because it captured something dead simple. People are funny. Funny like Jim Royle (Ricky Tomlinson), the patriarch kept sane by his own wit. We stay in his lounge, but can picture him as the funniest man in the pub. Funny, too, like Nana (Liz Smith), who’s only dimly aware that her efforts to appear more with it than she is are hilariously transparent. And funny like Anthony (Ralf Little), the youngest child whose battle not to make cups of tea is always in vain. Aherne and Cash are rightly hailed for painting northern working-class life as deftly as Wood or Bennett. The difference is the Royles…

One room, one family, one of the greatest sitcoms

Have a happy, appy summer

It’s only a holiday for kids. For parents, the looming break has too many hours in, too many days to fill. Apps can help. Time Out and YPlan (free, iOS/Android/Windows Phone) list fun activities in cities across Britain — search for “Kids” — while Eventbrite looks for events near you and can download tickets to your phone. Outside of the city, English Heritage Days Out (free, iOS/Android) will find a castle for them to conquer. To keep them entertained on long trips, turn to BBC iPlayer Kids (free, iOS/Android/Kindle Fire). This cuts iPlayer down to just the children’s channels, and lets you download programmes for 30 days. For the especially bored child, Disney Life (£9.99/month, iOS/Android) offers a huge selection of the studio’s movies, TV shows and books. Like iPlayer, remember to…

Have a happy, appy summer

SATURDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY The Rack Pack 10.00pmBBC2 COMEDY DRAMA It’s the 1970s, people are getting colour TVs and Kevin Bishop’s fabulously mouthy promoter Barry Hearn believes snooker could “even be bigger than the wrestling” one day. But this delightful film (which first aired on iPlayer and was bumped from the schedules after the real snooker overran earlier this year) is much more than a fond and cartoonish recollection of the sport’s heyday and those titanic battles at the Crucible. At its heart is the moving decline of the wayward, super-talented Alex “Hurricane” Higgins (Luke Treadaway) and his rivalry with Steve “Interesting” Davis (Will Merrick). Davis was the ginger-haired Essex kid who practised obsessively, preferred milk to booze and was, according to Hearn, so pale he probably got sunburn when he opened the fridge.…

SATURDAY Choices

From Berlin to Rio

Hitler’s Olympics Saturday 9.00pm Yesterday IN A FEW weeks’ time, the world will be tuning into the planet’s greatest spectacle – the Olympic Games. A razzmatazz of pageantry, sporting drama, high politics and doubtless some lowdown corruption, the Olympic fortnight celebrates humanity at both its best and its worst. Although many rightly believe that the event has its roots in ancient Greece, today’s Olympics owe more to a rather more modern time and place – Nazi Germany. For it was in Berlin 80 years ago that the Games acquired their bombastic triumphalism, complete with backhanders, drug-taking, and “female” athletes whose gruff baritones indicated they were competing in the wrong events. Today, it is not appreciated quite how much of the ritual of the Olympics was pioneered by the Nazis. It…

From Berlin to Rio

PICK OF THE DAY The Secret Agent 9.00pmBBC1 DRAMA OF THE WEEK If you’re looking to put a spring in your step of a summer’s evening, you might not turn to a drama based on Joseph Conrad’s dark novel about Victorian terrorists. But this adaptation (by Tony Marchant) is edgy and absorbing, not least thanks to the central performance of Toby Jones as Verloc, a small, seedy man ensnared by big events. Verloc runs the Victorian equivalent of a sex shop in the Soho of 1886. But he is also on the payroll of the Russian embassy, informing on an anarchist group he takes part in. The trouble is, a new broom at the embassy wants more: an “outrage that will summon this country from its slumber”. He sets Verloc a grim challenge: to…

Don’t miss... Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy continues with The Desolation of Smaug premiering on Saturday ITV The Lion King Sunday 6.15pm C4 THIS IS THE week when The Lion King, previously seen only on paid-for channels, is to be shown for the first time on Freeview and the Walt Disney Company celebrates the 61st birthday of Disneyland at Anaheim, California. At such a time, it’s possible to think of the organisation merely as rather warm, family-friendly purveyors of fun for the masses and gentle, charming animated movies for the young at heart. But it’s not quite like that. In fact, the Disney outfit is one of the most powerful, and probably richest, players in Hollywood, commercially ruthless in its acquisition of companies with a wide variety of interests. Nowadays, films…

PICK OF THE DAY Swim the Channel 9.00pmBBC4 DOCUMENTARY This is the kind of ripe, quirky documentary we used to see more of, but which have gone slightly out of vogue. It’s a warmly observed portrait of a very British sub-culture, the group of souls who gather through the summer season on a Dover beach to train for the brutal business of swimming the Channel. Mike is one of the pilots in small boats who help the swimmers make the crossing, the kind of man who answers the phone, saying “What can I do for thee, sir?” and says of Channel-swimming: “From the outside looking in, it’s hard to understand and from the inside looking out, it’s hard to explain.” But the programme does a nice job, showing us the odd characters who gather round…

TUESDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY New Zealand: Earth’s Mythical Islands 9.00pmBBC2 NATURE New seriesClouds of geo-thermal midges dance above the steaming waters of a stream too hot for fish to swim in; just-hatched tuatara, reptiles dating back to the dinosaurs, lurk in the mossy undergrowth of prehistoric woodland; and pohutukawa trees, smothered in crimson flowers, explode out of barren volcanic wasteland. You can see why New Zealand is so popular with film-makers looking for out-of-this-world locations. Isolated from the rest of the world 80 million years ago, the islands are home to many weird and unique species while the landscape, created by violent geological forces, has been fissured and fractured to form exotic shapes. But there are charming sights, too: hundreds of penguins waddle purposefully through prehistoric woodlands en route to their inland colony, while pods…

TUESDAY Choices

WEDNESDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY Long Lost Family 9.00pmITV DOCUMENTARY When she was six years old Vanda returned home after a holiday with relatives to find a baby boy propped up on her mum’s sofa. She clutched his tiny hands — then never saw the child again. It was only some years later that Vanda found a clue to his identity: he was her halfbrother, her mum’s child, the product of an affair with a married man and reluctantly given up for adoption. Vanda’s story has the most extraordinary outcome, after the splendid Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell and the Long Lost Family team do their digging. Your heart will pop with warmth at the generosity and kindness of everyone involved. As it will when Samantha’s lifelong hunt for the dad she never knew reaches its…

WEDNESDAY Choices

THURSDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY The Refugee Camp: Our Desert Home 9.00pmBBC2 DOCUMENTARY The Zaatari refugee camp in the Jordanian desert is enormous, a vast, sprawling city made of caravans and prefabs. It’s home to roughly 80,000 Syrian men, women and children who’ve fled the civil war that’s torn their homeland to pieces. Yet what comes through so resoundingly in this excellent documentary is the sheer life, hope and humour of its inhabitants. It might seem a pat, clichéd thing to say, but Zaatari, in all its dusty, shambolic magnificence, is a monument to the very human need to make a happy home, however dire the circumstances. Zaatari seethes with a rough kind of optimism. Its children in particular seize their lives with gusto. Nine-year-old Mohamed suffered a serious leg injury in a bomb blast…

THURSDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY London Anniversary Games 8.00pmBBC2 SPORT With exactly two weeks to go until the start of the Olympics, there is one question bothering the organisers. No, not whether the venues will be ready in time or whether competitors will stay away because of the Zika virus, although that is high on their agenda. No, what’s really keeping everyone up at night is simple: will Bolt be fit? The fastest man in the world is aiming to do the “triple triple” at Rio 2016 — winning gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay three Olympics in a row. However, at the beginning of July he pulled out of Jamaica’s athletics trials with a hamstring tear. He’s confident of being ready for the Games, of course — when is he not confident? —…

At the third stroke...

A Brief History of TIM Saturday 10.30am Radio 4 FM The modern world, it seems, is divided. There are older people who understand what you’re talking about when you say, “At the third stroke, the time will be eight, forty-four and ten seconds, bip, bip, bip.” And then there are younger ones who instinctively back away from you (especially during the bips), the incomprehension on their faces mixed just a little bit with fear. For many of us, British Telecom’s Speaking Clock (or TIM) – which next week celebrates its 80th anniversary – is so much the last word in reliability and accuracy that we have never asked ourselves why the recorded message includes the bizarre word “stroke”. But younger people know not of the Speaking Clock (accessed by dialing 123),…

At the third stroke...

PICK OF THE WEEK

Dave Podmore’s Big Bake Off Bash Sunday 7.15pm Radio 4 Cricketer Dave Podmore’s career really is on the skids — not that it was ever on a high, to be honest (batting average of 4). He’s even had to sell the special “gold” scissors he used to open supermarkets on a well-known auction site. He needs to get back in the public eye — and fast. For anyone unfamiliar with the work of Dave “Pod” Podmore, he is the fictional creation of writers Christopher Douglas, Andrew Nickolds and Nick Newman. And they have created a monster: Pod is an arrogant, politically incorrect, talentless has-been, which makes him one of the funniest characters in print (a column in The Guardian) and on radio. Sadly, this is a one-off rather than the start of a…

PICK OF THE WEEK

The Archers this week...

The school summer holidays are upon us: a time for rest and relaxation… and more brinkmanship between the Bridge Farm Archers and Rob Titchener. Pat wants Henry to spend more time with her and Tony during the break, but Rob insists this isn’t necessary. So how will Rob react when Pat raises the idea of taking Henry to the seaside? At least Helen has a new supporter in Shula, who wants to know if she can do anything to help… Over at Brookfield, Pip accuses David of being in the Dark Ages. Rex, meanwhile, is wondering whether Pip is avoiding him. And there’s a clash at the fête committee when Lynda goes up against Fallon after they fail to agree on a format for the event.…

Move! You fools

I AM A GENTLE soul, not quick to temper unless my ire is aroused by cyclists riding on pavements, or I’m kept waiting at the till by shop assistants as they fold jumpers. What are they doing with them, woolly origami? But since the EU Referendum result I’ve hopped around the living room, shrieking at the telly: “Get out of the way, you bloody fools, you witless wastes of space. MOVE!” Surely it’s not beyond the wit of any government (although, on the other hand…) to introduce a by-law along the lines of “If there’s a TV crew filming MPs, members of the public must not shuffle into the back of the shot and wave at the camera.” I know this has always happened – jubilant football supporters always crowd…

Move! You fools

This is fun, isn’t it?

SUCH HAS BEEN the velocity of events lately, it would be unwise of me to predict what might have happened in the short time between me resting my quill at the end of this column, and the words appearing in front of you. Perhaps the UK will have left the EU, rejoined it, then left again. Perhaps Michael Gove and Boris Johnson will have sumo-wrestled for their honour, married each other, then divorced. By the way, I think Mr Gove would come out on top. In the fight I mean, not the marriage. The breakneck speed of change has left commentators scrambling for comparisons. The outcome of David Cameron’s referendum was, they said, the biggest crisis since Suez/Bannockburn/the death of Peggy Mitchell. Things have moved so fast, events you might have…

This is fun, isn’t it?

NEW SEASON 1 Mr Robot Amazon Prime The most exciting US drama of 2015 returns. Last year it ended with our friends the computer hackers causing the collapse of capitalist society, a narrative hole the show confidently takes its time escaping from. When it does, once again it’s a daring vision of a digital dystopia that’s just close enough to reality to chill the blood — and there isn’t a more visually stylish show on TV, anywhere. Thursdays from 14 July. Episodes air a week later on Universal: see p103 OLD COMEDY GOLD 2 The Dick Van Dyke Show Netflix All 158 episodes of the seminal American sitcom, which ran between 1961 and 66, are now on Netflix. Van Dyke is comedy writer Rob, who flits between coining gags for…

COUNTRY FILES Music folk love nothing more than inventing new and spurious new genres of music to baffle and perplex civilians. “Acid Folk”, “IDM”, “Electro Clash”, “Nu-Metal”… just the other day I heard the term “jock rave” used (straightfaced) with regard to the kind of banging techno music enjoyed by sporty frat boys at US colleges. In this vein, I have no clear idea what the phrase “psychedelic country” means, but I have seen it applied often to my current favourite new band Night Moves. A duo from Minnesota, I prefer to say that they simply make terrific pop music from the heart and in high and heartfelt voices. Hear them on my show this week. (Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie, Tuesday 1pm 6 Music) GRAPHENE EQUALIZER There’s a deal of music about…

One room, one family, one of the greatest sitcoms

Good sitcoms capture something; great ones capture something fundamental. The Royle Family, by and with Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash, was an instant hit in 1998 because it captured something dead simple. People are funny. Funny like Jim Royle (Ricky Tomlinson), the patriarch kept sane by his own wit. We stay in his lounge, but can picture him as the funniest man in the pub. Funny, too, like Nana (Liz Smith), who’s only dimly aware that her efforts to appear more with it than she is are hilariously transparent. And funny like Anthony (Ralf Little), the youngest child whose battle not to make cups of tea is always in vain. Aherne and Cash are rightly hailed for painting northern working-class life as deftly as Wood or Bennett. The difference is…

One room, one family, one of the greatest sitcoms

Have a happy, appy summer

It’s only a holiday for kids. For parents, the looming break has too many hours in, too many days to fill. Apps can help. Time Out and YPlan (free, iOS/Android/Windows Phone) list fun activities in cities across Britain — search for “Kids” — while Eventbrite looks for events near you and can download tickets to your phone. Outside of the city, English Heritage Days Out (free, iOS/Android) will find a castle for them to conquer. To keep them entertained on long trips, turn to BBC iPlayer Kids (free, iOS/Android/Kindle Fire). This cuts iPlayer down to just the children’s channels, and lets you download programmes for 30 days. For the especially bored child, Disney Life (£9.99/month, iOS/Android) offers a huge selection of the studio’s movies, TV shows and books. Like iPlayer,…

Have a happy, appy summer

SATURDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY The Rack Pack 10.00pm BBC2 COMEDY DRAMA It’s the 1970s, people are getting colour TVs and Kevin Bishop’s fabulously mouthy promoter Barry Hearn believes snooker could “even be bigger than the wrestling” one day. But this delightful film (which first aired on iPlayer and was bumped from the schedules after the real snooker overran earlier this year) is much more than a fond and cartoonish recollection of the sport’s heyday and those titanic battles at the Crucible. At its heart is the moving decline of the wayward, super-talented Alex “Hurricane” Higgins (Luke Treadaway) and his rivalry with Steve “Interesting” Davis (Will Merrick). Davis was the ginger-haired Essex kid who practised obsessively, preferred milk to booze and was, according to Hearn, so pale he probably got sunburn when…

SATURDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY The Secret Agent 9.00pm BBC1 DRAMA OF THE WEEK If you’re looking to put a spring in your step of a summer’s evening, you might not turn to a drama based on Joseph Conrad’s dark novel about Victorian terrorists. But this adaptation (by Tony Marchant) is edgy and absorbing, not least thanks to the central performance of Toby Jones as Verloc, a small, seedy man ensnared by big events. Verloc runs the Victorian equivalent of a sex shop in the Soho of 1886. But he is also on the payroll of the Russian embassy, informing on an anarchist group he takes part in. The trouble is, a new broom at the embassy wants more: an “outrage that will summon this country from its slumber”. He sets Verloc…

PICK OF THE DAY Swim the Channel 9.00pm BBC4 DOCUMENTARY This is the kind of ripe, quirky documentary we used to see more of, but which have gone slightly out of vogue. It’s a warmly observed portrait of a very British sub-culture, the group of souls who gather through the summer season on a Dover beach to train for the brutal business of swimming the Channel. Mike is one of the pilots in small boats who help the swimmers make the crossing, the kind of man who answers the phone, saying “What can I do for thee, sir?” and says of Channel-swimming: “From the outside looking in, it’s hard to understand and from the inside looking out, it’s hard to explain.” But the programme does a nice job, showing us the…

TUESDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY New Zealand: Earth’s Mythical Islands 9.00pm BBC2 NATURE New series Clouds of geo-thermal midges dance above the steaming waters of a stream too hot for fish to swim in; just-hatched tuatara, reptiles dating back to the dinosaurs, lurk in the mossy undergrowth of prehistoric woodland; and pohutukawa trees, smothered in crimson flowers, explode out of barren volcanic wasteland. You can see why New Zealand is so popular with film-makers looking for out-of-this-world locations. Isolated from the rest of the world 80 million years ago, the islands are home to many weird and unique species while the landscape, created by violent geological forces, has been fissured and fractured to form exotic shapes. But there are charming sights, too: hundreds of penguins waddle purposefully through prehistoric woodlands en route…

TUESDAY Choices

WEDNESDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY Long Lost Family 9.00pm ITV DOCUMENTARY When she was six years old Vanda returned home after a holiday with relatives to find a baby boy propped up on her mum’s sofa. She clutched his tiny hands — then never saw the child again. It was only some years later that Vanda found a clue to his identity: he was her halfbrother, her mum’s child, the product of an affair with a married man and reluctantly given up for adoption. Vanda’s story has the most extraordinary outcome, after the splendid Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell and the Long Lost Family team do their digging. Your heart will pop with warmth at the generosity and kindness of everyone involved. As it will when Samantha’s lifelong hunt for the dad…

WEDNESDAY Choices

THURSDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY The Refugee Camp: Our Desert Home 9.00pm BBC2 DOCUMENTARY The Zaatari refugee camp in the Jordanian desert is enormous, a vast, sprawling city made of caravans and prefabs. It’s home to roughly 80,000 Syrian men, women and children who’ve fled the civil war that’s torn their homeland to pieces. Yet what comes through so resoundingly in this excellent documentary is the sheer life, hope and humour of its inhabitants. It might seem a pat, clichéd thing to say, but Zaatari, in all its dusty, shambolic magnificence, is a monument to the very human need to make a happy home, however dire the circumstances. Zaatari seethes with a rough kind of optimism. Its children in particular seize their lives with gusto. Nine-year-old Mohamed suffered a serious leg injury…

THURSDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY London Anniversary Games 8.00pmBBC2 SPORT With exactly two weeks to go until the start of the Olympics, there is one question bothering the organisers. No, not whether the venues will be ready in time or whether competitors will stay away because of the Zika virus, although that is high on their agenda. No, what’s really keeping everyone up at night is simple: will Bolt be fit? The fastest man in the world is aiming to do the “triple triple” at Rio 2016 — winning gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay three Olympics in a row. However, at the beginning of July he pulled out of Jamaica’s athletics trials with a hamstring tear. He’s confident of being ready for the Games, of course — when…

THE UK WILL almost certainly remain part of the EU until at least 10 September 2018. The new leader of the Conservative Party – and Prime Minister – is due to be announced on 9 September. But even if he or she immediately gives the EU the Article 50 notification that we are leaving, negotiations about the details of the separation will almost certainly take at least two years. So there should be no change in any rights given to us by the EU until autumn 2018 at the earliest. Many of those rights – including consumer laws and rights at work – are already part of UK law and will not be affected in any case. It is unlikely a future government would immediately pass laws to reduce them. FLIGHT DELAY…

At the third stroke...

A Brief History of TIM Saturday 10.30am Radio 4 FM The modern world, it seems, is divided. There are older people who understand what you’re talking about when you say, “At the third stroke, the time will be eight, forty-four and ten seconds, bip, bip, bip.” And then there are younger ones who instinctively back away from you (especially during the bips), the incomprehension on their faces mixed just a little bit with fear. For many of us, British Telecom’s Speaking Clock (or TIM) – which next week celebrates its 80th anniversary – is so much the last word in reliability and accuracy that we have never asked ourselves why the recorded message includes the bizarre word “stroke”. But younger people know not of the Speaking Clock (accessed by dialing…

At the third stroke...

That’s Superintendent Banks to you…

FOR HIS 23RD novel featuring DCI Alan Banks, When the Music’s Over, writer Peter Robinson had to give the taciturn, music-loving Yorkshire detective a promotion. “He gets older, though not quite at the same rate I do,” says Robinson, who is 66. “He would probably have had to retire as a Detective Chief Inspector turning 60, whereas Superintendents can stay on until 65. It’s bought him five more years.” Not that age seems to wither either of them. Banks is still putting away the beer and curries as well as the criminals, and Robinson has constructed a page-turning plot featuring twin crimes that feel grimly up-to-the-minute. Banks investigates the historic rape of a 14-year-old schoolgirl in 1967 by a once-beloved celebrity entertainer. Meanwhile, the body of a naked, battered 15-year-old girl…

That’s Superintendent Banks to you…

PICK OF THE WEEK

Dave Podmore’s Big Bake Off Bash Sunday 7.15pm Radio 4 Cricketer Dave Podmore’s career really is on the skids — not that it was ever on a high, to be honest (batting average of 4). He’s even had to sell the special “gold” scissors he used to open supermarkets on a well-known auction site. He needs to get back in the public eye — and fast. For anyone unfamiliar with the work of Dave “Pod” Podmore, he is the fictional creation of writers Christopher Douglas, Andrew Nickolds and Nick Newman. And they have created a monster: Pod is an arrogant, politically incorrect, talentless has-been, which makes him one of the funniest characters in print (a column in The Guardian) and on radio. Sadly, this is a one-off rather than the…

PICK OF THE WEEK

Hitting the road

DIRT ROAD JAMES KELMAN Book at BedtimeMon—Fri 10.45pm Radio 4 Dirt Road (£14.50, incl p&p) is the first book by Kelman — Scotland’s only Man Booker Prize winner — from his new publishers, Edinburgh-based Canongate, with whom he signed last year after criticising the London-centric strategies of the big publishing houses. It’s ironic, then, that the novel’s father-son protagonists, Tom and Murdo, leave a Scottish island to try and solve their problems. They’re mourning the deaths of Murdo’s mother and sister, when they visit family in Alabama. But a wrong turn leads 16-year-old Murdo to find unexpected solace in the musical history of Louisiana; can dad Tom follow suit? THE TIDAL ZONE SARAH MOSS Meet the AuthorThursday 7.45pm BBC News Channel Sarah Moss’s latest novel also explores parental grief, although of a different kind; The…

Hitting the road

The Archers this week...

The school summer holidays are upon us: a time for rest and relaxation… and more brinkmanship between the Bridge Farm Archers and Rob Titchener. Pat wants Henry to spend more time with her and Tony during the break, but Rob insists this isn’t necessary. So how will Rob react when Pat raises the idea of taking Henry to the seaside? At least Helen has a new supporter in Shula, who wants to know if she can do anything to help… Over at Brookfield, Pip accuses David of being in the Dark Ages. Rex, meanwhile, is wondering whether Pip is avoiding him. And there’s a clash at the fête committee when Lynda goes up against Fallon after they fail to agree on a format for the event.…

THERE’S NOTHING BETTER than being in the garden on a balmy evening. Some plants have been designed by nature to wait until the sun sets to release their delicious fragrance, in a bid to entice night-time pollinators such as moths. It doesn’t take much to make your garden smell great after dark. A few well-chosen plants in an enclosed small garden or corner can do the trick – with the boundaries helping to keep the breeze out and lingering perfumes in. By limiting the varieties and not overplanting, you’ll avoid too many scents clashing. Many have pale or even luminescent flowers so they stand out in the fading light, too. Brugmansia arborea (Angels’ trumpets) is a classic conservatory plant that can be moved to the patio in the summer, where the…

SEVEN YEARS AGO, Nottingham model Dean Newcombe (below) moved to Tokyo for three months and ended up staying for a year. Within six months of waving farewell, he was back for good. “Tokyo has a habit of grabbing hold of people,” he explains. “I felt like I hadn’t even come close to scratching the surface.” Even now, the city is full of surprises. “I’ll suddenly be introduced to a temple that’s just behind my house. It’s not famous at all but completely spectacular because all the wood was carved by hand hundreds of years ago. When I first arrived, I thought that everything would be pristine. But downtown Tokyo has ancient temples all mixed up with outdated and ultra-new buildings, which is part of the charm.” These days Dean is a presenter…

PRIZE CROSSWORD One reader receives a Waterstones £75 voucher; five runners-up get a £15 voucher. All six receive a voucher for Waterstones Book of the Week, The Past by Tessa Hadley. Tensions simmer when four siblings stay in their grandparents’ old house for three long, hot summer weeks. WORDFINDER Find the name of the show in the shaded squares to win the prize below. EASY CLUES For fun! Email your answers to xword29@radiotimescomps.co.uk PRIZE CROSSWORD ACROSS 7 Tree before which King Charles will die (5) 8 French stew might be lost cause (9) 10 Work up to (4) 11 About building you’ll hear as planned (2,8) 12 Sitcom and play without books (7,3,3) 15 Is bothered by film with fixed attitude (7) 16 Bacteriologist to stick with old city (7) 18 Socially failing Scotland? Unify again (13) 20 Fragile pot smashed…

This is fun, isn’t it?

SUCH HAS BEEN the velocity of events lately, it would be unwise of me to predict what might have happened in the short time between me resting my quill at the end of this column, and the words appearing in front of you. Perhaps the UK will have left the EU, rejoined it, then left again. Perhaps Michael Gove and Boris Johnson will have sumo-wrestled for their honour, married each other, then divorced. By the way, I think Mr Gove would come out on top. In the fight I mean, not the marriage. The breakneck speed of change has left commentators scrambling for comparisons. The outcome of David Cameron’s referendum was, they said, the biggest crisis since Suez/Bannockburn/the death of Peggy Mitchell. Things have moved so fast, events you might…

This is fun, isn’t it?

COUNTRY FILES Music folk love nothing more than inventing new and spurious new genres of music to baffle and perplex civilians. “Acid Folk”, “IDM”, “Electro Clash”, “Nu-Metal”… just the other day I heard the term “jock rave” used (straightfaced) with regard to the kind of banging techno music enjoyed by sporty frat boys at US colleges. In this vein, I have no clear idea what the phrase “psychedelic country” means, but I have seen it applied often to my current favourite new band Night Moves. A duo from Minnesota, I prefer to say that they simply make terrific pop music from the heart and in high and heartfelt voices. Hear them on my show this week. (Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie, Tuesday 1pm 6 Music) GRAPHENE EQUALIZER There’s a deal…

Only Connect with Victoria Coren Mitchell The connecting wall from the BBC2 game show Only Connect is an inventive combination of general knowledge, word play and lateral thinking to give your brain cells a workout! How to play Your task is to sort the 16 seemingly random words/phrases below into four groups of four connected words. You may find some clues fall into more than one category, but there is only one complete solution. If you get stuck, have a look at the clues, on the side of the page… SCRIBBLE PAD Order the Radio Times: From the Archive book for £10 inc p&p. Call 0344 245 8092 quoting RTFTA16. Calls cost no more than the national rate. Trackword How many words of three letters or more can you find by tracking from one square to…

WHAT WE WATCHED

2005 16 JULY Who can bring together Kate Winslet, Samuel L Jackson, Ben Stiller, Vinnie Jones, Patrick Stewart, Ashley Jensen, Ross Kemp and Les Dennis for an RT cover? Ricky Gervais, of course, who sat down with John Humphrys for a chat, ahead of his new sitcom Extras, which started this week. “Being recognised is the worst bit of the whole package,” said Gervais. “It’s very, very strange that people can be happy just from the recognition. I’m sick of the sight of my face, so Christ knows what other people think of it.” 1991 20 JULY To celebrate 1,000 editions of his chat show Wogan, Sir Terry interviewed Madonna. “She sits on the settee, small, not exactly pretty, wary,” he wrote. “She gives off no warmth, she doesn’t smile a lot, she doesn’t…

WHAT WE WATCHED

There’s more to this story

EMAILfeedback@radiotimes.comOR WRITE TO Letters Editor, Radio Times, Vineyard House, 44 Brook Green, London W6 7BT Please include full address and phone number B Is for Book (5 July BBC4), RT’ documentary of the week, seemed to pursue the idea that phonics were the only key in learning to read. Yes, primary school children need to understand the phonic approach, but not to the exclusion of using other clues that make reading easier. In the English language so many of our words are phonetically irregular, they simply cannot be built up by sounding out the letters. I do hope that a follow-up programme can be made. Please find a school that is using a more broad approach to teaching reading – using interesting stories, linking whole words to pictures and discussing the sense…

There’s more to this story

What happens to the Wimbledon towels?

What happens to all the official Wimbledon towels the players dry themselves on? They can’t be re-used as the design seems to change year on year. Elizabeth Ross, Hereford A spokesperson for the All England Lawn Tennis Club tells Feedback, “Many players elect to keep the towels. Any that are left over are laundered and donated to charity. The Ladies’ towel design changes each year and the Gentlemen’s stays broadly the same, but both have the current year printed on them — hence making them so collectable. They are available to buy from the Wimbledon shop and are consistently the top-selling item. In 2015 we sold 29,000 towels! Around 6,000 are used by the players during the tournament.” Intriguingly, some players are clearly not aware that they’re allowed to take the towels home,…

What happens to the Wimbledon towels?

‘What’s with the foot festishists?’

Who do you watch telly with? I have a flatmate at the moment who is staying with me who I have known for a long time, and so I’ve reverted to student life. It’s two middle-aged men, sitting and shouting at the television. He’s an old friend from my teaching days, he’s just between homes, and I love it. Do you eat in front of the telly? When you’ve got a mate staying with you, you revert to university eating as well… I’m eating more crisps now than I ever did as an 18-year-old. So, what’s your sofa like? I have a huge sofa, befitting of a man of my stature [he’s 6ft 8in]. I call it the sofa of doom, because it’s so big and it envelops me so well, I’m inevitably asleep within…

‘What’s with the foot festishists?’

THE UK WILL almost certainly remain part of the EU until at least 10 September 2018. The new leader of the Conservative Party – and Prime Minister – is due to be announced on 9 September. But even if he or she immediately gives the EU the Article 50 notification that we are leaving, negotiations about the details of the separation will almost certainly take at least two years. So there should be no change in any rights given to us by the EU until autumn 2018 at the earliest. Many of those rights – including consumer laws and rights at work – are already part of UK law and will not be affected in any case. It is unlikely a future government would immediately pass laws to reduce them.…

That’s Superintendent Banks to you…

FOR HIS 23RD novel featuring DCI Alan Banks, When the Music’s Over, writer Peter Robinson had to give the taciturn, music-loving Yorkshire detective a promotion. “He gets older, though not quite at the same rate I do,” says Robinson, who is 66. “He would probably have had to retire as a Detective Chief Inspector turning 60, whereas Superintendents can stay on until 65. It’s bought him five more years.” Not that age seems to wither either of them. Banks is still putting away the beer and curries as well as the criminals, and Robinson has constructed a page-turning plot featuring twin crimes that feel grimly up-to-the-minute. Banks investigates the historic rape of a 14-year-old schoolgirl in 1967 by a once-beloved celebrity entertainer. Meanwhile, the body of a naked, battered 15-year-old…

That’s Superintendent Banks to you…

Hitting the road

DIRT ROAD JAMES KELMAN Book at Bedtime Mon—Fri 10.45pm Radio 4 Dirt Road (£14.50, incl p&p) is the first book by Kelman — Scotland’s only Man Booker Prize winner — from his new publishers, Edinburgh-based Canongate, with whom he signed last year after criticising the London-centric strategies of the big publishing houses. It’s ironic, then, that the novel’s father-son protagonists, Tom and Murdo, leave a Scottish island to try and solve their problems. They’re mourning the deaths of Murdo’s mother and sister, when they visit family in Alabama. But a wrong turn leads 16-year-old Murdo to find unexpected solace in the musical history of Louisiana; can dad Tom follow suit? THE TIDAL ZONE SARAH MOSS Meet the Author Thursday 7.45pm BBC News Channel Sarah Moss’s latest novel also explores parental…

Hitting the road

THERE’S NOTHING BETTER than being in the garden on a balmy evening. Some plants have been designed by nature to wait until the sun sets to release their delicious fragrance, in a bid to entice night-time pollinators such as moths. It doesn’t take much to make your garden smell great after dark. A few well-chosen plants in an enclosed small garden or corner can do the trick – with the boundaries helping to keep the breeze out and lingering perfumes in. By limiting the varieties and not overplanting, you’ll avoid too many scents clashing. Many have pale or even luminescent flowers so they stand out in the fading light, too. Brugmansia arborea (Angels’ trumpets) is a classic conservatory plant that can be moved to the patio in the summer, where…

SEVEN YEARS AGO, Nottingham model Dean Newcombe (below) moved to Tokyo for three months and ended up staying for a year. Within six months of waving farewell, he was back for good. “Tokyo has a habit of grabbing hold of people,” he explains. “I felt like I hadn’t even come close to scratching the surface.” Even now, the city is full of surprises. “I’ll suddenly be introduced to a temple that’s just behind my house. It’s not famous at all but completely spectacular because all the wood was carved by hand hundreds of years ago. When I first arrived, I thought that everything would be pristine. But downtown Tokyo has ancient temples all mixed up with outdated and ultra-new buildings, which is part of the charm.” These days Dean is…

PRIZE CROSSWORD One reader receives a Waterstones £75 voucher; five runners-up get a £15 voucher. All six receive a voucher for Waterstones Book of the Week, The Past by Tessa Hadley. Tensions simmer when four siblings stay in their grandparents’ old house for three long, hot summer weeks. WORDFINDER Find the name of the show in the shaded squares to win the prize below. EASY CLUES For fun! Email your answers to xword29@radiotimescomps.co.uk PRIZE CROSSWORD ACROSS 7 Tree before which King Charles will die (5) 8 French stew might be lost cause (9) 10 Work up to (4) 11 About building you’ll hear as planned (2,8) 12 Sitcom and play without books (7,3,3) 15 Is bothered by film with fixed attitude (7) 16 Bacteriologist to stick with old city (7)…

Only Connect with Victoria Coren Mitchell The connecting wall from the BBC2 game show Only Connect is an inventive combination of general knowledge, word play and lateral thinking to give your brain cells a workout! How to play Your task is to sort the 16 seemingly random words/phrases below into four groups of four connected words. You may find some clues fall into more than one category, but there is only one complete solution. If you get stuck, have a look at the clues, on the side of the page… SCRIBBLE PAD Order the Radio Times: From the Archive book for £10 inc p&p. Call 0344 245 8092 quoting RTFTA16. Calls cost no more than the national rate. Trackword How many words of three letters or more can you find…

WHAT WE WATCHED

2005 16 JULY Who can bring together Kate Winslet, Samuel L Jackson, Ben Stiller, Vinnie Jones, Patrick Stewart, Ashley Jensen, Ross Kemp and Les Dennis for an RT cover? Ricky Gervais, of course, who sat down with John Humphrys for a chat, ahead of his new sitcom Extras, which started this week. “Being recognised is the worst bit of the whole package,” said Gervais. “It’s very, very strange that people can be happy just from the recognition. I’m sick of the sight of my face, so Christ knows what other people think of it.” 1991 20 JULY To celebrate 1,000 editions of his chat show Wogan, Sir Terry interviewed Madonna. “She sits on the settee, small, not exactly pretty, wary,” he wrote. “She gives off no warmth, she doesn’t smile…

WHAT WE WATCHED

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EMAIL feedback@radiotimes.com OR WRITE TO Letters Editor, Radio Times, Vineyard House, 44 Brook Green, London W6 7BT Please include full address and phone number B Is for Book (5 July BBC4), RT’s documentary of the week, seemed to pursue the idea that phonics were the only key in learning to read. Yes, primary school children need to understand the phonic approach, but not to the exclusion of using other clues that make reading easier. In the English language so many of our words are phonetically irregular, they simply cannot be built up by sounding out the letters. I do hope that a follow-up programme can be made. Please find a school that is using a more broad approach to teaching reading – using interesting stories, linking whole words to pictures and…

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What happens to the Wimbledon towels?

What happens to all the official Wimbledon towels the players dry themselves on? They can’t be re-used as the design seems to change year on year. Elizabeth Ross, Hereford A spokesperson for the All England Lawn Tennis Club tells Feedback, “Many players elect to keep the towels. Any that are left over are laundered and donated to charity. The Ladies’ towel design changes each year and the Gentlemen’s stays broadly the same, but both have the current year printed on them — hence making them so collectable. They are available to buy from the Wimbledon shop and are consistently the top-selling item. In 2015 we sold 29,000 towels! Around 6,000 are used by the players during the tournament.” Intriguingly, some players are clearly not aware that they’re allowed to take…

What happens to the Wimbledon towels?

‘What’s with the foot festishists?’

Who do you watch telly with? I have a flatmate at the moment who is staying with me who I have known for a long time, and so I’ve reverted to student life. It’s two middle-aged men, sitting and shouting at the television. He’s an old friend from my teaching days, he’s just between homes, and I love it. Do you eat in front of the telly? When you’ve got a mate staying with you, you revert to university eating as well… I’m eating more crisps now than I ever did as an 18-year-old. So, what’s your sofa like? I have a huge sofa, befitting of a man of my stature [he’s 6ft 8in]. I call it the sofa of doom, because it’s so big and it envelops me so…

‘What’s with the foot festishists?’

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