Foreign Bodies (Radio 4) | iPlayer
The Martin Beck Series (Radio 4) | iPlayer
Mastertapes (Radio 4) | iPlayer
I bumped into Mark Lawson at a play the other week and complimented him on his new Radio 4 series, Foreign Bodies, which views contemporary European history through the prism of crime fiction. Fifteen minutes each day; each day a new detective, a different country, a fresh approach.
"It's my life's work," said Lawson. He said it in a jokey way, but it wasn't a joke; Foreign Bodies is a thorough-going thesis, packed with information, interviews and, most importantly, argument.
The 1.45pm slot, just before The Archers, is one of my favourites on Radio 4; it's boasted several interesting series, but some have lacked hard, angled journalism. You think of the charming sports history programmes, presented by Clare Balding; information-packed also, but without Foreign Bodies' surprises.
Lawson began with Poirot and Maigret (a Belgian written by an Englishwoman; a Frenchman created by a Belgian) and, on Friday, got as far as Inspector Montalbano (set in Sicily, takes on the mafia), with five more to come next week. Each show has had an interesting point; whether about Switzerland's neutrality in the second world war, viewed as criminal by author Friedrich Dürrenmatt; or how the English have actually become more moral over the past 100 years, in all areas except sex, in an almost throwaway comment by Ruth Rendell. I can't imagine how hard Lawson found editing each programme – not a word is wasted.
His programme on the Swedish detective Martin Beck led me to The Martin Beck Series, a dramatisation of the 10 novels by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. Featuring some of my all-time favourite actors, it sadly didn't really work, mostly because of the distracting narration, split between Lesley Sharp and Nicholas Gleaves. As Sharp and Gleaves are real-life partners, as were Sjowall and Wahloo, I suppose the idea was to convey the novels' co-authorship, but the authors divided the chapters between them, not the sentences.
Lawson's Front Row compadre, John Wilson, has a new Radio 4 series, too – less scholarly, but just as much fun. Mastertapes reviews an artist's important album (the one usually called "seminal" by music journalists) by the simple means of Wilson asking the artist questions about it, in front of a live audience. This part of the programme is "the A-Side". Then, a few days later, we hear "the B-Side": the audience's questions. A nice idea – I've done plenty of on-stage interviews where the questions from the audience produce far more revealing answers than my careful research. Artists are kinder and more open with their fans.
Anyhow, Wilson began with Billy Bragg's Talking With the Taxman About Poetry, a great album and an interesting choice. First, because Bragg is incapable of being dull (there was a nice moment when he confessed that he wrote Levi Stubbs' Tears just to get his then-roadie, Andy Kershaw, to stop talking at him); second, because it shows who the series is aimed at, namely people such as me and Wilson – those never-give-up fortysomethings who are still into music.
(Just to note: this series, like 6 Music Live a few weeks ago, made use of some of the BBC's finest assets – its Maida Vale studios and its radio sound engineers. You can hear Bragg playing Levi Stubbs' Tears online – the sound is beautiful – and if you don't get a lump in your throat, then you've a harder heart than I have.)
Radio 4 has long puzzled over how to get us middle-aged pop buffs interested in its music coverage – Soul Music's Radio 3-style chin-scratchery doesn't work for the post-punk generation – and Mastertapes, along with Stuart Maconie's excellent new series, Swansong, about artists' last albums, is a big step forward. There's still room for more offbeat music stories, though; the overlap between Radio 4 and 6 Music listeners has long been noted. And if that sounds like a job pitch, it probably is.
