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82 Articles

From the editor

So many programmes, so many channels – but how does television find the talent to fill them all? And how can new actors, comedians, writers and presenters ever break through when so many viewers prefer to watch a familiar face? In this issue of Radio Times, we’ve tried to help. We asked Dawn French, Cillian Murphy, Jon Snow and even Hollywood director Ron Howard – among others – to pick brilliant newcomers who they believe should make it to the top. You can meet RT’s Class of 2017 starting on page 8. Television is also working hard to find new talent. BBC director-general Tony Hall and Idris Elba joined forces last week to bring together 200 young people starting out in broadcasting. Sky and Channel 4 are also pioneering ways…

From the editor

From the editor

So many programmes, so many channels – but how does television find the talent to fill them all? And how can new actors, comedians, writers and presenters ever break through when so many viewers prefer to watch a familiar face? In this issue of Radio Times, we’ve tried to help. We asked Dawn French, Cillian Murphy, Jon Snow and even Hollywood director Ron Howard – among others – to pick brilliant newcomers who they believe should make it to the top. You can meet RT’s Class of 2017 starting on page 8. Television is also working hard to find new talent. BBC director-general Tony Hall and Idris Elba joined forces last week to bring together 200 young people starting out in broadcasting. Sky and Channel 4 are also pioneering ways of attracting…

From the editor

WHAT I’M WATCHING… REV KATE BOTTLEY ‘I’m watching Broadchurch, Chef ’s Table on Netflix and Inside No 9,” says this week’s columnist (page 7). But the former Gogglebox panellist reveals that she never watches old episodes of the show. “Absolutely not! Would you? It’s a bit weird, it’s too awkward.’ TOM RANSLEY ‘I just finished Taboo. I like a lot of Tom Hardy’s work, especially when Steven Knight is involved,” says the Olympic gold medal rower, who writes about the Boat Race on page 20. “There’s now a rugby-shaped hole in my weekends after the end of the Six Nations – bring on the Lions’ tour!’ BFI& RADIO TIMES TELEVISION FESTIVAL HIGH DRAMA Be first to see the new Sky Atlantic drama Guerrilla, with Freida Pinto, Babou Ceesay and Idris…

WHAT I’M WATCHING… REV KATE BOTTLEY ‘I’m watching Broadchurch, Chef ’s Table on Netflix and Inside No 9,” says this week’s columnist (page 7). But the former Gogglebox panellist reveals that she never watches old episodes of the show. “Absolutely not! Would you? It’s a bit weird, it’s too awkward.’ TOM RANSLEY ‘I just finished Taboo. I like a lot of Tom Hardy’s work, especially when Steven Knight is involved,” says the Olympic gold medal rower, who writes about the Boat Race on page 20. “There’s now a rugby-shaped hole in my weekends after the end of the Six Nations – bring on the Lions’ tour!’ BFI& RADIO TIMES TELEVISION FESTIVAL HIGH DRAMA Be first to see the new Sky Atlantic drama Guerrilla, with Freida Pinto, Babou Ceesay and Idris Elba Rowan Atkinson talks about playing the lead…

Ask the in-laws

I THINK OF MYSELF as a strong independent woman. But when it came to my husband proposing, I made him do it the old-fashioned way, by first having a chat with my dad before officially popping the question. Graham duly booked up with my parents to have a cuppa, an occasion he later declared had been the strangest, most awkward evening of his life. Not the conversation about us spending the rest of our lives together – that was the easy bit – but sitting alone with my parents without me there. My parents liked Graham, they still do, and he liked them, but this was the first and only time he’d ever, in four years of our being in a relationship, spent any time alone with them. Not much has…

Ask the in-laws

1 Jason Forbes, 26, comedian YOU MIGHT RECOGNISE ME FROM The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm with Harry Hill. EARLY DAYS Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital in Bristol. I got a scholarship and then went to Cambridge. FIRST TIME ON STAGE In Footlights you write and perform an hour-long new comedy show every fortnight. It’s brilliant because you can go up to Edinburgh after you graduate with a fully formed show you’ve tested in front of thousands of people, but I often hid the fact I went to Cambridge because people presume you’re privileged and haven’t worked as hard. ROLE MODEL I used to copy Michael Crawford by throwing myself down the stairs and pretending to be dead. My mum didn’t find it funny. COMING UP IN The year after I graduated, George Fouracres, Phil Wang and…

Ask the in-laws

I THINK OF MYSELF as a strong independent woman. But when it came to my husband proposing, I made him do it the old-fashioned way, by first having a chat with my dad before officially popping the question. Graham duly booked up with my parents to have a cuppa, an occasion he later declared had been the strangest, most awkward evening of his life. Not the conversation about us spending the rest of our lives together – that was the easy bit – but sitting alone with my parents without me there. My parents liked Graham, they still do, and he liked them, but this was the first and only time he’d ever, in four years of our being in a relationship, spent any time alone with them. Not much…

Ask the in-laws

Have you met my husband?

How to Be a Surrealist with Philippa PerryTuesday 9.00pmBBC4 APERFECT IMPRINT OF Grayson Perry’s backside is marked out in flakes of croissant on the chair in front of me. “Sorry,” says Philippa Perry, 59, psychotherapist, author and presenter of this week’s BBC4 documentary How to be a Surrealist, as she brushes her husband’s seat clear. “Grayson is very messy.” The artist has already bolted his breakfast and gone, but the basement kitchen of the couple’s north London terrace bears his marks. The walls are covered with art, the floor scattered with crumbs and somewhere above us lurks the remarkable wardrobe of the nation’s best-known cross-dresser. Adopting the alter ego Claire, the 56-year-old artist has gained as much attention for his public transvestism as for his remarkable Turner Prizewinning pots, though his wife…

Have you met my husband?

1 Jason Forbes, 26, comedian YOU MIGHT RECOGNISE ME FROM The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm with Harry Hill. EARLY DAYS Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital in Bristol. I got a scholarship and then went to Cambridge. FIRST TIME ON STAGE In Footlights you write and perform an hour-long new comedy show every fortnight. It’s brilliant because you can go up to Edinburgh after you graduate with a fully formed show you’ve tested in front of thousands of people, but I often hid the fact I went to Cambridge because people presume you’re privileged and haven’t worked as hard. ROLE MODEL I used to copy Michael Crawford by throwing myself down the stairs and pretending to be dead. My mum didn’t find it funny. COMING UP IN The year after I graduated,…

Have you met my husband?

How to Be a Surrealist with Philippa Perry Tuesday 9.00pm BBC4 APERFECT IMPRINT OF Grayson Perry’s backside is marked out in flakes of croissant on the chair in front of me. “Sorry,” says Philippa Perry, 59, psychotherapist, author and presenter of this week’s BBC4 documentary How to be a Surrealist, as she brushes her husband’s seat clear. “Grayson is very messy.” The artist has already bolted his breakfast and gone, but the basement kitchen of the couple’s north London terrace bears his marks. The walls are covered with art, the floor scattered with crumbs and somewhere above us lurks the remarkable wardrobe of the nation’s best-known cross-dresser. Adopting the alter ego Claire, the 56-year-old artist has gained as much attention for his public transvestism as for his remarkable Turner Prizewinning pots, though…

Have you met my husband?

The spy who hates Trump

The Richard Dimbleby LectureTuesday 10.45pmBBC1 (11.10pm in N Ireland, 11.40pm in Wales, 11.45pm in Scotland) WHEN I WAS 16, I told my uncle Oliver that I wanted to be a spy. He looked at me with kindly concern. “Not sure you’re cut out for it really,” he said. “It’s rather private work, and they tend to look for people who are, well, discreet. And able to look after themselves.” Oliver was right: I was not obviously cut out for, ahem, “government service”. But he was. Oliver was a former soldier who spoke fluent Arabic and travelled round the Middle East before working for a time for GCHQ in Cheltenham and at various dingy Government buildings in London. That was what spies did in the Cold War. They kept an eye on people. Fast-forward to…

The spy who hates Trump

No silver medals

The Boat RacesSunday 4.00pmBBC1 MY MIND BLURRED. Thoughts tangled wi th ques t ions as I replayed the race in my head. Random snippets of our rowing looped inanely like a taunting showreel. Where had it gone wrong, and why does it hurt so much? We drifted to the bank and docked at Mortlake. As I walked up the scree away from the filthy tideway, dark thoughts continued to circle. The Boat Race is a unique event. It pulls on the tribal instincts of human nature and the desire for belonging. Everyone picks a side. The millions who tune in worldwide will cheer on the Cambridge light blues or dark-blue Oxford. With an annual spot in the sporting calendar, it has wrapped itself into British culture despite an otherwise only four-yearly interest…

No silver medals

‘I’m not Alan Partridge’

IT TAKES A special sort of radio programme to have an entire book written about it. Today can make that claim, so too The Archers and Desert Island Discs. Now their ranks are about to be joined by another Radio 4 institution – Midweek, the Wednesday-morning gathering of the great, the good and the downright eccentric over whom Libby Purves has presided for the past 33 years. The difference with this book, however, is that Purves has written it and published it herself – a loving memorial to, and a robust defence of, a programme that, as of 29 March, disappears from the airwaves, leaving its host to put on a brave face, reflect on her career, and, at 67, contemplate where she goes next. The decision to axe Midweek is one…

‘I’m not Alan Partridge’

The spy who hates Trump

The Richard Dimbleby Lecture Tuesday 10.45pm BBC1 (11.10pm in N Ireland, 11.40pm in Wales, 11.45pm in Scotland) WHEN I WAS 16, I told my uncle Oliver that I wanted to be a spy. He looked at me with kindly concern. “Not sure you’re cut out for it really,” he said. “It’s rather private work, and they tend to look for people who are, well, discreet. And able to look after themselves.” Oliver was right: I was not obviously cut out for, ahem, “government service”. But he was. Oliver was a former soldier who spoke fluent Arabic and travelled round the Middle East before working for a time for GCHQ in Cheltenham and at various dingy Government buildings in London. That was what spies did in the Cold War. They kept an eye…

The spy who hates Trump

Haven’t they grown!

Child of Our TimeMonday, Tuesday 9.00pmBBC1 (10.40pm Tuesday in Wales) ‘I want lots of kids. Four. Two of each’ ALICE‘I have friends, I go out, I work all the time’ MABEL‘I want to go into veterinary nursing. I’ve got two horses’ PHOEBE AT THE START of the latest instalment of Child of Our Time, Robert Winston spells out the reason why, in the year 2000, the BBC decided to start filming 25 newborn babies and to keep filming them as they turned into toddlers, children – and now teenagers. “It was a quest,” he declares on the voiceover, “to find out what makes us who we are: nature or nurture?” So I’m a little surprised that Lord Winston tells me, right at the start of our interview, “I was never really happy about…

Haven’t they grown!

Perfect puddings

Bake Off: Crème de la CrèmeTue 8.00pmBBC2 RAYMOND BLANC’S award-winning pastry and patisserie chef at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons and chief judge on Bake Off Crème de la Crème, Benoit Blin is the UK’s king of puddings. As a new series begins, we asked Blin to share his secrets for creating successful desserts for home chefs. MY SECRET WEAPON If you want to work with pastry, you’ll need a good rolling pin, not one you’ve left to age in the back of a cupboard, and a flat baking tray, so anything you place on it cooks correctly. Make sure you’ve got some baking paper. Obviously you need a good whisk, a little brush, a little sieve, good scales and a measuring jug. The secret of pastry is it’s an exact science. MY MILLIONAIRE’S SHORTBREAD You…

Perfect puddings

No silver medals

The Boat Races Sunday 4.00pm BBC1 MY MIND BLURRED. Thoughts tangled wi th ques t ions as I replayed the race in my head. Random snippets of our rowing looped inanely like a taunting showreel. Where had it gone wrong, and why does it hurt so much? We drifted to the bank and docked at Mortlake. As I walked up the scree away from the filthy tideway, dark thoughts continued to circle. The Boat Race is a unique event. It pulls on the tribal instincts of human nature and the desire for belonging. Everyone picks a side. The millions who tune in worldwide will cheer on the Cambridge light blues or dark-blue Oxford. With an annual spot in the sporting calendar, it has wrapped itself into British culture despite an otherwise only…

No silver medals

Do you know who I am?

HardtalkMon—Fri 12.30am, 4.30amBBC News Channel HAD THE INTERVIEW been a boxing match it would have been cut short. For 25 minutes Joice Mujuru, the former Zimbabwean vicepresident who fell out with Robert Mugabe in 2015 and now leads a rival party, was verbally pummelled. How could she claim to champion freedom and democracy when she had been Mugabe’s cabinet ally most of her adult life? How could she avoid responsibility for Zimbabwe’s economic collapse, or the Gukurahundi massacre of 20,000 civilians, or the destruction of hundreds of thousands of slum dwellers’ homes? How many white farms had she acquired? Why was part of Zimbabwe’s biggest diamond field known as “Mrs Mujuru’s anthill”? How could she possibly have remained in Mugabe’s cabinet for three years after his thugs murdered her husband? “It’s hard to…

Do you know who I am?

‘I’m not Alan Partridge’

IT TAKES A special sort of radio programme to have an entire book written about it. Today can make that claim, so too The Archers and Desert Island Discs. Now their ranks are about to be joined by another Radio 4 institution – Midweek, the Wednesday-morning gathering of the great, the good and the downright eccentric over whom Libby Purves has presided for the past 33 years. The difference with this book, however, is that Purves has written it and published it herself – a loving memorial to, and a robust defence of, a programme that, as of 29 March, disappears from the airwaves, leaving its host to put on a brave face, reflect on her career, and, at 67, contemplate where she goes next. The decision to axe Midweek…

‘I’m not Alan Partridge’

Kings of comedy

Henry IXWednesday 9.00pmGold Some TV writing partnerships occupy an elevated status: Galton and Simpson, Perry and Croft… and, since the 1960s, Clement and La Frenais. So it’s fitting that these monarchs of mirth are at Buckingham Palace – not to supplement the OBEs they received in 2007, but for a brand-new sitcom. Dick Clement, 79, and Ian La Frenais, 81, have generated much joy with their comedy classics The Likely Lads and its sequel, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, then Porridge (there’s a rebooted series in the autumn) and Auf Wiedersehen Pet. In Los Angeles, where they now live, the venerated pair have polished scripts for films including The Rock, and won awards for writing TV sketches for Tracey Ullman and adapting Roddy Doyle’s novel The Commitments for the big screen. They…

Kings of comedy

Haven’t they grown!

Child of Our Time Monday, Tuesday 9.00pm BBC1 (10.40pm Tuesday in Wales) ‘I want lots of kids. Four. Two of each’ ALICE ‘I have friends, I go out, I work all the time’ MABEL ‘I want to go into veterinary nursing. I’ve got two horses’ PHOEBE AT THE START of the latest instalment of Child of Our Time, Robert Winston spells out the reason why, in the year 2000, the BBC decided to start filming 25 newborn babies and to keep filming them as they turned into toddlers, children – and now teenagers. “It was a quest,” he declares on the voiceover, “to find out what makes us who we are: nature or nurture?” So I’m a little surprised that Lord Winston tells me, right at the start of our interview, “I…

Haven’t they grown!

Welcome to Walt’s world

Golf: the MastersThu, Fri 7pmSky Sports 1, Sky Sports 4/9pm5 Live,10pm5 Live Sports ExtraFri 7pm (highlights)BBC2 (6.30pm in N Ire/Wales) IN 1940, WALT Disney released a deranged masterpiece called Fantasia. Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony becomes an Arcadian landscape of pastel colours full of cute fawns, majestic winged horses with sweet little winged foals – and also pretty girls with bare breasts. These then step out of their bathing pool and, in a great cinematic coup, reveal themselves as centaurs. Or perhaps centaurettes. It has always seemed to me that the course at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, where the year’s first major, the Masters, begins on Thursday, is the nearest we’ll ever get to seeing Disney’s lunatic land for real. As the golfers walk through the pastel blossoms, you almost expect to…

Welcome to Walt’s world

Runaway BrideSaturday 6.45pmFilm4 SPOILER ALERT! What follows does not just apply to one film, but to an entire genre: that lovely couple do get together in the end. I’m talking, of course, about the romantic comedy, cinema’s most predictable movie subset. Unlike a romantic drama, which can be tragic and end in divorce or terminal illness (think of the definitive-sounding Love Story), the romantic comedy can only end happily, otherwise – let’s face it – it would be a horror film or a social-realist documentary. Genre films tend towards certain strictures and standbys. Who wants to see a western without a punch-up in a saloon, or a thriller without a car chase? But most do thrive on surprise. Not the romantic comedy, which must by law end up in a happy place, even if…

Perfect puddings

Bake Off: Crème de la Crème Tue 8.00pm BBC2 RAYMOND BLANC’S award-winning pastry and patisserie chef at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons and chief judge on Bake Off Crème de la Crème, Benoit Blin is the UK’s king of puddings. As a new series begins, we asked Blin to share his secrets for creating successful desserts for home chefs. MY SECRET WEAPON If you want to work with pastry, you’ll need a good rolling pin, not one you’ve left to age in the back of a cupboard, and a flat baking tray, so anything you place on it cooks correctly. Make sure you’ve got some baking paper. Obviously you need a good whisk, a little brush, a little sieve, good scales and a measuring jug. The secret of pastry is it’s an exact…

Perfect puddings

Big Brother for grown-ups

ONE OF THE participants in the new BBC2 series Second Chance Summer: Tuscany (Wednesday BBC2) tells us: “Living in Tuscany and being a farmer is what I should be doing.” Well, sitting on a bench by Whitby harbour eating banana-flavoured Angel Delight while Aidan Turner brushes my hair and Ralph Fiennes reads aloud to me from Alan Bennett’s diaries is what I should be doing. Clearly, though, I’m NOT doing any of these things but maybe I should ask BBC2 for help. Can the channel organise it for me? Why shouldn’t it make my dreams come true when it’s giving this lot every opportunity to do what they are – brace yourselves, I’m going to use the p-word – “passionate” about. Ten strangers are brought together to run an olive farm, vineyard and…

Big Brother for grown-ups

Do you know who I am?

Hardtalk Mon—Fri 12.30am, 4.30am BBC News Channel HAD THE INTERVIEW been a boxing match it would have been cut short. For 25 minutes Joice Mujuru, the former Zimbabwean vicepresident who fell out with Robert Mugabe in 2015 and now leads a rival party, was verbally pummelled. How could she claim to champion freedom and democracy when she had been Mugabe’s cabinet ally most of her adult life? How could she avoid responsibility for Zimbabwe’s economic collapse, or the Gukurahundi massacre of 20,000 civilians, or the destruction of hundreds of thousands of slum dwellers’ homes? How many white farms had she acquired? Why was part of Zimbabwe’s biggest diamond field known as “Mrs Mujuru’s anthill”? How could she possibly have remained in Mugabe’s cabinet for three years after his thugs murdered her husband?…

Do you know who I am?

1 SEE THE WHOLE SEASON Eyewitness Walter Presents Although the cops are hunting a murderer in this Norwegian series, we’re not because we saw it happen. So did two teenage boys, whose compulsion to lie about their whereabouts is one of many secrets and lies the investigation is set to uncover. This format flip enlivens a well-made production. The whole season is online following episode one’s 30 March premiere on C4. NO! YOU FOOL! 2 5 Gold Rings itv.com (ITV) The play-along app means Phillip Schofield’s latest game show is better live, yet it’s still worth catching up to see a clever new format. Pairs of punters take turns to place a circle on an image, to solve a puzzle where the answer lies in a particular spot. That’s a task that has a lot of what…

In modern Melbourne, it’s hip to be square

Awkward millennials are everywhere. From Girls to Chewing Gum to a series actually called Awkward, it’s not cool to be a carefree 20something. What’s cool is to be confused about your career, panicked about sex and prone to eating 18-inch pizzas in bed alone on Friday nights because you hate clubs. In Australian comedy drama Please Like Me, 20-year-old Josh is uncertain about a lot. When we meet him, his girlfriend is dumping him because she thinks he’s gay (he is). Then his mum tries to commit suicide. He deals with both these huge life events by fidgeting, avoiding eye contact and making jokes to avoid confrontation: “I’m almost definitely going to win Young Australian of the Year for this,” he says as he moves back in with his mum to…

In modern Melbourne, it’s hip to be square

Life after Windows Vista

Windows Vista was clunky, complex and widely hated, yet millions still use it. If you’re one of them, it’s time to move on. Microsoft will stop supporting the operating system on 11 April, with no updates to its firewall and virus scanner. As well as your data being vulnerable, browsers such as Firefox and Chrome will stop working. (Windows XP, Vista’s popular predecessor, was long since dropped — not that that stops almost 9 per cent of computer users from running it.) Upgrades are cheaper than installing a new system, but Vista is so old you’d need to upgrade twice: to the outdated Windows 8, then to the latest, Windows 10. It’s simpler to buy Windows 10 on a USB key (£120, microsoftstore.com). Check if your hardware can handle it at…

Life after Windows Vista

Kings of comedy

Henry IX Wednesday 9.00pm Gold Some TV writing partnerships occupy an elevated status: Galton and Simpson, Perry and Croft… and, since the 1960s, Clement and La Frenais. So it’s fitting that these monarchs of mirth are at Buckingham Palace – not to supplement the OBEs they received in 2007, but for a brand-new sitcom. Dick Clement, 79, and Ian La Frenais, 81, have generated much joy with their comedy classics The Likely Lads and its sequel, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, then Porridge (there’s a rebooted series in the autumn) and Auf Wiedersehen Pet. In Los Angeles, where they now live, the venerated pair have polished scripts for films including The Rock, and won awards for writing TV sketches for Tracey Ullman and adapting Roddy Doyle’s novel The Commitments for the…

Kings of comedy

SATURDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY The Voice UK 8.30pmITV DRAMA So the big question is whether ITV can do in one series what the BBC couldn’t in six. And that is to produce a winner who will go on to be a successful recording star — ie last for more than one or two lacklustre records. If we’re to believe the bookies, it might just happen with a young man that all the judges turned for in one of the very first blind auditions. I’m sticking my neck out slightly because there’s a slim chance that this guy could have been booted out in last week’s show, which at the time of writing hadn’t been broadcast. But Mo Adeniran has been earmarked as a winner from the start. His goosebumpraising rendition of Paolo Nutini’s Iron…

SATURDAY Choices

Welcome to Walt’s world

Golf: the Masters Thu, Fri 7pm Sky Sports 1, Sky Sports 4/9pm 5 Live, 10pm 5 Live Sports Extra Fri 7pm (highlights) BBC2 (6.30pm in N Ire/Wales) IN 1940, WALT Disney released a deranged masterpiece called Fantasia. Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony becomes an Arcadian landscape of pastel colours full of cute fawns, majestic winged horses with sweet little winged foals – and also pretty girls with bare breasts. These then step out of their bathing pool and, in a great cinematic coup, reveal themselves as centaurs. Or perhaps centaurettes. It has always seemed to me that the course at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, where the year’s first major, the Masters, begins on Thursday, is the nearest we’ll ever get to seeing Disney’s lunatic land for real. As the golfers walk through the pastel blossoms, you almost…

Welcome to Walt’s world

PICK OF THE DAY Line of Duty 9.00pmBBC1 DRAMA Ah, this is more like it, an interview scene lasting a good ten minutes, the first of the new series. So bring on “item reference AP5, document five in your folders”, because I’m ready for you. Just pass me a POLICE lanyard and switch on the tape recorder. Jed Mercurio’s tormented, twisted, breathless story of murder and corruption goes up several gears after last week’s head-butting opener, the one with the fantastically cheeky ending. DCI Roz Huntley (Thandie Newton) has failed to turn up for work. Meanwhile, something nasty has been found in the woods. Superintendent Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar) is at his most magnificently gimleteyed during the crucial interview when a Police Federation rep oversteps the mark by failing to give Ted due deference: “Federation…

Runaway Bride Saturday 6.45pm Film4 SPOILER ALERT! What follows does not just apply to one film, but to an entire genre: that lovely couple do get together in the end. I’m talking, of course, about the romantic comedy, cinema’s most predictable movie subset. Unlike a romantic drama, which can be tragic and end in divorce or terminal illness (think of the definitive-sounding Love Story), the romantic comedy can only end happily, otherwise – let’s face it – it would be a horror film or a social-realist documentary. Genre films tend towards certain strictures and standbys. Who wants to see a western without a punch-up in a saloon, or a thriller without a car chase? But most do thrive on surprise. Not the romantic comedy, which must by law end up in a…

PICK OF THE DAY Broadchurch 9.00pmITV DRAMA OF THE WEEK Everyone has inched slowly forward with their lives after the murder of Danny Latimer. But not his dad. Mark is haunted and lost; he dreams of Danny and the man he could never become. Andrew Buchan is heartbreaking as Mark, restlessly looking for peace of mind, hatching schemes, needing revenge, but spinning aimlessly. His wife Beth is moving on, channelling her energy into helping rape victims, particularly Trish, who’s struggling to cope. “I feel like I’m sinking… I hate myself and I don’t want to be in my body,” she says in an anguished late-night phone call. There are dramatic developments in the investigation and disturbing evidence comes to light. But there’s a bit more focus on the lead detectives’ home lives and an…

TUESDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY Bake Off: Crème de la Crème 8.00pmBBC2 FOOD Jack, the hip young head chef from a top London restaurant, with his ripped jeans and man-bun, is very confident of success in Crème de la Crème, the only remaining Bake Off remnant on the BBC. He sits with his team and reels off the names of celebrity customers (“David Beckham, Prince Harry, Joan Collins”) and how much work he and his staff do in the kitchen every night (“500 covers on a Saturday”). “The pressure’s not an issue,” Jack says confidently. Did I mention that before: how confident he is? Really, really confident. Which is nice. At the start of a new series, new host Angus Deayton replaces Tom Kerridge. And pastry chefs Benoit Blin (hearing him say “squidgy” is a delight)…

TUESDAY Choices

WEDNESDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY Henry IX 9.00pmGold COMEDY OF THE WEEK New series Henry is having a midlife crisis: he’s reading books on happiness and wearing garish socks. He’s urbane, friendly, 40-something... and king of the United Kingdom. Fearing obsolescence, the monarch (an easy and charming fit for Charles Edwards) initially agrees to a rebrand. But, stooping low from the weight of his crown, he tells his aloof Queen, “We live in a bubble, Katerina, and I intend to burst it.” This diamantéd but dysfunctional family offers gentle laughs: Sally Phillips has crazy fun with a Scandi accent, while Don Warrington radiates avuncular disdain as the king’s butler. And there are reflective interludes in which a clearly smitten Henry flirts with the palace florist Serena (Kara Tointon), hinting at a Roman Holiday vibe next…

WEDNESDAY Choices

THURSDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY The Last Kingdom 9.00pmBBC2 DRAMA One of the greatest scenes in the whole Last Kingdom saga came when Uhtred’s adopted childhood home with Ragnar the Fearless was attacked and burnt to the ground. Ragnar charging from the doors of his hall, wielding his sword even as he burnt like a human torch, was a scorching image. We’re reminded of it in tonight’s pre-titles catch-up because that attack by Kjartan the Cruel started a blood feud that still runs hot. Step forward Ragnar’s son, Young Ragnar, who lives for the day he can avenge his father’s death. One catch: Kjartan now sits in the impregnable fortress of Dunholm (ie ninth-century Durham). That and a thicket of politics stand between Uhtred and helping his brother take vengeance. Meanwhile, their poor, mistreated sister Thyra…

THURSDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY Decline and Fall 9.00pmBBC1 DRAMA Dr Fagan, headmaster of the decrepit and disreputable Llanabba School, is appalled at the prospect of the dissolute Captain Grimes as a son-in-law. He despises his “wooden leg, abominable features and moral turpitude”. Grimes (Douglas Hodge) isn’t that keen on marrying Flossy (Katy Wix) either, and looks around desperately for a means of escape, even during the actual ceremony. Though this (very faithful) dramatisation of Evelyn Waugh’s comedy of manners at times feels a bit flat and lifeless, a good cast keeps things bumping along. Eva Longoria is winning as the seemingly flighty yet ruthlessly steely Margot Beste-Chetwynde, while Jack Whitehall fits nicely into the role of hapless protagonist Paul Pennyfeather. He’s smitten with Margot, who wants him to do her one little favour before they…

Headaches from hell

AL Kennedy’s MigraineMonday 11.00amRadio 4 I’VE BEEN DISPATCHED to interview novelist AL Kennedy about her Radio 4 programme because, like her, I get migraines. We are, to use a new term I’ve learnt recently, and rather like, both migraineurs. Somehow, “migraineur” manages to make getting migraines sound faintly dashing and French, when really they’re a colossal pain. How colossal? It’s hard to improve on Anthony Burgess’s description of a migraine as like having the prow of a ship driving into his face. Kennedy and I compare symptoms in a pub near her home in rural Essex, but I soon realise that in a game of migraine Top Trumps I’m a lightweight. Yes, I get the visual fireworks (“aura”), the numbness in my mouth and fingers, the speech problems and rock-like headaches, but…

Headaches from hell

Big Brother for grown-ups

ONE OF THE participants in the new BBC2 series Second Chance Summer: Tuscany (Wednesday BBC2) tells us: “Living in Tuscany and being a farmer is what I should be doing.” Well, sitting on a bench by Whitby harbour eating banana-flavoured Angel Delight while Aidan Turner brushes my hair and Ralph Fiennes reads aloud to me from Alan Bennett’s diaries is what I should be doing. Clearly, though, I’m NOT doing any of these things but maybe I should ask BBC2 for help. Can the channel organise it for me? Why shouldn’t it make my dreams come true when it’s giving this lot every opportunity to do what they are – brace yourselves, I’m going to use the p-word – “passionate” about. Ten strangers are brought together to run an olive…

Big Brother for grown-ups

1 SEE THE WHOLE SEASON Eyewitness Walter Presents Although the cops are hunting a murderer in this Norwegian series, we’re not because we saw it happen. So did two teenage boys, whose compulsion to lie about their whereabouts is one of many secrets and lies the investigation is set to uncover. This format flip enlivens a well-made production. The whole season is online following episode one’s 30 March premiere on C4. NO! YOU FOOL! 2 5 Gold Rings itv.com (ITV) The play-along app means Phillip Schofield’s latest game show is better live, yet it’s still worth catching up to see a clever new format. Pairs of punters take turns to place a circle on an image, to solve a puzzle where the answer lies in a particular spot. That’s a…

PICK OF THE WEEK

Between the Ears: Second Side UpSaturday 9.30pmRadio 3 I must confess that on my first listen I believed that this was Radio 3’s version of Down the Line (a satire on live phone-in shows devised by Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson that had us all fooled on its first outing on Radio 4). With this in mind, I researched the subject of this bizarre monologue, Mark Talbot, and he is for real. Talbot had always dreamt of working on radio as a music presenter. Between 1978 and 2002 he recorded thousands of analogue cassette tapes from his own “radio station”, customising the content, at his own expense, for individual “listeners”. These ranged from attendees at his regular DJ nights at pubs to his mother and stepfather’s musical choices. There’s nothing about his “broadcasts”…

PICK OF THE WEEK

Feud… what feud?

MY APOLOGIES: some of what I wrote on this page last week was total rubbish. I know you’re rolling your eyes at that. We both realise that that sentence could legitimately open my remarks here on any given week. It’s a fair cop. But, really, last week I said something that was incontrovertibly wrong. I’m sorry. There’s no excuse for it. I mean, it’s not as if we live in an age where someone can just spout unproven drivel constantly and expect to be believed every time, though my mistake was hardly Nixon/Watergate. I intimated that on 2 April, I would be deputising for Andrew Marr on his BBC1 Sunday morning programme. There was literally no one else available so I got the call. I’m not joking. As I answered the phone,…

Feud… what feud?

In modern Melbourne, it’s hip to be square

Awkward millennials are everywhere. From Girls to Chewing Gum to a series actually called Awkward, it’s not cool to be a carefree 20something. What’s cool is to be confused about your career, panicked about sex and prone to eating 18-inch pizzas in bed alone on Friday nights because you hate clubs. In Australian comedy drama Please Like Me, 20-year-old Josh is uncertain about a lot. When we meet him, his girlfriend is dumping him because she thinks he’s gay (he is). Then his mum tries to commit suicide. He deals with both these huge life events by fidgeting, avoiding eye contact and making jokes to avoid confrontation: “I’m almost definitely going to win Young Australian of the Year for this,” he says as he moves back in with his mum…

In modern Melbourne, it’s hip to be square

A voice of reason in times of horror Write yourself a note. Don’t miss Peter Taylor’s Reporting Terror: 50 Years behind the Headlines this Saturday (8pm Radio 4). It’s an RT Choice (p124) and mine, too — an Archive on 4 that spans Taylor’s career in broadcast journalism, an account of how our times have changed and what talking to people caught up in terrorism has taught him. If you long for honesty, reason and reflection amid the firestorms of today’s news, you will find it here. Taylor (right) walks in the steps of Richard Dimbleby, Frank Gillard, René Cutforth and James Cameron, a reporter who can face human horror and help us comprehend it. Nurturing new talent Radio has its own power. A song, a sound, a voice can suddenly connect us…

Life after Windows Vista

Windows Vista was clunky, complex and widely hated, yet millions still use it. If you’re one of them, it’s time to move on. Microsoft will stop supporting the operating system on 11 April, with no updates to its firewall and virus scanner. As well as your data being vulnerable, browsers such as Firefox and Chrome will stop working. (Windows XP, Vista’s popular predecessor, was long since dropped — not that that stops almost 9 per cent of computer users from running it.) Upgrades are cheaper than installing a new system, but Vista is so old you’d need to upgrade twice: to the outdated Windows 8, then to the latest, Windows 10. It’s simpler to buy Windows 10 on a USB key (£120, microsoftstore.com). Check if your hardware can handle it…

Life after Windows Vista

SATURDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY The Voice UK 8.30pm ITV DRAMA So the big question is whether ITV can do in one series what the BBC couldn’t in six. And that is to produce a winner who will go on to be a successful recording star — ie last for more than one or two lacklustre records. If we’re to believe the bookies, it might just happen with a young man that all the judges turned for in one of the very first blind auditions. I’m sticking my neck out slightly because there’s a slim chance that this guy could have been booted out in last week’s show, which at the time of writing hadn’t been broadcast. But Mo Adeniran has been earmarked as a winner from the start. His goosebumpraising rendition…

SATURDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY Line of Duty 9.00pm BBC1 DRAMA Ah, this is more like it, an interview scene lasting a good ten minutes, the first of the new series. So bring on “item reference AP5, document five in your folders”, because I’m ready for you. Just pass me a POLICE lanyard and switch on the tape recorder. Jed Mercurio’s tormented, twisted, breathless story of murder and corruption goes up several gears after last week’s head-butting opener, the one with the fantastically cheeky ending. DCI Roz Huntley (Thandie Newton) has failed to turn up for work. Meanwhile, something nasty has been found in the woods. Superintendent Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar) is at his most magnificently gimleteyed during the crucial interview when a Police Federation rep oversteps the mark by failing to…

PICK OF THE DAY Broadchurch 9.00pm ITV DRAMA OF THE WEEK Everyone has inched slowly forward with their lives after the murder of Danny Latimer. But not his dad. Mark is haunted and lost; he dreams of Danny and the man he could never become. Andrew Buchan is heartbreaking as Mark, restlessly looking for peace of mind, hatching schemes, needing revenge, but spinning aimlessly. His wife Beth is moving on, channelling her energy into helping rape victims, particularly Trish, who’s struggling to cope. “I feel like I’m sinking… I hate myself and I don’t want to be in my body,” she says in an anguished late-night phone call. There are dramatic developments in the investigation and disturbing evidence comes to light. But there’s a bit more focus on the lead detectives’…

TUESDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY Bake Off: Crème de la Crème 8.00pm BBC2 FOOD Jack, the hip young head chef from a top London restaurant, with his ripped jeans and man-bun, is very confident of success in Crème de la Crème, the only remaining Bake Off remnant on the BBC. He sits with his team and reels off the names of celebrity customers (“David Beckham, Prince Harry, Joan Collins”) and how much work he and his staff do in the kitchen every night (“500 covers on a Saturday”). “The pressure’s not an issue,” Jack says confidently. Did I mention that before: how confident he is? Really, really confident. Which is nice. At the start of a new series, new host Angus Deayton replaces Tom Kerridge. And pastry chefs Benoit Blin (hearing him…

TUESDAY Choices

WEDNESDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY Henry IX 9.00pm Gold COMEDY OF THE WEEK New series Henry is having a midlife crisis: he’s reading books on happiness and wearing garish socks. He’s urbane, friendly, 40-something... and king of the United Kingdom. Fearing obsolescence, the monarch (an easy and charming fit for Charles Edwards) initially agrees to a rebrand. But, stooping low from the weight of his crown, he tells his aloof Queen, “We live in a bubble, Katerina, and I intend to burst it.” This diamantéd but dysfunctional family offers gentle laughs: Sally Phillips has crazy fun with a Scandi accent, while Don Warrington radiates avuncular disdain as the king’s butler. And there are reflective interludes in which a clearly smitten Henry flirts with the palace florist Serena (Kara Tointon), hinting at a…

WEDNESDAY Choices

THURSDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY The Last Kingdom 9.00pm BBC2 DRAMA One of the greatest scenes in the whole Last Kingdom saga came when Uhtred’s adopted childhood home with Ragnar the Fearless was attacked and burnt to the ground. Ragnar charging from the doors of his hall, wielding his sword even as he burnt like a human torch, was a scorching image. We’re reminded of it in tonight’s pre-titles catch-up because that attack by Kjartan the Cruel started a blood feud that still runs hot. Step forward Ragnar’s son, Young Ragnar, who lives for the day he can avenge his father’s death. One catch: Kjartan now sits in the impregnable fortress of Dunholm (ie ninth-century Durham). That and a thicket of politics stand between Uhtred and helping his brother take vengeance. Meanwhile,…

THURSDAY Choices

PICK OF THE DAY Decline and Fall 9.00pm BBC1 DRAMA Dr Fagan, headmaster of the decrepit and disreputable Llanabba School, is appalled at the prospect of the dissolute Captain Grimes as a son-in-law. He despises his “wooden leg, abominable features and moral turpitude”. Grimes (Douglas Hodge) isn’t that keen on marrying Flossy (Katy Wix) either, and looks around desperately for a means of escape, even during the actual ceremony. Though this (very faithful) dramatisation of Evelyn Waugh’s comedy of manners at times feels a bit flat and lifeless, a good cast keeps things bumping along. Eva Longoria is winning as the seemingly flighty yet ruthlessly steely Margot Beste-Chetwynde, while Jack Whitehall fits nicely into the role of hapless protagonist Paul Pennyfeather. He’s smitten with Margot, who wants him to do her…

Headaches from hell

AL Kennedy’s Migraine Monday 11.00am Radio 4 I’VE BEEN DISPATCHED to interview novelist AL Kennedy about her Radio 4 programme because, like her, I get migraines. We are, to use a new term I’ve learnt recently, and rather like, both migraineurs. Somehow, “migraineur” manages to make getting migraines sound faintly dashing and French, when really they’re a colossal pain. How colossal? It’s hard to improve on Anthony Burgess’s description of a migraine as like having the prow of a ship driving into his face. Kennedy and I compare symptoms in a pub near her home in rural Essex, but I soon realise that in a game of migraine Top Trumps I’m a lightweight. Yes, I get the visual fireworks (“aura”), the numbness in my mouth and fingers, the speech problems and rock-like…

Headaches from hell

PICK OF THE WEEK

Between the Ears: Second Side Up Saturday 9.30pm Radio 3 I must confess that on my first listen I believed that this was Radio 3’s version of Down the Line (a satire on live phone-in shows devised by Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson that had us all fooled on its first outing on Radio 4). With this in mind, I researched the subject of this bizarre monologue, Mark Talbot, and he is for real. Talbot had always dreamt of working on radio as a music presenter. Between 1978 and 2002 he recorded thousands of analogue cassette tapes from his own “radio station”, customising the content, at his own expense, for individual “listeners”. These ranged from attendees at his regular DJ nights at pubs to his mother and stepfather’s musical choices. There’s nothing…

PICK OF THE WEEK

‘I was having a midlife crisis’

‘If I hadn’t left my husband I would have gone mad’ ALYS FOWLER ALYS FOWLER GREETS me at a Birmingham train station looking like an explorer from the 1930s . The former Gardeners’ World presenter and newspaper columnist is dressed in a tweed jacket, sturdy tan leather lace-up ankle boots and tortoiseshell glasses, with her distinctive auburn mane piled up on top of her head. She is carrying two bags, one an old-fashioned rucksack, the other a slim duffel. This bag, containing an inflatable kayak, changed Fowler’s life, an epiphany movingly chronicled in her new book, Hidden Nature. Talking ten-to-the-dozen, the 39-year-old plunges me into the hidden labyrinth of canals that run through the city like veins under the skin. As a Brummie, I was lazily aware that the West Midlands had…

‘I was having a midlife crisis’

The outback beckons

THE DRY JANE HARPER Simon MayoMonday 5pm Radio 2 To readers of this column, the story of Jane Harper’s The Dry (£11.50, incl p&p) will sound familiar: a bestselling Australian thriller given a star-studded Hollywood adaptation. Yes, just like Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies, currently airing on Sky Atlantic and which stars, coincidentally, Reese Witherspoon, whose production company has just snapped up film rights for The Dry. Australia, then, seems to be the place to find the next big thing — and it’s the perfect backdrop for Harper’s unsettling debut novel, which sees Aaron Falk return to the outback community he left decades ago, for the funeral of his childhood best friend. THE COWS DAWN O’PORTER Graham NortonSat 10am Radio 2 Dawn O’Porter has a new novel out — but fans of her last two may be…

The outback beckons

Joe Swift on surefire success with seeds SPRING IS THE ideal time to sow fast-growing half-hardy annuals so that, come the end of May, they’ll be ready to plant out and fill the summer garden with colour and drama. Plants such as cool nicotianas (tobacco plants), graceful cosmos (main picture), spicy nasturtiums and the exotic leonotis (or lion’s ear, below) take between 12 and 16 weeks from sowing to flowering. Dot them, drift them, grow them in pots and containers – just feed and deadhead them regularly to keep them going all summer. You can buy them ready to go from garden centres, but sowing seed yourself is more satisfying, cheaper and gives you greater choice. Annuals flower, seed and die outdoors in one year, but half-hardy annuals need some heat to germinate,…

Feud… what feud?

MY APOLOGIES: some of what I wrote on this page last week was total rubbish. I know you’re rolling your eyes at that. We both realise that that sentence could legitimately open my remarks here on any given week. It’s a fair cop. But, really, last week I said something that was incontrovertibly wrong. I’m sorry. There’s no excuse for it. I mean, it’s not as if we live in an age where someone can just spout unproven drivel constantly and expect to be believed every time, though my mistake was hardly Nixon/Watergate. I intimated that on 2 April, I would be deputising for Andrew Marr on his BBC1 Sunday morning programme. There was literally no one else available so I got the call. I’m not joking. As I answered…

Feud… what feud?

Michelangelo’s Rome

THE NATIONAL GALLERY’S new blockbuster show celebrates the partnership between Michelangelo Buonarroti, arguably the greatest artist that ever lived, and Sebastiano del Piombo, the lesser-known painter who became Michelangelo’s vital ally in the bitter rivalry with Raphael in 16th-century Rome. The exhibition is crammed with treasures, but if you can get to Italy, there are even more wonders to see. Here are ten of the best… 1 SISTINE CHAPEL The big one in any Michelangelo tour, and certainly the attraction with the biggest queue. Arrive early at the Vatican Museum, because the Sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo invited Sebastiano onto the scaffold to watch him work, is unmissable. The Creation of Adam is a defining work, and looking up at God reaching out a finger to Adam remains a gobsmacking moment. Though, invariably,…

Michelangelo’s Rome

A voice of reason in times of horror Write yourself a note. Don’t miss Peter Taylor’s Reporting Terror: 50 Years behind the Headlines this Saturday (8pm Radio 4). It’s an RT Choice (p124) and mine, too — an Archive on 4 that spans Taylor’s career in broadcast journalism, an account of how our times have changed and what talking to people caught up in terrorism has taught him. If you long for honesty, reason and reflection amid the firestorms of today’s news, you will find it here. Taylor (right) walks in the steps of Richard Dimbleby, Frank Gillard, René Cutforth and James Cameron, a reporter who can face human horror and help us comprehend it. Nurturing new talent Radio has its own power. A song, a sound, a voice can…

Safeguard your legacy

FROM 1 APRIL people can leave more of their assets to children or grandchildren free of Inheritance Tax. The new rules apply where a family home is left to direct descendants and could save up to £80,000 off any tax bill. The change follows the promise made in 2007 by George Osborne that if elected, a Conservative government would raise the Inheritance Tax threshold to £1 million. He never did that but the new arrangements will help protect the family home a little more, though the rules are rather complex and professional advice should be sought. Inheritance Tax starts on total estates above £325,000. The new rule will add up to £100,000 to that allowance if part of the estate is the family home and it is left to direct descendants. They…

Safeguard your legacy

PRIZE CROSSWORD One reader will win a luxurious one-night stay at the Malvern Spa*. The prize includes a threecourse evening meal, breakfast and full use of the amazing spa facilities during your stay. For more information on the Malvern Spa visit www.themalvernspa.com, or call 01684 898290. WORDFINDER Find the name of the show in the shaded squares to win the prize below. EASY CLUES For fun! Email your answers to xword14@radiotimescomps.co.uk PRIZE CROSSWORD ACROSS 7 Some paper to get without an account (5) 8 Upstart takes Riviera trip carrying small weight (9) 10 Reportedly carry off shrub (4) 11 Watch during off-day as a warning (10) 12 Ringer’s outpost with signal too garbled (13) 15 Unknown girl follows this French artist (7) 16 Beginning with six captured via test tube (2,5) 18 This DJ needs a drink! (7,6) 20 Burden with…

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… In last week’s Only Connect the clue Bermuda appeared twice. One of those clues should have been The Chase. Apologies for the mistake. SCRIBBLE PAD Order the Radio Times Crossword Books (vol 2–4) now for just £3 each! Call 0344 245 8092 quoting RTCW14.…

BBC4 – your verdict

LETTER OF THE WEEK Feedback (18 March) asked for our verdict on BBC4. It’s the channel I watch more than any other. It has the wit and intelligence that seem to be increasingly lacking on other channels. It’s been responsible for introducing the best comedies, the best quiz show and many of the best documentaries of recent years, as well as making us all devotees of Scandi noir. The channel represents what the BBC should be all about: not just giving people what they want, but what they didn’t even realise they wanted. My only regret is that budget cuts have reduced its original output and in particular that it no longer makes the excellent dramas of its earlier years. Nick MorganAinderby Steeple, North Yorkshire Nick Morgan wins an award-winning Evoke D2 portable DAB…

BBC4 – your verdict

FRESH LICK OF PAINT I so enjoyed The Big Painting Challenge (BBC1). The introduction of Pascal Anson and Diana Ali as mentors gave a new perspective, and their innovative ideas for planning a project encouraged imagination and the courage to take a different approach. Their guidance and support motivated the painters to be the best they could be. As an amateur painter, I now feel inspired to be more adventurous with my own projects. Suman was a worthy winner, but all the competitors had such talent, and I wish them all every success. I’m sure they’ll have inspired many people to take up their brushes. Barbara FrameWindsor, Berkshire SUBLIME No 9 Dark, devious, sublimely surreal. Can’t think of a greater way to spend half an hour than Inside No 9 (BBC2). It is short-story…

‘He called real ale the food of the brain’

We’d always look forward to going to Oxford to film Morse and Lewis because we’d get to see Colin. It’s quite unusual for the creator to be on set so much, and he spent a lot of time with us. It was lovely to get Colin’s angle on each script as he had envisaged Morse very much as himself — the inspector’s love of real ale and Wagner and AE Housman and crosswords. Colin did The Times crossword each day in about 15 minutes. And he loved to chat. He was very inquisitive and would talk about Greek and Latin derivations. And then there was the pub. For Colin, the pub was everything. That was his main hobby — he loved doing pub crawls in Oxford and chatting to any academics…

‘He called real ale the food of the brain’

Friday evenings aren’t the same now that Tracey Ullman’s Show (BBC1) is over! I particularly laughed, and at the same time felt sad, at the old mother and spinster daughter sketches. The portrayal of a possessive mother was unnerving. I assume it wasn’t Tracey Ullman, so who is this amazing, funny actress? Mrs J Stubley, Loxwood, West Sussex Although the character of the middle-aged daughter, Kay, was played by Tracey Ullman, a BBC spokesperson tells us: “The mother character is played by veteran actress Joan Linder. She has appeared in many comedy shows including Little Britain and Not Going Out. Her first TV part listed on the website imdb.com was in a Sunday Night Theatre play from 1955!” Joan, 83, who lives in Essex, tells RT: “I was very pleased to do the…

‘I can see flamingos flying by’

What’s the view from your sofa? I live on Necker in the Virgin Islands with my wife Joan. Two minutes from our house is a Balinese-style pagoda called the Temple and that is basically our living room. There’s a sofa there with rows of wooden shelves with lots of books and family photos and a fairly new widescreen TV nestled in the middle. To my right I can see the island spreading out below me – to my left is the ocean, and up above I can see flamingos flying by. Basically a high-end chill-out room, then? Well, sort of, but I also spend most of my time here working with my assistant Helen. I’m usually up by 5am and go to the Temple to check my emails and social media and watch…

‘I can see flamingos flying by’

‘I was having a midlife crisis’

‘If I hadn’t left my husband I would have gone mad’ ALYS FOWLER ALYS FOWLER GREETS me at a Birmingham train station looking like an explorer from the 1930s . The former Gardeners’ World presenter and newspaper columnist is dressed in a tweed jacket, sturdy tan leather lace-up ankle boots and tortoiseshell glasses, with her distinctive auburn mane piled up on top of her head. She is carrying two bags, one an old-fashioned rucksack, the other a slim duffel. This bag, containing an inflatable kayak, changed Fowler’s life, an epiphany movingly chronicled in her new book, Hidden Nature. Talking ten-to-the-dozen, the 39-year-old plunges me into the hidden labyrinth of canals that run through the city like veins under the skin. As a Brummie, I was lazily aware that the West…

‘I was having a midlife crisis’

The outback beckons

THE DRY JANE HARPER Simon Mayo Monday 5pm Radio 2 To readers of this column, the story of Jane Harper’s The Dry (£11.50, incl p&p) will sound familiar: a bestselling Australian thriller given a star-studded Hollywood adaptation. Yes, just like Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies, currently airing on Sky Atlantic and which stars, coincidentally, Reese Witherspoon, whose production company has just snapped up film rights for The Dry. Australia, then, seems to be the place to find the next big thing — and it’s the perfect backdrop for Harper’s unsettling debut novel, which sees Aaron Falk return to the outback community he left decades ago, for the funeral of his childhood best friend. THE COWS DAWN O’PORTER Graham Norton Sat 10am Radio 2 Dawn O’Porter has a new novel out — but…

The outback beckons

Joe Swift on surefire success with seeds SPRING IS THE ideal time to sow fast-growing half-hardy annuals so that, come the end of May, they’ll be ready to plant out and fill the summer garden with colour and drama. Plants such as cool nicotianas (tobacco plants), graceful cosmos (main picture), spicy nasturtiums and the exotic leonotis (or lion’s ear, below) take between 12 and 16 weeks from sowing to flowering. Dot them, drift them, grow them in pots and containers – just feed and deadhead them regularly to keep them going all summer. You can buy them ready to go from garden centres, but sowing seed yourself is more satisfying, cheaper and gives you greater choice. Annuals flower, seed and die outdoors in one year, but half-hardy annuals need some…

Michelangelo’s Rome

THE NATIONAL GALLERY’S new blockbuster show celebrates the partnership between Michelangelo Buonarroti, arguably the greatest artist that ever lived, and Sebastiano del Piombo, the lesser-known painter who became Michelangelo’s vital ally in the bitter rivalry with Raphael in 16th-century Rome. The exhibition is crammed with treasures, but if you can get to Italy, there are even more wonders to see. Here are ten of the best… 1 SISTINE CHAPEL The big one in any Michelangelo tour, and certainly the attraction with the biggest queue. Arrive early at the Vatican Museum, because the Sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo invited Sebastiano onto the scaffold to watch him work, is unmissable. The Creation of Adam is a defining work, and looking up at God reaching out a finger to Adam remains a gobsmacking moment.…

Michelangelo’s Rome

Safeguard your legacy

FROM 1 APRIL people can leave more of their assets to children or grandchildren free of Inheritance Tax. The new rules apply where a family home is left to direct descendants and could save up to £80,000 off any tax bill. The change follows the promise made in 2007 by George Osborne that if elected, a Conservative government would raise the Inheritance Tax threshold to £1 million. He never did that but the new arrangements will help protect the family home a little more, though the rules are rather complex and professional advice should be sought. Inheritance Tax starts on total estates above £325,000. The new rule will add up to £100,000 to that allowance if part of the estate is the family home and it is left to direct…

Safeguard your legacy

PRIZE CROSSWORD One reader will win a luxurious one-night stay at the Malvern Spa*. The prize includes a threecourse evening meal, breakfast and full use of the amazing spa facilities during your stay. For more information on the Malvern Spa visit www.themalvernspa.com, or call 01684 898290. WORDFINDER Find the name of the show in the shaded squares to win the prize below. EASY CLUES For fun! Email your answers to xword14@radiotimescomps.co.uk PRIZE CROSSWORD ACROSS 7 Some paper to get without an account (5) 8 Upstart takes Riviera trip carrying small weight (9) 10 Reportedly carry off shrub (4) 11 Watch during off-day as a warning (10) 12 Ringer’s outpost with signal too garbled (13) 15 Unknown girl follows this French artist (7) 16 Beginning with six captured via test tube…

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… In last week’s Only Connect the clue Bermuda appeared twice. One of those clues should have been The Chase. Apologies for the mistake. SCRIBBLE PAD Order the Radio Times Crossword Books (vol 2–4) now for just £3 each! Call 0344…

FRESH LICK OF PAINT I so enjoyed The Big Painting Challenge (BBC1). The introduction of Pascal Anson and Diana Ali as mentors gave a new perspective, and their innovative ideas for planning a project encouraged imagination and the courage to take a different approach. Their guidance and support motivated the painters to be the best they could be. As an amateur painter, I now feel inspired to be more adventurous with my own projects. Suman was a worthy winner, but all the competitors had such talent, and I wish them all every success. I’m sure they’ll have inspired many people to take up their brushes. Barbara Frame Windsor, Berkshire SUBLIME No 9 Dark, devious, sublimely surreal. Can’t think of a greater way to spend half an hour than Inside No 9…

BBC4 – your verdict

LETTER OF THE WEEK Feedback (18 March) asked for our verdict on BBC4. It’s the channel I watch more than any other. It has the wit and intelligence that seem to be increasingly lacking on other channels. It’s been responsible for introducing the best comedies, the best quiz show and many of the best documentaries of recent years, as well as making us all devotees of Scandi noir. The channel represents what the BBC should be all about: not just giving people what they want, but what they didn’t even realise they wanted. My only regret is that budget cuts have reduced its original output and in particular that it no longer makes the excellent dramas of its earlier years. Nick Morgan Ainderby Steeple, North Yorkshire Nick Morgan wins an award-winning…

BBC4 – your verdict

‘He called real ale the food of the brain’

We’d always look forward to going to Oxford to film Morse and Lewis because we’d get to see Colin. It’s quite unusual for the creator to be on set so much, and he spent a lot of time with us. It was lovely to get Colin’s angle on each script as he had envisaged Morse very much as himself — the inspector’s love of real ale and Wagner and AE Housman and crosswords. Colin did The Times crossword each day in about 15 minutes. And he loved to chat. He was very inquisitive and would talk about Greek and Latin derivations. And then there was the pub. For Colin, the pub was everything. That was his main hobby — he loved doing pub crawls in Oxford and chatting to any…

‘He called real ale the food of the brain’

Friday evenings aren’t the same now that Tracey Ullman’s Show (BBC1) is over! I particularly laughed, and at the same time felt sad, at the old mother and spinster daughter sketches. The portrayal of a possessive mother was unnerving. I assume it wasn’t Tracey Ullman, so who is this amazing, funny actress? Mrs J Stubley, Loxwood, West Sussex Although the character of the middle-aged daughter, Kay, was played by Tracey Ullman, a BBC spokesperson tells us: “The mother character is played by veteran actress Joan Linder. She has appeared in many comedy shows including Little Britain and Not Going Out. Her first TV part listed on the website imdb.com was in a Sunday Night Theatre play from 1955!” Joan, 83, who lives in Essex, tells RT: “I was very pleased…

‘I can see flamingos flying by’

What’s the view from your sofa? I live on Necker in the Virgin Islands with my wife Joan. Two minutes from our house is a Balinese-style pagoda called the Temple and that is basically our living room. There’s a sofa there with rows of wooden shelves with lots of books and family photos and a fairly new widescreen TV nestled in the middle. To my right I can see the island spreading out below me – to my left is the ocean, and up above I can see flamingos flying by. Basically a high-end chill-out room, then? Well, sort of, but I also spend most of my time here working with my assistant Helen. I’m usually up by 5am and go to the Temple to check my emails and social…

‘I can see flamingos flying by’

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