Saturday Review

By BBC Radio 4Society & Culture

Saturday Review episodes

November 17, 2018 Macbeth at The Globe, The Workshop, My Brilliant Friend, Uwe Johnson, Penny Woolcock
The latest production of Macbeth at London's Globe Theatre sees real-life husband and wife, Paul Ready and Michelle Terry play the murderous couple
French film The Workshop is about a young people's writer's group where tensions over the plot development spill into the film's own story-line
Italian author Elena Ferrante's multi-million selling, globally-successful novels are coming to the TV. My Brilliant Friend has been adapted and directed by Saverio Costanzo: a man! Some avid fans have wondered aloud whether such a female-centric story might be beyond his capabilities.
Uwe Johnson's 1800 page meisterwerk Anniversaries was published in 4 parts from 1970 to 1983. It has just been translated into English for the first time - will they delight in its scope?
An exhibition at Modern Art Oxford of video work by Penny Woolcock reveals her fascination with the underdog
Podcastextra recommendations:
Kathryn is a fan of Channel 4's The Secret Life of The Zoo
Don was overawed by the majesty of the redwoods in Muir Woods in California
Jenny has been reading Kafka's The Unhappiness of Being A Single Man
Tom is looking forward to watching The House of Assad on BBC TV
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Don Guttenplan, Kathryn Hughes and Jenny McCartney. The producer is Oliver Jones
46 min
November 10, 2018 Jonathan Coe, Wildlife, Design Museum, The Watsons - Chichester, Grand Designs House of the Year
Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan in Paul Dano's directorial debut Wildlife; a story of familial unravelling in 1960s America
Middle England is Jonathan Coe's latest novel; the third part of his trilogy which began in 2001 with The Rotters Club. It follows the same characters and their offspring dealing with life from 2010 to today
Jane Austen began - but never finished - a book which became known as The Watsons. In Laura Wade's new play opening at Chichester's Festival Theatre she picks up the story to interrogate what happens to characters when the author abandons them....?
Home Futures is a new exhibition at London's Design Museum comparing 20th century prototypes with the latest domestic innovations, and it asks "Are we living in yesterday's tomorrow?"
Grand Designs is a long established Channel 4 TV show whose format allows viewers to follow the trials tribulations and triumphs of daring innovative home building projects. There's also a 'spinoff' Home of the Year edition
Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Rebecca Stott, Maev Kennedy and Sarah Crompton. The producer is Oliver Jones
Podcast Extra:
Maev is delighted by the Twickenham Cinema Club
Rebecca recommends Emma Rice's production of Wise Children at The Old Vic
Sarah recommends Robert Icke's production of The Wild Duck at The Almeida Theatre
51 min
November 03, 2018 Peterloo, George Saunders, Posy Simmonds, Klimt/Schiele, debbie tucker green, Doing Money
Mike Leigh's film Peterloo is his biggest budget film. 200 years ago mounted yeomanry massacred unarmed protesters in Manchester who had gathered to demand their rights. The story is not often taught in schools and this film aims to increase public awareness of the barbarity and indifference of the authorities.
We're reviewing 2 illustrated story books; Booker Prize winner George Saunders follows up Lincoln In The Bardo with a story apparently written by a fox. Also Posy Simmonds "Cassandra Darke" about love and dark machinations in world of fine art trading.
Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele were near-contemporaries on the Viennese art scene if the late 1800s. A new exhibition at London's Royal Academy shows a selection of their drawings; erotic, tender, explicit, ethereal, beautiful and intimate
Olivier and BAFTA award-winning playwright debbie tucker green's new play at The Royal Court Theatre in London is ear for eye, described as "a play about protest and the black body in the UK and US today” containing “snapshots of some experiences of protest; violence versus non-violence, direct action versus demonstrations”. Doing Money is a one-off drama for BBC TV about sex trafficking of Eastern European women. The writer Gwyneth Hughes also recently adapted Vanity Fair; the contrast could hardly be greater.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Ayesha Hazarika, Liz Jensen and Robert Hanks. The producer is Oliver Jones
Podcast Extra selections:
Liz recommends The British Library's selection of Mervyn Peake's manuscripts
Ayesha recommends Tunng
Robert recommends Day Of The Outlaw
Tom recommends Room 237
49 min
October 27, 2018 Don't Worry He Won't Get Far on Foot, Burne-Jones, Little Drummer Girl, A Very Very Very Dark Matter, Barbara Kingsolver
Gus Van Sant's new film Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot is about John Callahan; the quadriplegic, alcoholic cartoonist whose work skewered the lives of disabled people and those who patronise them.
An exhibition of the work of pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones has opened at Tate Britain in London. Its their first major retrospective of his work for 75 years and includes works that have never been on public display before.
Following BBC TV's enormous success with The Night Manager there's a new leCarre drama - Little Drummer Girl
Martin McDonagh's play A Very Very Very Dark Matter has just opened at London's Bridge Theatre. It begins with the idea that Hans Christian Andersen kept a Congolese pygmy in a 3ft x 3ft box in his home and SHE wrote all his stories, living on a diet of sausages. And, oh yes! Charles Dickens also had one too...
Barbara Kingsolver's novel Unsheltered follows 2 parallel stories about families - nearly 150 years apart - sharing the same house
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Blake Morrison, Elizabeth Day and Tom Shakespeare. The producer is Oliver Jones
Podcast extra choices:
Blake recommends Philip Larkin: Letters Home
Elizabeth recommends Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister
Tom Shakespeare recommends Melmoth by Sarah Perry
Tom Sutcliffe recommends In The Dark podcast
48 min
October 20, 2018 They Shall Not Grow Old, Oceania, Sally Rooney, Nina Raine - Stories, Sally4Ever
They Shall Not Grow Old is a film directed and created by Peter Jackson about The First World War. Compiled using colourised and painstakingly-restored footage from 100 years ago accompanied by the testimonies of the soldiers who fought. Is it tampering with history or an exciting new way to bring it back to life?
Oceania at The Royal Academy is the first major survey of Oceanic art to be held in the UK, featuring art from Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia. From New Guinea to Easter Island , Hawaii to New Zealand it marks the 250th anniversary of Captain Cooke setting sail on the Endeavour
Sally Rooney's novel Normal People was longlisted for this year's Man Booker prize. The highly-praised story follows the complicated and passionate relationship of 2 young lovers in modern Ireland
Nina Raine's new play Stories at The National's Dorfman Theatre is about a 39 year old woman who wants to have a baby 'before it's too late' and her efforts to find the best father for her much-longed-for child
Sally4Ever is Julia Davis' painfully-uncomfortable new comedy series on Sky Atlantic, about a bored woman who decides to ditch her dull fiance to pursue a lesbian affair
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Rosie Boycott, Geoffrey Durham and Viv Groskop. The producer is Oliver Jones
Podextra recommendations
Rosie recommends Stacey Dooley investigates Fashion's Dirty Secrets on BBC iPlayer
Geoffrey recommends Whistle In The Dark by Emma Healey
Viv recommends Angus Roxburgh's Moscow Calling
Tom recommends The Long Take by Robin Robertson
50 min
October 13, 2018 First Man, Modern Couples, The Height of the Storm, Penguin Short Stories, Informer
First Man is a film about astronaut Neil Armstrong's life in the lead-up to the Apollo 11 moon-landing mission.
The Modern Couples exhibition at The Barbican Gallery shines a spotlight upon the often under-appreciated partners of artistic geniuses whose contribution to their work and achievements has been hitherto unacknowledged or unknown.
Jonathan Price and Eileen Atkins star in The Height Of The Storm, a new play by Florian Zeller translated by Christopher Hampton which has just opened in London
The Penguin Book Of The Contemporary British Short Story includes 30 works from writers including Ali Smith, Zadie Smith, Kazuo Ishiguro, Martin Amis, Rose Tremain and many more
Informer is a new BBC TV series about a young British Muslim who is coerced into becoming a police informer to infiltrate his own community.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are John Mullan, Tiffany Jenkins and Arifa Akbar. The producer is Oliver Jones
Podcast Extra:
Arifa recommends: Memoirs of An Asian Football Casual and Ben Okri's short film The Insider
Tiffany recommends the Slow Burn Podcast from Slate
John recommends The Wife
Tom recommends Sondheim's Company
49 min
October 06, 2018 A Star Is Born, Harold Pinter, Javier Marias, Survey at The Jerwood, The Bisexual
The latest reworking of the classic film story of a performer-on-the-wain-being-eclipsed-by-his-protege, A Star Is Born features Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper as the two leads. It has received 5 star reviews all over the place; what will our reviewers make of it?
There's a double-bill of Harold Pinter plays; The Lover and The Collection opening in London as part of Pinter At The Pinter. A series of one-act plays at the theatre named after the playwright.
Berta Isla is the latest novel from award-winning Spanish writer Javier Marias. It's a story of love, espionage, betrayal and coming to terms with who you and what you can't change.
Survey at The Jerwood Space in London is a chance to catch the work of 15 early-career artists from across a range of disciplines
The Bisexual is a new drama series coming to Channel 4, created by and starring Desiree Akhavan (director of The Miseducation of Cameron Post) which explores - yes, you guessed it - the potentially thorny subject of bisexuality.
Podcast Extra:
Miranda Carter recommends the trailer for the new Holmes and Watson film and Also A Perfect Spy by John le Carre
Esther recommends The BBC's RatLine podcasts
Charlotte recommends Sylvia by Zoo Nation
Tom doesn't really recommend Doris Salcedo at White Cube Bermondsey
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Esther Freud, Charlotte Mullins and Miranda Carter. The producer is Oliver Jones
50 min
September 29, 2018 Two For Joy, Poet In Da Corner, Sarah Perry, Space Shifters, Maniac/Counterpart
Two For Joy is a British film starring Samantha Morton, Billie Piper and Daniel Mays. a study of family tensions, depression and hope
Poet In Da Corner is a play that explores how grime music (and Dizzee rascal's award-winning album Boy In Da Corner in particular) changed the life of a young Mormon girl in Essex who transformed from Deborah Stevenson into Grime MC Debris. It's about how an album can turn your life around.
Sarah Perry's 2016 novel The Essex Serpent was a runaway prize-winning success. Her latest - Melmoth - is a supernatural tale full of dilemmas and questions
Space Shifters is an exhibition at London's Hayward Gallery which intends to re-orientate visitor's perceptions of the world around them
Two Sci-fi TV series Maniac and Counterpart have begun on Netflix and Amazon Prime respectively
Podcast Extra:
Kamila Shamsie recommends the Canadian literary journal Brick.
Barb Jungr recommends the band 10cc.
Tom Dyckhoff recommends the book Inner City Pressure by Dan Hancox and two exhibitions at London's Photographers' Gallery.
Tom Sutcliffe recommends the radio programme Ratlines on Radio 4 and the Doris Salcedo exhibition at White Cube.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Kamila Shamsie, Tom Dyckhoff and Barb Jungr. The producer is Oliver Jones
50 min
September 22, 2018 The Little Stranger, Tosca, Lake Success, Making a New World season, The Cry
Lenny Abrahamson's The Little Stranger, based on the novel by Sarah Waters, is set in the austerity-era Britain of 1948. Domhnall Gleeson is Dr Faraday who is called out to a patient at Hundreds Hall, a country manor where his mother once worked as a housemaid. The Little Stranger also stars Ruth Wilson, Charlotte Rampling and Will Poulter.
Giacomo Puccini's Tosca in a new production by Opera North opens at the Grand Theatre in Leeds, directed by Edward Dick, conducted by Antony Hermus and starring Giselle Allen, Rafael Rojas and Robert Hayward. Dick‘s new production relocates Puccini’s political thriller from Rome during the Napoleonic wars to an unnamed present-day country in which church and state collude as forces of reaction.
Lake Success is American writer Gary Shteyngart's fourth novel and tells the story of hedge fund manager Barry Cohen, who oversees 2.4 billion dollars in assets. Stressed by a fraud investigation and by his son's diagnosis of autism, he flees New York on a Greyhound bus in search of a simpler life with his old college sweetheart.
Making a New World season continues at the Imperial War Museum in London with four new exhibitions. John Akomfrah's Mimesis: African Soldier, Renewal: Life after the First World War in Photographs, Moments of Silence - two immersive installations from 59 Productions - and I Was There: Room of Voices, bringing together personal voices reflecting on the Armistice from the IWM's own sound archive.
The Cry is a new 4-part psychological drama set in Scotland and Australia on BBC1. The drama chronicles the collapse of a marriage in the aftermath of the abduction of a baby from a small coastal town in Australia. Written by Jacquelin Perske, adapted from the novel by Helen Fitzgerald and starring Jenna Coleman as Joanna and Ewen Leslie as her husband Alistair.
50 min
September 15, 2018 Lucky, The Clock, Letters of Sylvia Plath, Trust, An Adventure
Christian Marclay's acclaimed 24 hour video installation The Clock at Tate Modern is a montage of thousands of film and television clips that depict clocks or reference time and operates as a journey both through cinematic history as well as a functioning timepiece. The installation is synchronised to local time wherever it is on display, transforming artificial cinematic time into a sensation of real time inside the gallery.
John Carroll Lynch's debut feature Lucky stars Harry Dean Stanton in his last major screen role in a career which included films such as Repo Man, Wild at Heart, Paris, Texas and Wise Blood. Lucky co-stars David Lynch, Stanton's long time friend and collaborator.
The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume II: 1956 - 1963 edited by Peter K Steinberg and Karen V Kukil document - unabridged and without revision - Plath's literary development and private life. It includes 14 letters Plath wrote to her psychiatrist, Dr Ruth Beuscher, between 1960 and 1963.
Trust is a ten part series starring Donald Sutherland as J Paul Getty and Hilary Swank as Gail Getty, the mother of John Paul Getty III, heir to the Getty oil fortune who was kidnapped in 1973 by the Italian mafia in Rome. It was written by Simon Beaufoy and directed (first three episodes) by Danny Boyle who previously worked together on Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire.
An Adventure by Vinay Patel at the Bush Theatre in London follows young couple Jyoti and Rasik as they leave India for Kenya in hope of a better life, only to find themselves entangled in the Mau Mau rebellion, from which they leave for England. It is based on the life story of Vinay Patel's grandparents and is directed by Madani Younis, the Artistic Director of the Bush Theatre.
46 min