Saturday Review

By BBC Radio 4Society & Culture

Saturday Review episodes

December 19, 2015 Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Star Wars, Serial Podcast, Dickensian, Penguin Monarchs
Dominic West and Janet McTeer star in the first major London production for 30 years of Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
Star Wars is back. Unless you've been living in cave, it's been hard to avoid. But is it any good?
Last year WBEZ, Chicago Public Radio created the astoundingly successful Serial podcast and now there's a new series unravelling the peculiar story of American soldier Bowe Bergdahl
Dickensian is Tony "Eastenders" Jordan's mash-up of several Charles Dickens stories and characters. How well does this TV series capture the spirit of the originals?
Penguin publishing is putting out a series of 45 small books, each of which tells the story of a different British monarch.
Tom Sutcliffe is joined for the final edition of Saturday Review for 2015 by Timberlake Wertenbaker, Rosie Goldsmith and Patrick Gale. The producer is Oliver Jones.
42 min
December 12, 2015 Wonder.land, Grandma, Nureyev, Adam Roberts, V&A Europe Galleries
www.Wonder.land is Damon Albarn's re-imagining of Lewis Carol's tales of Alice, the White rabbit et al, transferred from The Manchester International Festival to London's National Theatre.
Lily Tomlin plays the feisty Grandma who has to help her granddaughter find the money needed for an abortion
Nureyev - Dance to Freedom, is a BBC4 drama-documentary which tells the story of the famous dancer's dramatic defection to The West in 1961
Adam Roberts' novel The Thing Itself deals with Emmanuel Kant, the search for extra-terrestrial life, time-hopping and so much more
London's V+A Museum has reopened refurbished European Galleries. With an embarrassment of riches from which to choose, how have they updated the display?
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are John Tusa, Louise Doughty and Lynn Nead. The producer is Oliver Jones.
43 min
December 05, 2015 Sunset Song, Funny Girl, Edna O'Brien, Big Bang Data, What a Performance
Sunset Song is Terence Davies' first film for a decade - telling Lewis Grassic Gibbon's tale of northern Scottish farming and family before and after the First World War.
Sheridan Smith takes the role of actress Fanny Brice in the first London production of Funny Girl for 50 years. Made famous by Barbra Streisand on stage and screen, they're big shoes to fill and the current run of shows is already sold out, is it any good?
Edna O'Brien's latest novel The Little Red Chairs places a major war criminal in a small Irish village and ghastly violence comes with him
Big Bang Data is an exhibition at London's Somerset House which explores how artists are trying to depict the welter of data that is out there, growing all the time.
Frank Skinner and Suzy Klein look at the world of popular British entertainment before TV in the BBC4 series What a Performance.
42 min
November 28, 2015 Bridge of Spies, Carol, Little Eyolf, Michael Craig-Martin, Kenzaburo Oe
Spielberg's latest film, Bridge of Spies, features Tom Hanks as a lawyer in 1950s America, hired to defend a Soviet spy. Does that combination of actor and director guarantee a great film?
Todd Haynes' has adapted a Patricia Highsmith novel for Carol. Cate Blanchett plays a woman trapped in a loveless marriage of convenience who falls in love with a shop girl Rooney Mara. Complications ensue.
Richard Eyre directs Ibsen's Little Eyolf at London's Almeida Theatre - difficult play dealing with marriage and grief.
A retrospective exhibition of more than 30 years of the work of Irish artist Michael Craig-Martin has opened at The Serpentine Gallery.
Nobel Winnner Kenzaburo Oe's latest novel is Death by Water; a leisurely tale about family crises and family legends
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Joe Dunthorne, Damian Barr and Susannah Clapp. The producer is Oliver Jones.
43 min
November 21, 2015 Love, Reacher Said Nothing, Waste, Capital, Imagined Museum
Gaspar Noe's film Love is so sexually explicit that it has been labelled as pornography by many reviewers. It is eye-poppingly graphic, but is there substance beneath the lengthy sex scenes?
The subject of Andy Martin's new book is author Lee Child. He shadowed Child as he wrote his most recent Jack Reacher novel. It's a meta book about a writer and his craft.
Banned by the censors in 1907, Harley Granville Barker's play Waste is being staged at London's National Theatre. It exposes a cut-throat, cynical world of sex, sleaze and death
BBCTV has adapted John Lanchester's novel Capital -about the crazy housing market in London - into a series starring Toby Jones
Tate Liverpool imagines the world in 2053 when all art has vanished and museum visitors have to evoke the works themselves.
42 min
November 14, 2015 Steve Jobs, Branagh's The Winter's Tale, Vermeer, Verdi's Force of Destiny, The Great Swindle
Danny Boyle directs Michael Fassbender in the title role of Steve Jobs - a biopic of the technology genius.
Kenneth Branagh's Theatre Company launches with Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.
An exhibition Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer at The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace allows the public a chance to see some Dutch masters from The Royal Collection.
ENO is staging Verdi's Force of Destiny; great music (the Jean de Florette tune!), a chorus of 49 singers, an orchestra of 69 musicians and a crazy plot, what does it all add up to?
The Great Swindle by Pierre Lemaitre was the 2013 winner of France's most prestigious book award, the Prix Goncourt. It looks at the aftermath of WW1 on a group of very different soldiers.
Main Image: Miranda Raison (Hermione) and Kenneth Branagh (Leontes) in Theatre Company's The Winter's Tale. Credit: Johan Persson.
42 min
November 07, 2015 Brooklyn, Bob Dylan bootlegs, Mr Foote's Other Leg, Jonathan Coe, Blood at the Jewish Museum
Saoirse Ronan in the film adaptation of Colm Toibin's novel Brooklyn has been touted by some critics as Oscar material; do our reviewers agree?
Bob Dylan Bootlegs Vol 12 date from his most fecund period 1965-66. How much light does a collection of outakes and alternative versions throw upon his creative processes?
Simon Russell Beale plays an 18th century cross-dressing satirist, impressionist and comedian in Mr Foote's Other Leg. It's now transferred to the West End
Jonathan Coe's new novel Number 11 is his 11th book, published on 11th November.
A new exhibition at London's Jewish Museum looks at the significance of blood in religion through manuscripts, prints, Jewish ritual and ceremonial objects, art, film, literature and cultural ephemera.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Kit Davis, Tom Holland and Kerry Shale. The producer is Oliver Jones.
43 min
October 31, 2015 Taxi Tehran, The Dresser, Cumberland Gallery, Slade House, Moderate Soprano
Even though he's banned from making films in his home country, Iranian director Jafar Panahi's film Taxi Tehran won this year's Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Was this a largely political or aesthetic award?
Ronald Harwood's play The Dresser became an award-winning film in 1983. A new version for BBC TV stars Anthony Hopkins and Ian McKellen
Hampton Court houses just a few paintings from The Royal Collection in The Cumberland Gallery. It's a small sample of the glorious riches The Queen holds in trust for the nation.
David Mitchell's new novel Slade House tells a spooky tale of mindbending, timeslips and soul-stripping.
David Hare's play The Moderate Soprano is about the beginnings of Glyndebourne Opera in the 1930s and its eccentric founder Capt John Christie
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Deborah Bull, Rebecca Stott and Michael Arditti. The producer is Oliver Jones.
42 min
October 24, 2015 Magna Carta plays, Mississippi Grind, Mr Robot, Charles and Ray Eames, Beatlebone
Salisbury Playhouse has commissioned 4 new plays to mark the octocentenary of Magna Carta. How do contemporary playwrights deal with the ideas behind an 800 year old document?
Mississippi Grind is a film that follows 2 gamblers trying to beat the odds to turn their lives around as they head down the Mississippi river to the big game in New Orleans .
The latest cult TV series from the USA is Mr Robot - turning the world of computer coders and hackers into nailbiting narrative
The prolific and highly influential design team of Charles and Ray Eames are the subject of a new exhibition at The Barbican in London. You probably know their work without realising it (they designed the "Mastermind" chair and much more)
Beatlebone by Kevin Barry is the imagined story of John Lennon trying to reach spiritual peace by going to an island he has bought off the coast of Ireland.
43 min
October 17, 2015 Suffragette, City on Fire - Garth Risk Hallberg, Wolf in Snakeskin Shoes, Periodic Tales at Compton Verney
The film Suffragette looks at the campaign 100 years ago to gain women the right to vote. It was made with an all-star largely-female cast and crew. How broad is the appeal of this historical retelling?
City On Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg has been hyped by the publishers and lauded by many critics. It's a 944-page novel about New York City in the mid 1970s; does it justify the hoopla?
Wolf in Snakeskin Shoes is a modern reworking of Moliere's Tartuffe at London's Tricycle Theatre. Set in a black southern baptist church with a dissembling pastor, do the themes still resonate in the twenty-first century?
'Periodic Tales, The Art of the Elements" is an exhibition at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. It explores the way the elements of the periodic table have inspired and influenced artists over the centuries.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Rowan Pelling, Geoffrey Durham and Linda Grant. The producer is Oliver Jones.
42 min