Saturday Review

By BBC Radio 4Society & Culture

Saturday Review episodes

April 21, 2018 Tina Turner, Let The Sunshine In, Aminatta Forna, Colourising historical photographs, The Woman In White
Let The Sunshine In, directed by Claire Denis is a French film starring Juliette Binoche as a divorced Parisienne dealing with love and looking for a relationship that will work for her
The latest West End jukebox musical Tina is about the tumultuous life of Tina Turner and her transformation from Anna Mae Bullock - born into rural poverty in the Southern USA - into half of Ike-and-Tina-Turner and a disastrous violent marriage into a world-conquering solo superstar
Aminatta Forna's new novel Happiness follows the story of two strangers who bump into each other on Waterloo Bridge in London and their intertwining narratives. An urban wildlife expert and a psychiatrist specialising in PTSD share a lot in common
Marina Amaral is a photograph colourisation expert and her work is much admired. She has colourised photographs of prisoners at Auschwitz and gained plaudits from the general public and survivors groups but does altering a historical document change our understanding of its meaning?
BBC TV's latest Sunday night series is an adaptation of Wilkie Collins' The Woman In White
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are David Olusoga, Shahidha Bari and Maev Kennedy. The producer is Oliver Jones.
53 min
April 14, 2018 Quiz, Custody, Lost in Space, Nikesh Shukla, Surface Work
Quiz is the latest play from James Graham. Its subject matter is the edition of Who Wants To be A Millionaire in which a lot of coughing went on. We the audience are asked to vote on whether we think the major is guilty or not of trying to beat the system.
French film Custody is a searing and unflinching look at a disintegrating marriage and the emotional and psychological consequences on all those in the family
1960's sci-fi TV series Lost In Space is returning. And this time it's on Netflix with all the enormo-budgets that have become associated with that channel. But has spending more money made it any better?
Nikesh Shukla's novel: The One Who Wrote Destiny is about the immigrant experience of a Gujarati family into the UK, following different generations' approach to assimilation and identity
There's an exhibition of work by 50 women abstract artists from 1918 to 2018 at Victoria Miro Gallery in London, called Surface Work.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Ayesha Hazarika, Pat Kane and Lynn Nead. The producer is Oliver Jones.
48 min
April 07, 2018 Thoroughbreds, The Way of the World, Richard Powers, City in the City, Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Black comedy thriller film Thoroughbreds is about 2 American teenage girls who hatch a plot to kill one of their step-fathers. Is it easier to hire an assassin or do it themselves? And will emotions get in the way of such a potentially messy business?
Congreve's The Way Of The World at London's Donmar Warehouse is a restoration comedy. But how funny can one make a wildly convoluted 300 year old plot about inheritance funny for today's theatre goers?
Richard Powers' latest novel is The Overstory - about mankind's relationship with the arboreal world. Eight stories set around the USA over several centuries come together to make readers rethink their relationship with trees
BBC TV is broadcasting a 4 part adaptation of China Mieville's novel The City & The City. It's a complicated speculative fiction work involving two cities which occupy exactly the same space and time but are invisible to each other. Well sort of... See if our reviewers have made sense of the idea
The Arts Council Collection tours the UK bringing major works by established and emerging British artists to venues which might not otherwise have access to important contemporary art. The exhibition In My Shoes at Yorkshire Sculpture Park is the opening venue for a chance to see the newest collection additions.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Jessica Burton, John Mullan and Sarah Crompton. The producer is Oliver Jones.
52 min
March 31, 2018 Isle of Dogs, The Inheritance, To Throw Away Unopened, Hope to Nope
The American auteur Wes Anderson's new stop motion animation feature film "Isle of Dogs" is set in a dystopian future Japan and features the voices of Bryan Cranston, Bill Murray, Greta Gerwig, Scarlet Johansson and Edward Norton - as dogs marooned in a garbage dump called Trash island. This is Anderson's second animation after his adaptation of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox, and tells the story of 12 year old run away Atari on a mission to save his dog, Spots, after a deadly dog flu virus spreads through the canine population.
The Inheritance at London's Young Vic by American playwright Matthew Lopez is an epic two part play about gay life in New York in the shadow of the Aids crisis. Directed by Stephen Daldry, whose credits include Billy Eliot, The Hours and The Reader, The Inheritance is inspired by EM Forster's Howard's End which Lopez read as a teenager growing up in Florida Panhandle and features Vanessa Redgrave in Part 2.
Viv Albertine was the guitarist in cult post punk band The Slits turned solo artist, tv and film director and now writer. To Throw Away Unopened is a follow up to her award winning memoir Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. and explores the impact her parents had upon her and her sister growing up - prompted by the dramatic falling out between the sisters as their mother lay dying.
Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008- 2018 at the Design Museum in London examines the political graphic design of a turbulent decade. The political events featured include: the 2008 financial crash; the Barack Obama presidency; the Arab Spring; the Occupy movement; the Charlie Hebdo attacks; Brexit and Donald Trump's presidency.
50 min
March 24, 2018 A Wrinkle In Time, The Great Wave, Philip Hensher, Come Home (BBC1), America's Cool Modernism
Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kayling star as deities who are millions of years old in the £108m mega-budget film: A Wrinkle In Time. It's a story which mixes physics, time travel, female empowerment, and bullying at school. Does the presence of Oprah et al make it divine or dreadful?
The Great Wave is a new play by Japanese Ulsterman Francis Turnly about the kidnapping in the 1970s of Japanese citizens by the North Korean authorities. Some returned, others were (and maybe still are) held by their captors. It's running at The Dorfman at London's National Theatre,
Philip Hensher's latest novel The Friendly Ones follows two contemporaneous storylines about 2 families; one British, the other Bangladeshi.
Come Home on BBC1 is a new drama about a family break-up told from different sides of the story. It's written by Danny Brocklehurst and features Christopher Eccleston as the dad, Greg
America's Cool Modernism at Oxford's Ashmolean looks at art from the US from O'Keeffe to Hopper; before the word 'cool' was synonymous with 'groovy'
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Mark Ravenhill, Deborah Orr and Amanda Craig . The producer is Oliver Jones.
54 min
March 17, 2018 Frankenstein in Manchester, Palme d'Or winner The Square, The Immortalists, Tacita Dean, Annihilation
A new theatrical adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at The Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre aims to be one of the most faithful versions to the original novel. What does this add to our understanding of the play and of the Creature?
This year's Palme d'Or winning film The Square, is a Swedish satirical drama dealing with the world of contemporary art and our personal boundaries and responsibilities.
Chloe Benjamin's latest novel 'The Immortalists' follows the lives of a group of contemporary New York Jewish American siblings and poses the question "how would you live your life if you knew the day you would die'?
Two exhibitions have opened this week in London of the work of Tacita Dean (former YBA), known primarily for her work in film
Annihilation is a new release on Netflix, written and directed by Alex Garland. With five female leads, its scheduled theatrical release has been dropped, but can we read into that decision: that it's no good?
Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Susannah Clapp, Ryan Gilbey and Alex Clark. The producer is Oliver Jones.
50 min
March 10, 2018 Sweet Country, High Society at Rijksmuseum, Macbeth at National, Wendy Cope, David Byrne
Australian film Sweet Country is an Australian Western set in the 1920s - can there be justice when an aboriginal man kills a white farmer in self defence.
High Society is a new exhibition at The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam - a series of life-size portraits from the masters of art history from Rembrandt to Manet and Velasquez.
The National Theatre's latest production stars Rory Kinnear and Anne Marie Duff in Macbeth.
Wendy Cope's first collection of poetry in 7 years is Anecdotal Evidence
David Byrne has been one of the most consistently inventive and exciting musicians and performers for more than 4 decades. His latest release American Utopia is his first solo album for nearly a decade-and-a-half and looks at the state of the US right now. What does his eye alight upon and what does he make of it...?
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Sir Richard Eyre, Tracy Chevalier and Natalie Haynes. The producer is Oliver Jones.
52 min
March 05, 2018 Fanny and Alexander, The Nile Hilton Incident, Toby Litt, Minimalism, Cross Dressing
Fanny and Alexander opens at London's Old Vic Theatre. Adapted from Ingmar Bergman's award-winning 1982 film, how well does such a sumptuous film transfer to the stage?
Also coming from Sweden is our film this week (well, to be more accurate, it's a Swedish/German/Egyptian co-production). The Nile Hilton Incident tells the true story of an Egyptian policeman investigating the death of a nightclub singer in Cairo, as The Arab Spring is beginning. But the justice system seems intent on stymieing his work.
Toby Litt's latest novel is Notes For a Young Gentleman. It's told in the form of advice left behind by a WW2 soldier after a mission that went wrong.
In Tones Drones and Arpeggios; The Magic of Minimalism on BBC4, Charles Hazlewood interviews La Monte Young and Terry Riley about the movement which stripped music back to its sonic essentials and power
The latest exhibition at London's Photgraphers' Gallery is 'Under Cover, a Secret History of Cross Dressers' Made up of a collection of amateur 'found photographs' from Europe and the US dating from 1880 onwards, it explores the many manifestations of gender non-conformity and cross-dressing.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Rosie Boycott, Linda Grant and Robert Hanks. The producer is Oliver Jones.
51 min
February 24, 2018 Dark River, The B*easts, BBC TV's Civilisations, Fire Sermon, Pop! Art in Chichester
Ruth Wilson stars in British film Dark River; a tragedy about a family coping with death on a rundown farm in Yorkshire,
The B*easts at London's Bush Theatre is an exploration of the pornification of culture and the sexualisation of children.
Kenneth Clark's landmark 1969 BBC TV series Civilisation explored the history of Western art, architecture and philosophy since the Dark Ages. It's now been remade as Civilisations.
Fire Sermon is a novel by Jamie Quatro about a mother devoted to her family who begins an affair, throwing all her moral certainties into a spiral.
Pop! Art in a Changing Britain is a new exhibition at Chichester's Pallant Gallery. The issues raised by pop artists in the 50s and 60s about mass media, the cult of celebrity, questions of identity and prevalent political concerns still resonate today.
Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Kate Maltby, Viv Groskop and Kevin Jackson. The producer is Oliver Jones.
51 min
February 17, 2018 Lady Bird, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Kettle's Yard, Howard Brenton: The Shadow Factory, Troy
Greta Gerwig's latest film stars Saoirse Ronan. Lady Bird has been Oscar-nominated but will it impress our panel of reviewers?
Alfred Döblin's 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz is considered one of the finest novels ever written. How does a brand new translation improve it?
For more than 35 years, Kettle's Yard in Cambridge was the home of Jim and Helen Ede and they opened it to the public allowing everyone to enjoy their art collection. Following 2 years of closure and a multi-million pound programme of improvements it has reopened
Howard Brenton's play, The Shadow Factory is the opening production for a new arts centre in Southampton. Set during The Battle of Britain - when Southampton was heavily bombed - it tells the story of a government initiative to make more spitfires using the facilities and technologies of many small industries throughout the city
Troy; Fall of a City is a new swords and sandals series on on BBC1 based on Ancient Greek tales
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Deborah Moggach, Meg Rosoff and Boyd Tonkin. The producer is Oliver Jones.
49 min