Saturday Review

By BBC Radio 4Society & Culture

Saturday Review episodes

January 03, 2015 Birdman; 10:04 by Ben Lerner; Golem at Young Vic; Crisis TV drama; Kentucky Route Zero computer game
Birdman starring Michael Keaton is director Alejandro G Inarritu's first comedy and is hotly tipped for Academy Awards - does it live up to the hype?
10 04 by Ben Lerner is the poet, essayist and novelist's second work of fiction which probes the reality of his own life and in doing so raises questions about the nature of fiction and truth itself.
Golem is staged at the Young Vic by the 1927 theatre company and combines performance and live music with handcrafted animation and film to create magical filmic theatre. Inspired by Gustav Meyrink's The Golem published in 1915 - the play's message challenges our current obsession with technological gadgets.
Crisis is a new television drama on UKTV's Watch Channel starring Gillian Anderson and revolving around a mass kidnapping of a group of teenagers on a school bus. In this case the teenagers are the children of America's rich and powerful elite.
And Kentucky Route Zero, an innovative point and click computer game in 5 acts which employs storytelling techniques as well as graphics to involve the game player in the process of the narrative itself. How entertaining is it to play and how different is it to what has gone before?
43 min
December 20, 2014 V&A Cast Court, City of Angels, Big Eyes, Kureishi/Murakami/AN Wilson, Mapp and Lucia
London's V+A Museum has just reopened the Weston Cast Court, which houses life-size plaster casts of statuary and artefacts from around Europe. It includes the museum's largest items, can it draw their largest crowds?
Larry Gelbart's City of Angels is revived at London's Donmar Warehouse. A musical about the golden age of Hollywood, it garnered awards galore 25 years ago in its original run, will this production be a winner?
Tim Burton's new film Big Eyes is about 1960s housewife Margaret Keane whose paintings of waifs with enormous dark eyes were wildly commercially successful, but her husband claimed all the glory until she decided to make a break for fame in her own right.
Small Books: We look at 3 works of extremely short fiction. Hanif Kureishi, Haruki Murakami and AN Wilson all have stories to tell, that they feel are best-suited to new diminutive formats.
The BBC has remade EF Benson's Mapp and Lucia in sumptuous style; is it a new classic?
42 min
December 13, 2014 13/12/2014
Treasure Island is The National Theatre's seasonal offering at The Olivier, full of pirates, parrots and seaspray. How does it play to the various audiences who come to the theatre at Christmas time?
Electricity is a film starring model turned actress Agyness Deyn whose character deals with her epilepsy as she tries to find a community to be a part of.
Charlie Brooker is back with a one-off feature-length Christmas special edition of Black Mirror on Channel 4. It's a worrying look at a future world that may be closer to our present world than we expect. It's guaranteed to inject some darkness into the joviality of Christmas
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Robert Olen Butler's latest novel is The Hot Country; a historical thriller set in Mexico in 1914 with a hardbitten journalist as hero
The V+A has an exhibition of Dolls Houses - from 1670 to 2001. They're a world of wonder in miniature. How do they reflect the society of the children for whom they were made?
Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Deborah Bull, Neil Brand and Misha Glenny. The producer is Oliver Jones.
42 min
December 06, 2014 Men Women and Children, Hope, William Blake, Olive Kitteridge, End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck
Jason Reitman's latest film Men Women and Children is a lighthearted look at the way the internet has become woven into everyone's existence for good or bad; the pitfalls, the temptations and the endless possibilities.
Hope is a new play by Jack Thorne at London's Royal Court Theatre. It's a dark comedy about a cash-strapped Labour council trying to balance its books and do the least harm in the face of cuts.
William Blake is the subject of a major exhibition at the Ashmolean in Oxford. He was a printmaker, painter and revolutionary poet of the prophetic books, and this show attempts to reveal how he acquired and developed his skills and also to show his legacy.
HBO's new series 4 part mini series , Olive Kitteridge is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and stars Frances McDormand in a tale of marital affairs, mental illness, intrigue, crime and tragedy in a small New England town.
Acclaimed novel End of Days by German author Jenny Erpenbeck explores a multi-narrative story of a family whose destiny could spiral in many directions.
Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Charlotte Mendelson, Kate Mossman and Michael Arditti. The producer is Oliver Jones.
43 min
November 29, 2014 William Gibson; Marco Polo; Chimera; Conflict Time Photography; Concerning Violence
William Gibson's novel The Peripheral is set in 2 dystopian futures filled with drugs, 3D printers, high-tech surveillance and various legally dubious practices. When readers are immersed in a complete universe of newness, how do they orientate themselves?
Netflix newest production is an epic adventure series (10 x 60 minutes) telling the story of Marco Polo; full of spectacle, does it have substance or is it an Oriental Game of Thrones?
London's Gate Theatre is staging Chimera - a play about DNA, genetic inheritance and kitchens
Tate Modern's exhibition Conflict Time Photography looks at the relationship between photography and sites of conflict over time - eschewing chronological arrangement, it is displayed instead according to how soon after the event the photograph was taken - from moments to a century later.
Concerning Violence is a documentary that deals with the struggle for independence of former colonies - how can they free themselves from the yoke of oppression?
Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Bidisha, Jim White and Alice Jones. The producer is Oliver Jones.
43 min
November 22, 2014 Institute of Sexology, What We Do in the Shadows, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Robert Edric, Legacy
London's Wellcome Institute has a new exhibition entitled The Institute of Sexology which it describes as "a candid exploration of the most publicly discussed of private acts". How will our reviewers tiptoe gently around the explicit nature of what's on show?
What We Do In The Shadows is a New Zealand vampire comedy film about a group of bloodsucking flatmates (a 'dracumentary' if you will) - who does the washing-up in the house of the undead?
Behind The Beautiful Forevers is David Hare's new play at London's National Theatre, based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Pulitzer Prize winning author Katherine Boo. It deals with life death and hope in a Mumbai undercity
Robert Edric is an acclaimed British novelist whose latest book explores the life of Branwell Bronte - brother of the more famous sisters - whose life couldn't match theirs.
Legacy is a new Danish TV police programme. What is it about the Scandi Noir genre that keeps on gripping UK audiences?
Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Helen Lewis Pat Kane and Amanda Craig. The producer is Oliver Jones.
42 min
November 15, 2014 Rose Tremain; The Imitation Game; Wildefire; Allen Jones; Remember Me
Rose Tremain's latest book is a collection of short stories called The American Lover; how does her shorter fiction compare to her full length work?
Benedict Cumberbatch plays the WWII cryptographer and code-breaker Alan Turing in The Imitation Game. Also starring Kiera Knightley, it tells the tale of the team of British maths geniuses who cracked the Nazi's Enigma Code. How successfully does it breathe new life into the biography of a private and secretive man?
Roy Williams' new play Wildefire, directed by Maria Aberg, opens at London's Hampstead Theatre. It deals with 'the precarious world of modern policing'; how does a good copper stay good when her world turns nasty?
British artist Allen Jones is probably best known for three works he created 45 years ago; Hat Stand, Table and Chair. A new exhibition at London's Royal Academy is a look back at his career - including pop art from the 60s, through figurative sculpture to his painted steel sculptures. But do accusations that his early work demeans women still hold sway in the more broadminded 21st century?
Michael Palin returns to a British TV series for the first time in 2 decades in Remember Me on BBC1; a supernatural thriller set in Yorkshire - who is to blame for a series of mysterious deaths?
Razia Iqbal's guests are Elif Shafak, Patrick Gale and Miranda Carter. The producer is Oliver Jones.
43 min
November 07, 2014 DV8: John, Interstellar, Peter Carey, Gold at Buckingham Palace, Puppy Love
Peter Carey's latest novel, Amnesia follows a disgraced Australian journalist hired to write the life story of a hacker activist who has raised the hackles of international governments because she wrote the code that unlocks prisons around the world. Carey is has twice won The Booker Prize, is this another winning work?
DV8 Physical Theatre Company's new show "John" tells the tale of a man who grows up in an extremely abusive family and who- as an adult - finds comfort and company in gay saunas. There's a lot of vivid descriptions of what goes on - how will the audience at London's Lyttleton respond to such explicit depiction of gay sex?
Christopher Nolan's new film Interstellar stars Matthew McConaughey as a former NASA astronaut whose job is to save the human race from extinction...not an simple subject, even for such an accomplished director.
The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace has an exhibition called Gold, which displays some of Her Majesty's astonishing artefacts around that theme. Is it a dazzling success?
Puppy Love is the latest project from Joanna Scanlan and Vicky Pepperdine (who made the award- winning Getting On comedy series set in a hospital geriatric ward). This deals with the world of canine training; is it a bit of dog's breakfast?
Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Giles Fraser, Susie Boyt and Antonia Quirke. The producer is Oliver Jones.
42 min
November 01, 2014 Nightcrawler, Tis Pity She's a Whore, Richard Ford, Science Museum, Passing Bells
Nightcrawler is a movie about the ambulance-chasing camera crews who film at the site of traffic accidents, shootings etc and sell the footage to TV stations for their news bulletins. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, we see him begin his nightcrawling career, but will it make a good man turn bad?
'Tis Pity She's a Whore is being staged at London's Globe Theatre. Written in the early 1600s by John Ford, the plot includes incest which made it extremely controversial at the time. And it was so controversial in fact that it wasn't revived in London until 1923. How will 21st century London audiences respond?
Richard Ford's new book Let Me Be Frank With You is a collection of short stories all featuring the same main character: Frank Bascombe who has appeared in Ford's previous work. He's getting older and returns in all his imperfect glory, dealing with the mess of life.
The Queen recently opened the latest gallery at London's Science Museum. It's called The Information Age and it's the first permanent gallery dedicated to the history of information and communication technologies. How have they managed to bring Translatlantic cable-laying to life?
BBC1's latest World War 1 drama, Passing Bells follows the lives of two young recruits, one English, one German as they take part in and are affected by the conflict.
Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Linda Grant, Emma Woolf and David Benedict. The producer is Oliver Jones.
42 min
October 25, 2014 Grayson Perry, Brad Pitt in Fury, Dance Umbrella: Harlem Dream, Per Petterson I Refuse, The Missing
Grayson Perry's new exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery is called "Who Are You". Through pots and paintings, a hijab and tapestry it explores the nature of identity.
Brad Pitt's latest film Fury follows a tank crew towards the end of WW2, when a rooky soldier joins the grizzled old conflict-hardened team in the hell of war.
London's Young Vic Theatre plays host to Dance Umbrella 2014. We'll be reviewing Harlem Dream - a work by young British choreographer Ivan Blackstock in which The Harlem Renaissance collides with hip hop.
Norwegian writer Per Petterson's 2003 novel Out Stealing Horses won critical acclaim. His newest 'I Refuse' has been hailed as a masterpiece in Norway - what will our panel make of the newly published English translation?
And every parent's nightmare - a child disappears on a family holiday - is the plot of BBC1's new drama The Missing, which stars James Nesbitt.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Blake Morrison, Natalie Haynes and Judith Mackrell. The producer is Oliver Jones.
42 min