Saturday Review

By BBC Radio 4Society & Culture

Saturday Review episodes

September 08, 2018 The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Humans, Killing Eve, Miriam Toews, I Object
The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a new film set in the US in the 90s; Cameron (played by Chloe Grace Moretz) is a teenage lesbian sent to a gay conversion centre but not really motivated to try and change
Humans has transferred from an award-winning run on Broadway to The Hampstead Theatre in London. An American family gather together for Thanksgiving supper and all the worries and fears bubble to the surface. But it's not all grim soul-searching
Phoebe Waller Bridge is the name behind Killing Eve on BBC3; a new slick female assassin TV series starring Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer as the detective tracking down the killer and the ruthless killer herself respectively
Miriam Toews' novel Women Talking is set in a Mennonite settlement in rural Canada where a series of rapes has torn their world apart when it is discovered that the rapists come from within their own community
I Object, Ian Hislop's Search for Dissent is at The British Museum, tracing the history of dissent subversion and satire hidden within the Museum's vast collections
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Meg Rosoff, Francis Wheen and Stephanie Merritt. The producer is Oliver Jones.
53 min
September 01, 2018 Love's Labour's Lost, Cold War, Black Earth Rising, Pat Barker, Surreal Science
The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in London is an intimate candle-lit theatre space ideally suited for Shakespeare productions. Their latest is Love's Labour's Lost, played largely as broad comedy... how does it handle the pathos?
Polish film Cold War won the Best Director Palme d'Or this year. It's a love story set in Soviet era Poland and the obstacles which make reaching for hope and resolution sometimes seem impossible
A new TV drama series co-production from BBCTV and Netflix looks at the international legal ramifications of war crimes committed during the Rwandan genocide. Black Earth Rising stars Harriet Walter and Michaela Coel as a mother and daughter with a personal involvement that leads to family conflict
Pat Barker's latest novel The Silence Of The Girls is a retelling of the Trojan Wars from the point of view of the women.
Surreal Science is a new exhibition at London's Whitechapel Gallery combining collected 19th century scientific teaching models and illustrations, with new works selected by Salvatore Arancio to explore and understand the mysteries of nature and existence through scientific enquiry.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Helen Lewis, Susan Jeffreys and David Benedict. The producer is Oliver Jones.
52 min
August 25, 2018 Copenhagen, The Children Act, All Among The Barley, Extraordinary Rituals, Grayson Perry: Rites of Passage
A revival of Michael Frayn's multi award-winning 1998 play Copenhagen at The Chichester Minerva Theatre. 20 years on from the original production how does it stand up and what does it say to the new audiences?
Ian McEwan's novel The Children Act has been adapted for the big screen by Richard Eyre, starring Emma Thompson, Fion Whitehead and Stanley Tucci
All Among The Barley is Melissa Harrison's new novel. The Costa and Bailey's nominee explores the rhythms of rural life between The Wars and how it affects the locals in a village in Suffolk
Two new series are starting on TV exploring similar territory: Extraordinary Rituals on the BBC and Grayson Perry: Rites of Passage on Channel 4.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Shahidha Bari, Kate Maltby and Rajan Datar. The producer is Oliver Jones.
54 min
August 18, 2018 At the Edinburgh Festivals: Beggar's Opera, Maladie de la mort, Midsummer, The Eyes of Orson Welles, Raqib Shaw, Andrew Miller
We're in Edinburgh for the festivals. In venues throughout the city there's a barrage of theatre, cabaret, music, books, kids' shows; something for everyone, . We're reviewing Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord's productions of The Beggar's Opera and La Maladie de la Mort as well as National Theatre Of Scotland's Midsummer. Also Raqib Shaw exhibition; Reinventing The Old Masters. We're discussing Andrew Miller's novel Now We Shall Be Entirely Free and the film The Eyes of Orson Welles. AND mentioning as many other recommended events as we can cram into the programme!
Onstage at the BBC's Big Blue Tent, Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Denise Mina, Don Paterson and Peggy Hughes. The producer is Oliver Jones.
48 min
August 11, 2018 Under The Tree, Aristocrats, Michael Hughes, Big British Asian Summer, Sabrina
Iceland's film industry is not a big player around the globe, but it does create character-driven small-scale works. Under The Tree is a very dark Icelandic comedy film about what happens when neighbours fall out and civility begins to evaporate. There's a revival of Brian Friel's Aristocrats, a play about a Catholic family on its uppers in Donegal just opened at London's Donmar Warehouse. Michael Hughes new novel, Country, is a re-imagining of The Iliad, set in the sticky lethal politics of paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. The BBC's new season Big British Asian Summer includes shows across the radio and TV networks looking at the British Asian experience. We're reviewing Big Asian Stand-up and A Passage to Britain. Nick Drnaso's graphic novel Sabrina has been Booker-shortlisted - the first of its kind to enter the ring traditionally associated with novels of the non-graphic kind.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Patrick Gale, Antony Johnston and Sharmaine Lovegrove. The producer is Oliver Jones.
47 min
August 04, 2018 Sicilian Ghost Story, Othello, Succession, Art in Weimar Germany, Andrew McMillan
Italian film Sicilian Ghost Story is based on a real life kidnapping of the son of a Mafia supergrass
The new production of Othello at London's Globe Theatre includes Mark Rylance as Iago
HBO's Succession is a new series telling the story of a media empire led by an ageing patriarch which is thrown into confusion when he suffers a brain haemorrhage: which of his children is capable of taking over the responsibilities and pressures of running the company?
Magic Realism: Art in Weimar Germany 1919-1933 at Tate Modern is an exhibition of many of the artists whose work was cast as degenerate by the Nazis. The term 'magic realism' was coined in 1925 to describe an artistic movement away from expressionism to a harsh, cold, unsettling veracity
Andrew McMillan's collection of poems: playtime explores the different ways boys grow into their sexual selves and adult identities through rites of passage.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Linda Grant, Terence Blacker and Deborah Bull. The producer is Oliver Jones.
50 min
July 28, 2018 Apostasy, Exit The King, Olivia Laing, Memory Palace, Pride and Prejudice box set
Apostasy is a British film about disfellowship in Jehovah's Witness congregations. How do families cope when their religious beliefs come into conflict with contemporary social mores.
London's National Theatre is staging its first production of a play by Eugene Ionesco. Adapted and directed by Patrick Marber, Exit The King stars Rhys Ifans as a monarch who knows he will die before the end of the play.
Olivia Laing's first novel Crudo was written in real time in 7 weeks during 2017, recording her thoughts on the news of the day, "to get an imprint of the moment while it is still wet".
White Cube Gallery's newest exhibition marks its 25th anniversary. Memory Palace is on at their two London sites (as well as at their Hong Kong gallery, but we didn't go there!) looking at memory and how it shapes our identities.
BBCTV has put the 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (you know, the one where Colin Firth comes out of the lake clad in a clinging shirt) on iPlayer as a box set, we consider whether the fond memories of it match up to a re-watching 22 years on...
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Alex Preston, Kate Williams and Abigail Morris. The producer is Oliver Jones.
50 min
July 21, 2018 Allelujah!, Clock Dance, Liverpool Biennial 2018, The Receptionist, Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema
Alan Bennett's new play Allelujah! opens at the Bridge Theatre in London directed by Nicholas Hytner, with music by George Fenton and choreography by Arlene Phillips. It stars Deborah Findlay, Rosie Ede, Sacha Dhawan, Manish Gandhi and Simon Williams. The Beth, an old fashioned cradle-to-grave hospital serving a town on the edge of the Pennines, is threatened with closure as part of an NHS efficiency drive. Meanwhile, a documentary crew eager to capture its fight for survival follows the daily struggle to find beds on the Dusty Springfield Geriatric Ward, and the triumphs of the old people's choir.
Pulitzer Prize winning writer Anne Tyler's new novel Clock Dance tells the life story of Willa Drake and her decision late in life to take on the care of a 9 year old child. Anne Tyler is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published over 20 novels, the best known of which are Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons(1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with Breathing Lessons winning the prize in 1989.
The tenth edition of the Liverpool Biennial includes more than 40 artists from over 22 countries. In the words of the lead curators, "The Biennial asks Beautiful world, where are you?" - a question derived from a 1788 poem by the German poet Frederich Schiller. Artists include Agnes Varda, Inci Eviner, Holly Hendry, Duane Linklater, Taus Makhacheva, Annie Pootoogook, Joyce Wieland and Rehana Zaman and their works ares spread across the city including public spaces, civic buildings and the city's leading art venues.
Taiwanese writer/director Jenny Lu's film debut feature film The Receptionist is a drama based on an illegal massage parlour in London and follows the lives of the employees and clients as seen through the eyes of a Taiwanese graduate employed as a receptionist.
In a new five part documentary series on BBC Four, Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema, film critic Mark Kermode presents a fresh and very personal look at the art of cinema by examining the techniques and conventions behind some classic genres: romcoms, heist movies,coming-of-age stories, science fiction and horror.
48 min
July 14, 2018 Incredibles 2, The Lehman Trilogy, Sacred Games, The Head and the Load, Out of My Head
Incredibles 2 is writer / director Brad Bird's long awaited sequel to the Oscar winning Incredibles (2005). Produced by Pixar Animation Studios the film follows the Parr family as they balance regaining the public's trust of superheroes with their civilian family life, only to face a new foe who seeks to turn the populace against them. The voice cast includes Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell and Samuel L. Jackson.
Sam Mendes (Skyfall, King Lear, The Ferryman) returns to the National's Lyttelton Theatre to direct Ben Power's English version of Italian writer Stefano Massini's The Lehman Trilogy, inspired by the events following the economic crisis of 2008. The Lehman Trilogy stars Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles as the Lehman brothers and is an epic story of making it and breaking it, charting one family's fortunes over 163 years and tracing the financial sector from boom to bust.
Tim Parks is the author of fourteen novels including Europa (shortlisted for the Booker prize), Destiny, Cleaver, Sex is Forbidden and, most recently, In Extremis. He has also written several books of non fiction, the latest of which "Out of My Head" tells the highly personal and often surprisingly funny story of Parks's quest to discover more about consciousness. It seems not a day goes by without a discussion on whether computers can be conscious, whether our universe is some kind of simulation, whether the mind is unique to humans or spread out across the universe. Out of My Head aims to explore these ideas via metaphysical considerations and laboratory experiments in terms we can all understand and invites us to see space, time, colour and smell, sounds and sensations in a new way.
Tate Modern joins forces with 14-18 NOW, the UK's arts programme for the First World War centenary, to commemorate the significant contribution of African men and women in this conflict. William Kentridge's "The Head and the Load" is performed against the dramatic backdrop of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall and tells the untold story of the hundreds of thousands of African porters and carriers who served in British, French and German forces during the First World War. It combines music, dance, film projections, mechanised sculptures and shadow play to create an imaginative landscape on an epic scale.
Netflix's new 8 part drama series Sacred Games was announced as one of seven Netflix Indian Originals. Based on Vikram Chandra's 2006 thriller novel of the same name it stars Saif Ali Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, and Radhika Apte, and tells the story of a righteous police officer who attempts to thwart a terrorist attack in Mumbai after being warned by a notorious criminal and burrows deep into India's dark underworld.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Michael Arditti, Shahidha Bari and Sarah Crompton.
52 min
July 07, 2018 Whitney documentary, AM Homes, The Jungle, The Horniman Museum, Picnic at Hanging Rock
There's a new Whitney Houston documentary by Kevin MacDonald. It explores her life her stratospheric successes and her demons which led to her premature death
AM Homes has a collection of 13 short stories. Days of Awe explores the heart of contemporary America
The Jungle is a play about an Afghan refugee attempting to reach the UK from The Jungle - the unofficial shantytown which emerged in Calais. It's a transfer to London's Playhouse Theatre from a sold-out run at The Young Vic
The Horniman Museum in London has reopened its South Hall Gallery as World Gallery; exploring the fundamental questions of what it means to be human; that's a big task
The BBC is showing a new adaptation of the novel Picnic at Hanging Rock (made into a successful film in 1975). It stars Natalie Dormer and has a decidedly modern approach to a period piece
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Mark Billingham, Kathryn Hughes and Alice Jones. The producer is Oliver Jones.
47 min