Saturday Review

By BBC Radio 4Society & Culture

Saturday Review episodes

May 06, 2017 Angels In America, The Ferryman, Harmonium, Laurent Binet, Eric Gill
A revival of Tony Kushner's epic play about the US AIDS epidemic Angels In America is being staged at London's National Theatre. It's nearly 8 hours long (in two parts); is it still pertinent and is it worth sitting through?
Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem was an enormous theatrical success and his latest The Ferryman has just opened at London's Royal Court Theatre. Set during The Troubles in Northern Ireland it deals with one family's unavoidable and unwilling involvement
The family at the heart of Japanese film Harmonium seem to have a functioning but unemotional stability. And then a stranger comes into their lives and slowly things change. For the better or for the worse?
Laurent Binet's new novel The Seventh Function of Language is about the death (or was it an assassination?!) of Roland Barthes - the death of the author of "The Death Of The Author"
Eric Gill was one of the finest sculptors of the 20th Century. And also a paedophile. A new exhibition in his home village of Ditchling, tries to see if it's possible to appreciate his art as entirely separate from his biography
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Damian Barr, Maria Delgado and Gillian Slovo. The producer is Oliver Jones.
48 min
April 29, 2017 Lady Macbeth, Obsession, See What I Have Done, Whitechapel Gallery, Griefcast
British film Lady Macbeth has been much praised for the central perfomance by Florence Pugh as the intelligent complicated 19th century woman sold into marriage and realising that her soul is being stifled.
Ivo Van Hove's prodiuction of Obsession - an adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice stars Jude Law. It should be theatrical gold...
Sarah Schmidt's debut novel See What I Have Done deals with the still-unsolved Lizzie Borden case from 1892: "Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks"
London's Whitechapel Gallery has a new exhibition: Iself, bringing together the work of artists exploring their own personal identity
Griefcast - In Cariad Lloyd's podcast she talks with fellow comedians about their own experiences of coping with grieving, mourning and death and mortality. How funny can such a grim subject be?
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Alex Preston, Andrea Rose and Kit Davies. The producer is Oliver Jones.
47 min
April 22, 2017 22/04/2017
Gemma Arterton and Bill Nighy star in in Their Finest; a new film about the vital role of movies in Britain during The War.
A revival of Christopher Hampton's 1970 play The Philanthropist has opened in London. It features a glittering array of actors best known for their TV work. How well do their skills transfer to the stage?
Lisa McInerny won The Bailey's Prize 's for her first novel The Glorious Heresies. Her latest, The Blood Miracles, continues that story with same characters many years older and a little wiser
Ashley Bickerton is a painter and sculptor whose work is much admired (and collected) by Damien Hirst, among others. A new exhibition at Hirst's Newport Gallery includes work from throughout Bickertion's career
The Hours is a new radio dramatization of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer winning book inspired by Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. Starring Rosamund Pike it has the tricky job of maintaining three simultaneous plotlines set in different eras
Viv Groskop's guests are Emma Jane Unsworth, Ryan Gilbey and Ekow Eshun. The producer is Oliver Jones.
47 min
April 15, 2017 The Handmaiden, White Tears, Guards at the Taj, Born to Kill, Game Changers
South Korean film director Park Chan-Wook's latest film "The Handmaiden" is based on Welsh writer Sarah Waters' hit 2002 novel Fingersmith about a lesbian love affair in Victorian England transported to 1930s Korea.
Award winning British writer Hari Kunzru's fifth novel, White Tears, is a ghost story, a terrifying murder mystery, a timely meditation on race, and a love letter to all the forgotten geniuses of American music and Delta Mississippi Blues.
American Pulitzer Prize nominee Rajiv Joseph's new play opens at the newly refurbished Bush Theatre in London and tells the story of two guards at the Taj Mahal, as the magnificent monument nears completion in Agra, India in 1648.
Born to Kill is a new four-part drama exploring the mind of Sam, a teenager on the verge of acting out suppressed psychopathic desires. As this chilling coming of age drama unfolds, decades of deceit are revealed and Sam's family's long buried past returns with a vengeance. Starring Romola Garai (The Hour, Suffragette) and Daniel Mays (Line of Duty).
And Game Changers, Another Way to Play at Somerset House in London shows how designers and artists continuously adapt the mechanics of familiar games, featuring chess, billiards and mazes.
48 min
April 08, 2017 Consent, A Quiet Passion, Jon McGregor, Tate St Ives, Car Share and Bucket
Nina Raine's new play Consent at London's National Theatre explores the tricky intertwining of modern relationships and legal niceties
The life of American poet Emily Dickinson is dramatised in Terence Davies' new film A Quiet Passion. Does enough happen to make it dramatically interesting?
Jon McGregor's newest novel Reservoir 13 looks at a community exploring the loss of one family, as life goes on for everyone else
Tate St Ives is reopening after many months of closure for development. The first exhibition is The Studio and The Sea
We look at a couple of car-based TV comedies; Peter Kaye in Car Share + Miriam Margolyes in Bucket
And in the podcast, our guests reveal what they enjoy in the world of arts when they're not reviewing it for us
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Katie Puckrik, Alex Clark and Kevin Jackson. The producer is Oliver Jones.
46 min
April 01, 2017 Ghost In The Shell, Don Juan in Soho, Les Murray, Comics at Kelvingrove Museum, Harlots on ITV
Scarlett Johansson plays Major in the manga-based action film Ghost In The Shell.
David Tennant leads the cast of Don Juan in Soho. Patrick Marber's play, based on Moliere's original - which debuted a decade ago - reaches London's West End for the first time
Australian poet Les Murray's latest collection On Bunyah cogitates on the rural spot in New South Wales where his ancestors settled and lived - Wild Horses Creek, known to the aboriginal Australians as Bunyah
The Art of Comics, a new exhibition in Glasgow, looks at the work of comicbook artist Frank Quitely, "from Krypton to Kelvingrove.. from Gotham to Glasgow".
Harlots is a TV series starting on ITV Encore - is it too good to be hidden away on a niche channel?
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Miranda Carter, Jim White and Robert hanks. The producer is Oliver Jones.
49 min
March 25, 2017 RSC's Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, The Eyes of my Mother, David Vann, BBC's Decline and Fall
The RSC is staging Shakepeare's Roman plays, beginning with Julius Caesar and Antony & Cleopatra - how have they made them chime for today's audiences?
The debut film from American director Nicolas Pesce The Eyes of my Mother is a black and white gothic tale of murder, home-invasion incest, necrophilia, abduction, imprisonment, involuntary surgery..I could go on, but I think you've probably got the idea by now. Is it any good?
David Vann's new novel is Bright Air Black, a poetic prose retelling of the Medea story.
BBC TV had adapted Evelyn Waugh's Decline & Fall as a 3 part series starring Jack Whitehall - do our reviewers think a good job has been done with a classic novel?
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Christopher Frayling, Kathryn Hughes and Alice Jones. The producer is Oliver Jones.
42 min
March 18, 2017 Griff Rhys Jones in The Miser, Personal Shopper, George Saunders, Michelangelo and Sebastiano, Carnage
Griff Rhys Jones plays the title rol in a freely adapted production of Moliere's The Miser
Personal Shopper stars Kristen Stewart as a young woman trying to communicate with her dead twin brother beyond the veil
President Abraham Lincoln never overcame his grief at the death of his son Willie and American novelist George Saunders has written Lincoln In The Bardo which explores how he tried to cope
An exhibition of works by Michelangelo & Sebastiano at London's National Gallery explores the two artists mutually supportive and inspiring relationship
Simon Amstell has created Carnage, a mockumentary from the future looking at the rise of veganism.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Mark Ravenhill, Rosie Boycott and Melissa Harrison. The producer is Oliver Jones.
43 min
March 04, 2017 Viceroy's House, Hamlet, Jake Arnott, Photography on BBC TV, Serpentine Gallery
Gurinder Chadha's film Viceroy's House mixes a love story with the history of Indian Partition
Andrew Scott plays The Dane in The Almeida Theatre's latest production of Hamlet
The Fatal Tree is Jake Arnott's newst novel, set in 18th century London, written in street slang of the time and telling a true story about a married criminal couple of the time
BBC TV's Britain In Focus is a series looking at the history of photography in The UK, at the professional and personal level
The Serpentine Gallery has an exhibition of work by Zambian-born British conceptual artist John Latham
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are John Tusa, Bidisha and Laura Ashe. The producer is Oliver Jones.
43 min
February 25, 2017 Twelfth Night, It's Only the End of the World, America after the Fall at RA, Big Little Lies, Ross Raisin
Tamsin Greig has been gender-blind cast as Malvolia in The National Theatre's production of Twelfth Night. Does it work or is it an interesting novelty
Quebecois film director Xavier Dolan's latest film It's Only The End Of The World was booed when it won The Grand Prix at last year's Cannes Festival and some reviewers have described it as "disappointing" "excruciating" and "deeply unsatisfying". What will our panel make of it?
America After The Fall is an exhibition at London's Royal Academy which looks at painting in the USA in the 1930s, responding to social change and economic anxiety. HBO's Big Little Lies is a new TV series with an all star cast and a grubby tale of the dirt that lies beneath modern glamour
Ross Raisin's new novel A Natural is about a young footballer whose dreams of reaching the upper leagues are rapidly fading and whose identity is conflicted.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Russell Kane, Abigail Morris and Susan Jeffreys. The producer is Oliver Jones.
43 min