BBC Radio 4’s Party’s Over is a perfectly timed tale of a disgraced prime minister
Imagining the escapades of a fictional failed politician provides ample opportunity to comment on some real ones.
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Rory Stewart’s lessons in arguing well
In a three-part radio series, the former Conservative minister aims to bring reason and rhetorical flair back to public discourse.
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What the dog hears
BBC Radio 3’s unnarrated day in the life of Honey the Labrador is 30 minutes of head-emptying canine comfort.
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What does it really mean to forgive?
A new BBC Radio 4 series variously frames forgiveness as difficult, healing, a tool to regain power and an act…
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How statistics mislead us
Anna Lawlor’s BBC Radio 4 show Typical! reveals how a poor grasp of means and modes skews our idea of…
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Radio 4’s Red Lines is a heavy-handed attempt to pin today’s crisis in Ukraine on squeamish MPs in 2013
The message is unsubtle and simplistic, and the only moment of wit is when David Davis is called a wanker.
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The messy sex lives of monkeys
A delightful mix of science, history and feminism, BBC Radio 4’s Political Animals explores what animal sexuality reveals about the…
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Marian Keyes and Tara Flynn provide warmth and wisdom in Now You’re Asking
This agenda-free agony aunt podcast doesn’t set out to change the world – and therein lies its charm.
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BBC Radio 4’s Night Watch offers insight into female fear – but is it useful?
The shadow of Sarah Everard’s murder looms over this catalogue of women’s experiences of walking at night.
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BBC Radio 4’s A Home of Our Own explores Britain’s housing crisis
Across ten episodes, Lynsey Hanley speaks to people who are shut out of the housing market. The picture is bleak.
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To dissect a good joke, do you have to kill it?
Perhaps the most futile of all questions is why some things make us laugh, which doesn’t bode well for BBC…
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BBC Radio 6 Music’s The Happiness Map is pure escapism disguised as a chat show
Listening to musicians discuss their best travel experiences is both magical and otherworldly.
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BBC Radio 4’s My Teenage Diary is as delightful – and embarrassing – as ever
The tenth series of Rufus Hound’s hit show opens with Jane Horrocks and an adventurous “coming of age” holiday to Sorrento.
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BBC Radio 4 series Guide Books questions how literature can help us understand the human experience
In this episode, authors Sarah Perry and Sinéad Gleeson reflect on how their relationships with their bodies have changed over lockdown.
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Armando Iannucci’s Why Time Flies is a delightful radio documentary
Does it move more slowly when we experience pain? Do we really see things “in slow motion” during a sudden…
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BBC Radio 4’s The Untold returns with offbeat human stories
Episodes can be heavy in subject matter or dovetail with broader topical issues – the Windrush scandal, Brexit and Covid-19…
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BBC Radio 4’s Conspiracies is a deep, broad consideration of conspiratorial thinking
Phil Tinline digs through history, journalism, fiction and film to try to understand why the idea of being “in on”…
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Between Ourselves With Marian Keyes: breezy, mischievous radio
This four-episode series mixes winking chats between Keyes and Tara Flynn, with readings from Keyes’s non-fiction work.
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A new podcast promises to provide insight into Gen Z life – but proves an infuriating, outdated listen
Although it covers important and sensitive issues, Chloe Combi’s “You Don’t Know Me” can feel exploitative in its approach.
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A new BBC Radio 4 series seeks to take “a fresh look” at Thomas Hardy’s novels through the eyes of his women
In this three-part adaptation of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Tess relates her own story in a series of first-person monologues.…
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