Radio Times

‘the accident is a powerful drama’

I RECENTLY EMERGED, BLINKING into the daylight, after watching all five episodes of Chernobyl across two days. Obviously I wouldn’t go as far as claiming, as others have, that it’s the greatest television drama of all time. But it was extraordinary. It’s unfortunate for The Accident (Thursday C4) that it arrives while Chernobyl is still fresh in memories, and this is a shame, because The Accident is perfectly capable of standing on its own, in its own right, even though both series deal with the aftermath of a catastrophic industrial accident, albeit on very different scales. In The Accident a small Welsh community is torn apart when a derelict factory, the centre of a development project that everyone hopes will bring jobs and prosperity, collapses. There are many casualties, including the daughter…

this week 19—25 october 2019

WHAT I’M WATCHING… BILL TURNBULL ‘I’m focusing on comedies at the moment,” says the former Breakfast presenter. “I’m catching up with Veep, which is hilarious – a US version of The Thick of It, but even better. I’m box-setting The Wrong Mans on iPlayer, and rewatching Inside No 9, which manages to be funny, dark and clever all at the same time. Laughter is good medicine.’ The RT interview — page 10 PETER DAVISON ‘I don’t like TV shows that take themselves too seriously – I find it a bit boring,” says the actor. “But at the moment I’m watching the Sky Atlantic drama Succession, about a family that’s out of control, and that is very good.’ Great British Car Journeys — page 53 WHAT WE’VE LEARNT THIS WEEK At around 15cm long, the weasel is the smallest…

news

CRIME PAYS As the BBC knows, Agatha Christie adaptations can be a goldmine of TV hits (the corporation has two in the works, The Pale Horse and Death Comes as the End), and now Channel 5 is getting in on the act. Following on from the hugely successful Agatha and the Truth of Murder last Christmas, in which Ruth Bradley played the young crime writer solving the kind of murders not wholly unlike those featured in her books, it has commissioned two new films: Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar, set in Iraq, and Agatha and the Death of X (both are working titles) set in the London Blitz. They are new stories, written by Tom Dalton, and given they are not based on the source books, they also have the…

sing it, suranne!

Instead of a charity single, this year Children in Need is releasing an album featuring songs covered by some of the country’s best-known actors, including Suranne Jones (above), Jodie Whittaker, Olivia Colman and Jim Broadbent. It’s the brainchild of Broadchurch actor Shaun Dooley (pictured, far right, with Luke Evans) and his producer wife, Polly. Recorded at Abbey Road Studios, it has been two years in the making and next week the BBC1 documentary Children in Need: Got It Covered shows how the album came about. “We basically went through my phone book of everybody I’ve worked with,” explains Dooley. “Two years ago, while filming Doctor Who with Jodie, I asked her if it was something she’d want to do, and she said, ‘Yes, I even know what I’d sing — Yellow by…

beware the banter

I HAD TO DEAL with many controversial stories as a BBC political correspondent that involved me taking key decisions. If people think I showed nerve when I appeared on Strictly Come Dancing, it was nothing compared with the nail-biting tension of discussing a hot topic outside Number Ten. The BBC bosses were, of course, ultimately responsible, but they could take some comfort in the fact that I carried the initial burden. My memory of all this has been sharpened by the argument over the comments made on Breakfast by Naga Munchetty about a tweet from Donald Trump. The US President suggested three leading Democrats should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came”. In conversation with her co-host Dan Walker, Naga said this Trump…

from the rt archive… 17—23 october 1987

WHAT WE WATCHED Before ITV’s The Durrells, there was My Family and Other Animals, the BBC’s drama based on Gerald Durrell’s memories of his five idyllic years spent on Corfu as a child. Starring Hannah Gordon as widowed Mrs D, and Brian Blessed as the family’s Greek minder Spiro, the series was unique in weaving at least 30 minutes of wildlife footage specially filmed by the BBC’s Natural History Unit into the drama. Blessed very much enjoyed breaking the actor’s “rule” of not working with children and animals. “They teach you to be simple, which is no bad thing,” he said. “Actors tend to overcomplicate far too much.” WHAT YOU SAID Our post room was overflowing with letters about the second series of Carla Lane’s Liverpool-set sitcom, Bread, about the raucous Boswell clan.…