Sommaire pour 7-13th March 2026 de Radio Times

Welcome to a bittersweet issue. Bittersweet because it marks the end of the latest series of Call the Midwife. It’s a drama that has anchored Sunday nights each winter since 2012, and has been lapped up at “Law Towers” from the start. Your letters to RT suggest we are far from alone. Few series inspire such loyalty and such affection. We spoke to showrunner Heidi Thomas about her decision to “pause” the show and what it means to draw breath after 15 years. Thankfully, this is not a full stop. With a Second World War prequel plus a feature film in development, the world of Call the Midwife – or CTM, as we affectionately call it in the offce (publishing, like the Army, does love an abbreviation) – looks set…

Holliday Grainger has been scene-stealing since the age of six, when she landed her first role in the BBC’s All Quiet on the Preston Front (1994). Now 37, she’s firmly in her detective era. As well as continuing her role as the unflappable Robin Ellacott in Strike (series seven will air later this year), she’s back as the inscrutable surveillance boss Rachel Carey, diving into the murky world of deepfakes and institutional cover-ups, in BBC One’s The Capture. What was the hardest part about filming this third series? To be honest, the hours! But to be more specific, the learning of the procedural jargon. You’ve got to make it look easy, otherwise you’re doing your job wrong. Give me a stunt scene any day. It doesn’t require as much homework.…

Call the Midwife Sunday 8.00pm BBC One CHANGE IS BAKED into Call the Midwife. Progress is what the drama is about. Indeed, in last Sunday’s episode there was an exchange between Nurse Crane (Linda Bassett) and Miss Higgins (Georgie Glen) on the subject of change. In it, Miss Higgins notes, “People speak of change as if they’re speaking about rats, as if change is something hiding underneath the house, attempting to get in and gnaw at all that we hold precious… Perhaps we would be better to compare change to the birds that carry twigs in their beaks, and seeds, so they build nests and sow flowers – however accidentally.” Having often voiced her thoughts through her characters, writer Heidi Thomas now says of her beloved show, “We have made 15…

SHARON D CLARKE has made history with the roles she’s played. As Grace O’Brien, she was one of three very diverse women to step into the Doctor Who universe in 2018, alongside Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor and Mandip Gill’s companion Yaz. “What, young boys can’t look up to a woman?” she says now of the claims a female Doctor deprived young boys of a positive male role model. She then starred in a story that hadn’t been told on screen before with 2024’s Mr Loverman, based on Bernardine Evaristo’s novel. She played the wife of a secretly gay man (Lennie James) who’s in love with his best friend. It was only in 2022 that homosexuality was decriminalised in Antigua and Barbuda, where part of Mr Loverman was set. “It’s really, really…

THRILLER Scarpetta Amazon Prime Video All 8 episodes available Wednesday Long before Amazon got into smart speakers and food shopping, it was a bookshop in your laptop. So, of all the streaming services, it’s the one most likely to be in tune with what you’d read. Hence their current knack for adapting page-turning thrillers into hit dramas. Take Jack Reacher — he was an imposing presence in paperbacks prior to swaggering onto to the screen. Same with Alex Cross. And now medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, in the form of Nicole Kidman, is making the leap from bedside tables to TV. Of the three, she’s had the longest gestation period, with writer Patricia Cornwell’s first Scarpetta novel, Postmortem, having debuted in 1990. Since then, forensic science has advanced and technology surged.…

A BETTER LIFE LIONEL SHRIVER Immigration is a hot topic and it’s the driving force behind the plot of Lionel Shriver’s latest novel, A Better Life (Borough Press, £22). It’s set in a realistic New York City in 2023, though certain references are already outdated, thanks to the political landscape shifting drastically under Trump’s presidency. Nevertheless, Shriver’s polemic remains relevant in its opposition of two warring perspectives: the leftist, open-armed liberal versus a sceptical every-man-for-himself approach — but ultimately, who is seeing clearly? Radio 4 is airing a new commission from Lionel Shriver, Nobody’s Perfect, in Book at Bedtime (Monday—Friday 10.45pm) TO HUNT A KILLER JULIE MACKAY AND ROBERT MURPHY Gone Sunday, Monday 9pm ITV1 In 1984, a young woman never made it back to her family home in Bath, the only…

Alexander Armstrong in India Thursday 8.00pm 5 ■ There are, Alexander Armstrong reminds us in his Channel 5 travelogue, 1.4 billion people in India. And, he tells RT, “I gave it a good shot at meeting them all.” Clearly, he’s a man who’s covered the ground. Here are his most memorable moments. MUST-SEE TIGERS We saw all sorts of amazing creatures on this trip: elephants blocking our way on the roads, macaques who’ve learnt to steal mobile phones and only return them in exchange for a bag of crisps – and not any old packet, either; they want a proper grab bag. But the truly astonishing thing to glimpse is a tiger, which we saw at Bandipur reserve (bandipurtr.in). Their power, their muscles, their teeth, the way they pad… they’re beautiful…

ONLY CONNECT with Victoria Coren Mitchell The connecting wall from Only Connect combines general knowledge, wordplay and lateral thinking to give your brain cells a workout! How to play Your task is to sort the 16 seemingly random words/phrases below into four groups of four connected words. You may find some clues fall into more than one category, but there is only one complete solution. If you get stuck, have a look at the clues on the side of the page… TRY THESE CLUES: GROUP ONE: HOLLYWOOD. GROUP TWO: SHIITAKE. GROUP THREE: PORTOBELLO. GROUP FOUR: HAMMOND. © RDF WEST SCRIBBLE PAD TRACKWORD How many words of three letters or more can you find by tracking from one square to the next, going up, down, sideways or diagonally in order? You…

Helen George and Laura Main are unanimous: they won’t miss Call the Midwife. At least not yet. “We’ve all been saying that we’ll feel it most in April because that’s when we usually start filming,” explains George, who has played midwife Trixie since episode one. “So when that comes around and we don’t, we won’t have the support network and community that work has given us.” “Apart from that first year, we’ve always known at the end of filming that we’d see each other again,” says Main, whom we first encountered as Sister Bernadette and later transitioned to Nurse Shelagh Turner. “Even that first year, we found out after the second episode that the show would be coming back. We’ve had rare and lovely stability for 15 years. We’ve never…

How did you get involved with Gone? A few people approached Rob [Murphy, her co-author] and I about the rights to our book and we ended up working with George Kay. He’s such an inspirational screenwriter — The Long Shadow [about the hunt for serial killer Peter Sutcliffe] was terrific. George asked me about various aspects of police procedure, but I didn’t know what the story was until he sent the final scripts, so I just suggested different scenarios. It was exciting! Is Gone reminiscent of your experience of finding Melanie Road’s killer?  Gone is completely fictional. They’ve taken my cold-case journey — which was up and down, two steps forward, three steps back, endless dead ends — and told a different story. I’m very happy about it — Melanie’s family…

I HOPE THERE’S a statute of limitations regarding VHS-related crime before I embark on this tale. Thirty years ago this week, BBC Two screened the majestic, moving finale of Our Friends in the North. Two months earlier, I’d watched the first episode with my flatmate Jane, and we became so engrossed that we decided we simply couldn’t wait for the rest. Here’s the mea culpa: we both worked in the BBC’s presentation department at the time, so we “borrowed” the precious preview tapes and spent one long, bleary Sunday watching the remaining eight episodes back to back. As the final credits rolled, with the four young leads Gina McKee, Christopher Eccleston, Mark Strong and Daniel Craig now feeling more familiar to us than our cats, we sat back exhausted. “Let’s…

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Apple TV Ep 3 available Friday A titan (above) is on the loose — could simply distracting it be the way to save thousands of lives? Also, time travel and monogamy prove to be a difficult mix. Walter Presents: Oxen C4 Streaming Series 2 available 6 March The popular Danish thriller returns, and former special ops soldier Niels Oxen (Jacob Lohmann) has a giant elite conspiracy to crack. Age of Attraction Netflix Available Wednesday Does it matter how old your partner is? American singletons put this theory to the test as they participate in a new dating show where nobody reveals how old they are.…

WHEN YOU BUY a book in a shop, they have no way of knowing whether you read it or indeed what else you read. When you stream an audiobook from a service like Spotify, on the other hand, they learn quite a bit about your reading habits, and their algorithms will soon usher you in the direction of something else you might like to read. They will also, like any smart bookshop, put their most popular stuff on a table near the door. The labelling of such displays has moved on a bit. Go to their audiobooks section and you’re immediately confronted with “Spicy Audio Books”, which immediately sub-divides into a kaleidoscope of varieties of spice, ranging from “spicy romantasy” and “spicy queer romance” via “fake dating romances” to plain…

YOU MAY THINK you’ve missed the opportunity to prune some of your shrubs and roses, but fear not – there’s still time to get out there and do it. Mid- and late-flowering shrubs such as roses, buddleia, mallow, euonymus and many cotoneasters can be sorted now, as can winter-flowering plants like viburnums, winter honeysuckles and winter jasmines. (Avoid pruning spring-flowering plants, though, or you’ll cut off the emerging flowers.) Pick a sunny, dry day to lift your spirits, and put your headphones to one side so you can hear the birdsong and feel fully immersed in nature. If you know, you know! The word “pruning” scares some gardeners, with some feeling that they don’t know where to start and others perhaps not quite knowing when to stop. So think about…

It is rare nowadays to buy anything online or in many shops without being offered a deal to pay for it in several interest-free instalments. These deals are not currently regulated, but the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced that from July it will impose the same rules on Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) deals as on any other loan. BNPL was introduced to Britain by the Swedish firm Klarna in 2014. Since then it has grown rapidly, with many other firms such as Zilch and ClearPay offering similar deals. In 2024, nearly 11 million people used a BNPL deal, borrowing more than £13 billion. It is now offcially defined as interest-free credit repayable in up to 12 repayments over a year or less. ‘People borrow £13 billion on BNPL…

GOOD GAMES… Along with much of the nation, my wife and I have enjoyed the BBC’s excellent coverage of the Winter Olympics in Italy and are missing it hugely already, from the infectious enthusiasm of Ed Leigh and Tim Warwood in the snowboarding and free skiing events, to the precise commentary of the two Johns (Jackson and Hunt) in the sliding centre and Steve Cram, Vicky Wright, Logan Gray and Jackie Lockhart willing the curlers on in Cortina. What has also had a big impact is that the commentators and presenters are there – the benefits of being on location are enormous. That’s the difference between adequate coverage, which no one remembers, and a great show that has us flocking back for more. Congratulations, BBC! Rob Cherry Somerton, Somerset We’ve had…

What’s the view from your sofa? I sit in my red armchair, with a pouffe to put my legs up on. There’s also a foot massager I treated myself to. If I’m cold, I wear a woolly hat and have a blanket over me to sit and watch the TV. What have you been watching? Loot on Apple TV with Maya Rudolph is radical and funny, and it does what I love – through the medium of comedy, it actually makes a point. She’s going, “There should be no such thing as billionaires! Why am I a millionaire?” You starred in Lisa McGee’s Derry Girls which also did just that… Derry Girls was extraordinary, but what was frustratingly extraordinary about it was that it essentially taught people recent Irish history.…

A Woman of Substance Wednesday, Thursday 9.00pm C4 THERE’S A BARNSTORMING finale to Brenda Blethyn’s new series, A Woman of Substance. Octogenarian tycoon Emma Harte, frocked in immaculate royal-purple and a heavy gold necklace, confronts her family with deadly calm. “There’s a fatal flaw in your scheme – you underestimated me!” Think of a female version of Brian Cox in Succession. “I really get my teeth into that scene,” she says. “Trump them all. Sorry to use that word…” Even more fun is the final twist that follows, with a masterclass in close-up face-acting. Breezy, friendly, full of life and only a few days off her 80th birthday, Blethyn loved the story based on Barbara Taylor Bradford’s novel. “It’s so rich, it’s luscious.” It’s the ultimate rolling, readable popular saga: a…

FREE TO VIEW BBC iPLAYER bbc.co.uk/iplayer As long as you have a TV licence, you can register for free and enjoy a slew of BBC shows on demand and BBC channels to stream live. ITVX itv.com This free service is the place to stream ITV content. An ad-free version called Premium costs £5.99 a month or £59.99 a year, and also includes shows formerly on BritBox. CHANNEL 4 channel4.com No longer called All 4, Channel 4’s streaming service has more than 1,500 shows and films from C4, E4, More4, Film4 and Walter Presents. Watching without ads costs £3.99 per month. 5  channel5.com Content from 5 and channels 5 USA, 5 Star and 5 Select can be streamed live with a free online account. U u.co.uk Catch up with shows on…

ENTERTAINMENT Desert Island Discs Sunday 10.00am Radio 4 We’ll find out later this month whether Jessie Buckley will add an Oscar to her Bafta for Hamnet, but here she tells Lauren Laverne how playing an earth mother like Agnes Hathaway coincided with her own decision to become one. She also reveals how she turned to the classics after an early career in musical theatre, describes the influence of creative parents during her childhood in County Kerry and some up-and-down attempts at Irish dancing. Her music choices include tracks reminding her of seaside holidays and her own wedding dance. JENNY BARDWELL MUSIC All Queens All Day Sunday all day 6 Music Iggy Pop is soon to take a year off from his Sunday afternoon show on 6 Music, making way for the return…

PRIZE CROSSWORD One winner will receive a £100 Book Token that can be spent at bookshops across the UK and online. To enter, just fill in and post the coupon below, or email your answers to xword11@radiotimescomps.co.uk WORDFINDER Find the name of the show in the shaded squares to win the prize below. EASY CLUES Just for fun! PRIZE CROSSWORD ACROSS 7 Part of UK listen and listen again for fish (5,5) 9 Reversible leavened bread? (4) 10 Fuel, one reeks awfully (8) 11 Crime drama coming from hotel in M6 services (3,3) 12 Is poet beyond vehicle by English Castle? (11) 15 Having died willingly? (7) 16 Come by Bill with those singing loudly (7) 18 Police force wreck garden by minute lake (11)  21 In Malmo station? Not quite…