Radio Times 4-10th June 2022

THE QUEEN’S PLATINUM JUBILEE celebrations continue this weekend and inside this issue you will find recipes created by some of Britain and Ireland’s best chefs and home cooks for food that’s good enough to grace a royal banquet. If you’re planning a street party or a family get-together, then these dishes will crown your celebrations. After all, they were good enough for the Queen… The centrepiece of the weekend’s celebrations is the pageant that will wind its way through central London. We’re promised music, horses, a dragon, national treasures on buses, dancing corgis – and Ed Sheeran. Turn to page 8 for our guide to what you will see on the big day. Once the pomp and ceremony subsides, we also have the best of what TV and radio has to offer.…

Television Your TV guide starts on p53 ▶ 1 Platinum Party at the Palace Saturday 7.30pm BBC1 With a line-up as stellar as it gets, the Queen’s 70 years on the throne are marked by stars of stage and screen, including a performance by Queen of Motown Diana Ross to close the show. FEATURE P8 ▶ 2 My Name Is Leon Friday 9.00pm BBC2 In this adaptation of Kit de Waal’s novel, a boy in 1980s Birmingham has to grow up fast as he cares for his baby brother and adjusts to life with foster parents. Lenny Henry (above) has a cameo role in a warm but at times painful story. FEATURE P24 ▶ 3 Top Gear Sunday 8.00pm BBC1 If you think the motoring circus has peaked, think again. The series 32 opener takes Paddy McGuinness (above), Freddie Flintoff and Chris…

STEPHEN MERCHANT “The Apple TV+ drama Severance was great,” says the comedy writer and actor. “I wonder if the writers know where it’s heading or if they’re asking, ‘What are we going to do for series two?’ I like shows where we know there’s an ending – a show that stretches on endlessly seems really intimidating.” Interview page 20 RICK STEIN “I’m watching the drama Julia on Now, about the life of the TV chef Julia Child, which is right up my street,” says the chef. “The early-60s sets are brilliant and Sarah Lancashire is incredible. I’m also loving the final series of The Split on BBC1. The acting is so fabulous that it’s a joy to watch.” Royal pageant – page 8…

AVAST NUMBER OF us in the UK – more than half – are overweight or obese. Until recently, the reason why obesity rates have soared over the past few decades has been a mystery, partly because we gain weight for deceptively simple reasons: we eat more calories than we burn off. But why is this happening to so many when even 50 years ago it was a far smaller problem? The answer is that we have started to eat a lot more of one particular thing: UPF, or ultra-processed food. UPF now makes up around 60 per cent of our diet in the UK and for many children it’s 80 per cent. The rise of obesity began with the rise of UPF. It started in the 1970s in the US and…

WHAT WE WATCHED Is it a bird… is it a plane? No, it’s the Birthday Boy. Superman’s steely strength over 50 years was being celebrated, most notably in a two-part Radio 4 drama, Superman on Trial, in which the Man of Steel stood accused of crimes against humanity, with his archenemy Lex Luthor as chief prosecutor! RT featured a comic preview written and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, with Luthor seen threatening that, if found guilty, Superman would be imprisoned as a ghost within the Phantom Zone for all eternity. Luckily, he escaped that fate and was last seen on BBC1 earlier this year in the excellent Superman & Lois. WHAT YOU SAID BBC2 youth strand DEF II (Mondays and Wednesdays) was impressing John Nichol of West Lothian. “Congratulations to Janet Street-Porter for giving…

FIRST THE POMP, then the pop, now the pageantry. Buckle in for what could be an exhilarating, but bumpy, ride as the public takes to the streets of London to salute the Queen’s remarkable 70-year reign. Sunday’s televised parade will stretch, in all its colourful and vibrant glory, for more than two miles from front to back and is expected to take several hours to complete the route. It will be a fusion of cultures – village green meets Bollywood meets Carnival. The parade will be led by the Gold State Coach that carried the Queen to her Coronation in 1953. This time it won’t contain the monarch, but newsreel of that day will be played onto the coach windows. It will be drawn by eight Windsor Grey horses and escorted by…