RADIO WEEK
The picks of the best of this week’s radio
ENTERTAINMENT Louise McSharry
SUNDAY, 9AM, 2FM ★★★★
Louise McSharry (pictured) presents music, entertainment and chat about hot topics.
Spoken Stories
SUNDAY, 7PM, RTÉ RADIO 1 ★★★★
The new story this evening is On Being Sophia by Mike McCormack, acclaimed writer and winner of the Dublin Literary Prize for his novel Solar Bones.
The Battersea Poltergeist
MONDAY, 11.30PM, BBC RADIO FOUR ★★★★ Drama documentary in eight parts by Danny Robins about a paranormal cold case that combines a chilling story from South London in the 1950s – Dafne Keen plays the haunted young girl and Toby Jones is a ghost-hunter – and a modern-day investigation by Robins into the alleged haunting that even promises a solution.
The Tom Dunne Show
MONDAY-THURSDAY, 10PM, NEWSTALK ★★★★
A nightly entertainment driven magazine show focusing on music, culture, movies, sex, sports, comedy, books, gossip and technology.
FACTUAL The Lyric Feature
SUNDAY, 6PM, LYRIC FM ★★★★
In 1951 the Belfast artist James MacIntyre spent a summer on the tiny island of Inishlacken, just off the Galway coast, with fellow artists Gerard Dillon and George Campbell. Years later, he wrote a lively account of the mishaps, friendships and inspirations of that summer in his book Three Men On An Island. James MacIntyre’s book in turn inspired Belfast artist Rosie McGurran, now based in Roundstone in Co Galway, to set up the Inishlacken Project, which every year gives a group of artists the opportunity to spend a week working on the island. This programme tells the story of the 2020 Inishlacken Project.
At The Foot Of The Cross
GOOD FRIDAY, 7PM, BBC RADIO 2 ★★★★
The Kingdom Choir, Newton Faulkner and Marisha Wallace contribute music and poetry on the theme of Jesus’s sacrifice, and pay tribute to those who have been on the coronavirus front line, or spent months in lonely quarantine, this past year.
DRAMA Drama On One
SUNDAY, 8PM, RTÉ RADIO 1 ★★★★
Based on true events, 12 Stones In The Water centres around the death of three-year-old Annie Slavin in Armagh in 1888 and the involvement of Bellina Prior, who was found guilty but insane of her murder. Bellina was committed to the Dundrum Mental Asylum in Dublin and was subsequently released into the care of her mother with a provision that she should never return to Armagh.
Happiness!
WEDNESDAY, 2.15PM, BBC RADIO FOUR ★★★★
This ironically titled drama about
Liverpudlian comedian Ken Dodd (it was his signature tune and a pop single in 1964) finds him in 1988 at the probable nadir of his long and colourful career, when he was charged with tax evasion. Ian Billings’ play, starring David Threllfall, portrays Dodd during the year of the case – in which he was acquitted – and how it must have affected this unique performer.