Saturday Review

By BBC Radio 4Society & Culture

Saturday Review episodes

July 23, 2016 Spielberg's The BFG, Adam Haslett's Imagine Me Gone, Eggleston portraits, LaBute's Some Girls
The biggest film maker in contemporary Hollywood takes on a much-loved story by a master story teller. Stephen Spielberg directs Roald Dahl's The BFG.
Adam Haslett's novel Imagine Me Gone deals with an unhappy family trying to find happiness stability and normality.
An new exhibition of photographic portraits by William Eggleston provides an insight into his home life. Previously untitled works have now had the sitters identified, lending a new twist to the pictures
Some Girls by Neil LaBute is revived at London's Park Theatre. It's an examination of fragile male psyche with ulterior motives
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Sathnam Sanghera, Alice Rawsthorn and Barb Jungr. The producer is Oliver Jones.
36 min
July 16, 2016 Ghostbusters, Unreachable, Kei Miller, Liverpool Biennial, Secret Agent
The remaking of Ghostbusters in 2016 has 4 women taking the leading roles and it has caused consternation among devotees of the original film. What on earth is all the fuss about? Is it just a bunch of sexist fanboys determined not to enjoy it because girls are involved?
Matt Smith plays a perfectionist film director in Unreachable, a new play at London's Royal Court Theatre.
Kei Miller's novel Augustown is set in a lightly-fictionalised version of the real Jamaican town of the same name, involving flying prophets and civil unrest
This year's Liverpool Biennial has a typically eclectic selection of artists and venues; what caught the eye of our reviewers?
BBC TV has a new adaptation of Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, starring Toby Jones and Vicky McClure.
Sarah Crompton's guests are Naomi Alderman, Kathryn Hughes and Giles Fraser. The producer is Oliver Jones.
42 min
July 09, 2016 Georgia O'Keeffe, Maggie's Plan, Robert lePage, The Association of Small Bombs, Brexit metaphors
A major retrospective exhibition of the work of Georgia O'Keeffe at Tate Modern brings together a wide range of her work from the floral paintings to her landscapes and urban paintings
A complicated web of marital intrigue unfolds in Rebecca Miller's film Maggie's Plan - is it more than Woody Allen lite?
Needles and Opium is Canadian performer Robert lePage's latest work to reach the UK - a revival of a work debuted in 1991 and based on the New York experiences of Jean Cocteau and Miles Davis
Karan Mahajan's novel The Association of Small Bombs is set in Delhi, which follows the consequences and web of influences of a terrorist attack
When politics seems wobbly, commentators in the press reach for the solid base of a good metaphor; Shakespeare, Game of Thrones and The Thick of It and Game of Cards have all been invoked to try and describe the consequences of the Brexit vote and Tory and Labour parties disarray.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Alex Preston, Rosie Boycott and Simon Evans. The producer is Oliver Jones.
43 min
July 02, 2016 Hisham Matar, Faith Healer, The Colony, David Hockney, Brief Encounters
Emma Watson plays an air stewardess who gets caught up in the Chilean politics of early era Pinochet. The Colony explores a little-known side of the regime
Faith Healer is Brian Friel's play about the fallibility of remembering, revived at London's Donmar Warehouse
Libyan writer Hisham Matar tells the story of how the disappearance of his father led his own exile from his homeland and political awakening during Ghadafi's dictatorship
David Hockney's work created on iPad and a collection of 82 portraits are on show in 2 new exhibitions
ITV's Brief Encounters is a drama about the founding of the Ann Summers' retail outlets
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Stephanie Merritt, Dreda Say Mitchell and Pat Kane. The producer is Oliver Jones.
42 min
June 25, 2016 Henry V, Elvis and Nixon, The Girls, Sculpture in the City, The Border
Liza Johnson directs Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey in the title roles of Elvis and Nixon a film which dramatises the unlikely 1970 meeting between the two men .
The title role in a production of Shakespeare's Henry V at the Regent's Park Open Air theatre is taken by the actress Michelle Terry.
Debut novel The Girls by Emma Cline looks at relationships and their consequences in a Charles Manson-like cult in California.
The City of London has placed 15 sculptures by leading artists among architectural landmarks such as the Gherkin and the Cheesegrater - an opportunity to see engaging works in unusual settings.
Polish television drama serial The Border dealing with the highly topical subject of immigration control starts downloads on All Four this week.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Ellah Alfrey, Linda Grant and Nikesh Shukla. The producer is Harry Parker.
42 min
June 18, 2016 Tale of Tales, Richard III, Barkskins, Tate Modern Switch House, The Living and The Dead
Matteo Garrone's fantasy film Tale of Tales is a modern interpretation of a 17th century fairytale collection filled with dark gothic strangeness.
Ralph Fiennes plays Richard III in a new production at London's Almeida Theatre. He's a very cynical psychopath as well as a ruthless monarch
Annie Proulx's Barkskins is a large novel dealing with an enormous subject - the irreversible catastrophe of deforestation
Tate Modern has opened a new extension: Switch House. It improves the gender balance of artists on display and broaden the geographical reach of works
BBC TV is launching a new horror drama The Living and The Dead - early last century a country doctor begins to experience eerie goings-on
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Meg Rosoff, Adam Mars Jones and Cahal Dallat. The producer is Oliver Jones.
42 min
June 11, 2016 Deep Blue Sea, Fire At Sea, Edmund White, Winifred Knights, Outcast/Preacher
Terrence Rattigan's post-war classic Deep Blue Sea opens in a new production at London's NationalTheatre; dealing with need, loneliness and long-repressed passion. Directed by Carrie Cracknell with Helen McRory as Hester
Fire At Sea is the Italian documentary which won The Golden Bear at this year's Berlin Film festival. Set on the Sicilian Island of Lampedusa, it examines the lives of the locals and the migrants who land there.
Edmund White's novel Our Young Man is a work of gay fiction set in the world of modelling in 1980s New York, with an apparently-ageless central character and the spectre of AIDS on the horizon.
Dulwich Picture Gallery is staging an exhibition of the works of early 20th century painter British Winifred Knights
We consider a couple of recent supernatural/horror TV dramas - Outcast and Preacher.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Bidisha, Shahidha Bari and David Benedict. The producer is Oliver Jones.
42 min
June 04, 2016 Minefield at Royal Court, The Nice Guys, Versailles, Francis Spufford, Dora Maurer
Minefield at London's Royal Court Theatre examines the personal effects of The Falklands War on veterans from both sides using testimonies of the actors who are all former combatants.
The Nice Guys is a new film with Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe as a couple of mismatched private eyes
BBC TV is showing Versailles, a drama series about the goings-on at the court of Louis XIV- the Sun King - has already caused consternation in France, but why?
Francis Spufford's first novel Golden Hill is set in the grubby dangerous world of Manhattan in 1746: New York before it became New York.
The 50 year career of Hungarian conceptual artist Dora Maurer is marked in an exhibition at London's White Cube Gallery
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Richard Eyre, Francis Stonor Saunders and Jamila Gavin. The producer is Oliver Jones.
43 min
May 28, 2016 Love and Friendship, Cornelia Parker - Found, Midsummer Night's Dream, Simon Armitage, The Threepenny Opera
Whit Stillman takes on an early Jane Austen epistolary novella, Love and Friendship; a film full of wicked women and gullible men
Cornelia Parker's asked 60 artists to submit items to an exhibition of found objects at London's Foundling Museum.
The man who revived Doctor Who for the BBC -Russell T Davis - turns his attentions to an all-star version TV of Midsummer Night's Dream
Simon Armitage has translated another Middle English poem; Pearl. It's the tale of a man addressing a daughter who died as an infant and returns as a bride of Christ
Rory Kinnear plays Macheath in the National Theatre's production of Brecht and Weill's The Threepenny Opera
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are John Tusa, Kamila Shamsie and Nihal. The producer is Oliver Jones.
42 min
May 21, 2016 Heart of a Dog, Don DeLillo, Blue/Orange, Going Forward, Seeing Round Corners
Laurie Anderson's film Heart of a Dog explores death and longing through the story of her terrier
Don DeLillo's novel new Zero K explores death and longing and cryogenic suspension
The revival at London's Young Vic of Joe Penhall's 2000 play Blue/Orange manages to deal in a darkly comic way with paranoid schizophrenia.
Jo Brand returns to TV as Kim Wilde - a community nurse coping with financial cuts and family crises in Going Forward. It's dark but is it comic?
Seeing Round Corners is a new exhibition at Turner Contemporary in Margate which celebrates the centrality of the circle in art.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Sarah Crompton, Alex Clark and Robert Hanks. The producer is Oliver Jones.
42 min