Adrian Chiles (BBC 5 Live) | BBC Sounds
Badger and the Blitz (Fun Kids) | funkidslive.com
Blood on the Dance Floor (BBC Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
Stories of Our Times: Poison (The Times) | Acast
Wosson Cornwall (BBC Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
Uninformed and a bit shocked about Sudan last week, I found a surprisingly enlightening guide in Adrian Chiles on 5 Live. Chiles, as a Guardian columnist, is perennially baffled by life: bewilderment is his USP. On the radio he umms and errs through the questions of the day: football, the joys of weeds, etc. But not-quite-understanding can be useful in a broadcaster, and on Tuesday morning, Chiles used his furrowed-brow interview technique to excellent effect, resulting in a thoroughly edifying listen.
His questions were a bit long – “So are there, between these characters involved, these sort of constituencies if you like, between the civilian militia and the military, are there dividing lines along, say, ethnic lines for example, between these two sides?” – but they were the right ones, and led to BBC reporter Mohanad Hashim and Africa Confidential’s Gillian Lusk explaining in detail Sudan’s recent history (from about 2000) and current situation. Unlike many hosts, Chiles doesn’t interrupt his guests for the sake of it, and Hashim was given enough airtime to go into the detail about the country’s leaders, their backgrounds, who they command and why.
Retired air marshal Greg Bagwell talked carefully through the difficulties the British armed forces were facing in their efforts to evacuate UK citizens. Hashim described the trials of a friend who was trying to get out. Later, Chiles spoke to a British NHS consultant whose family was in Sudan, who pointed out that any rescue flight should arrive with much-needed medical supplies. All the information gleaned was, unsurprisingly, upsetting and depressing, but you definitely learned a lot. For further context, the Guardian’s Today in Focus brought out an excellent episode on Sudan’s warring generals; the New York Times’s The Daily covered the same topic on Monday, if rather drily.
More war: Fun Kids has a new drama out this week. Narrated by the always-fab Kerry Godliman, Badger and the Blitz is set in the very early stages of the second world war, when British people worried that there wouldn’t be enough food to see them through, and so decided to voluntarily put down their pets. I’d not heard of this before but it’s true: 750,000 pets were put to sleep in the first few weeks of the conflict because owners mistakenly thought the government was demanding a cull.
In Badger and the Blitz, 11-year-old Jack (Devon Francis, great) runs away with his dog, Badger, to stop her from being put down, and they have several adventures, involving air raids, a duchess and a blues singer. It may take adults a while to adjust to Godliman’s narrative role – she details action and explains moods, a little like an audio description service – but she helps younger listeners to paint the pictures in their heads. Fun Kids is to be congratulated on yet another engaging and slickly produced series. Drama is the hardest, most labour-intensive audio to get right, and the station nearly always hits the spot.
A couple of new crime series, one set in the recent past, the other examining an ongoing situation. The first, Blood on the Dance Floor, on BBC Sounds and Radio 4, is about the sectarian, homophobic killing of a 24-year-old RUC officer in 1997. Policeman Darren Bradshaw was out at the Parliament, a gay bar in Belfast, when a man in a bad wig and drawn-on beard approached him and shot him three times in the back. The consequences stick with you. How everyone in the bar fled because they didn’t want outsiders to know they were gay. How Bradshaw’s mum had to welcome local members of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) to her son’s funeral, though it was the INLA that ordered the hit. How Darren’s younger brother Scott went off the rails and became involved in a killing himself. This six-part series gradually builds the world in which such a horrible murder could take place; and how its remnants remain, as a murderer continues to walk free.
Poison, from the Times’s Stories of our Times strand, is a three-part investigation by James Beal into how a British 22-year-old, Tom Parfett, was able to order poison online from Kenneth Law, a Canadian chef, and use it to end his own life. The first episode, which doesn’t feature Law, is a terribly upsetting listen, mostly because of Tom’s dad, David, who tells his story with great dignity and calm. Beal has a difficult line to walk editorially, between not wanting to overly focus on suicide and telling a story that is undoubtedly in the public interest. He does it very well. There are two more episodes to come, in which he exposes Law by going undercover and talking to him about suicide. I hope the authorities are listening and Law can be stopped.
Just time to mention Wosson Cornwall, a new series in Radio 4’s uneven 6.30pm comedy slot. This is, essentially, an old-fashioned silly sketch show, featuring Dawn French among the cast. Many jokes about Rick Stein and second-home owners, but my favourite skit involved two hotel workers, Jess (keen) and LJ (not), moaning about demanding guests. “Yes, you’ve paid to be here,” says LJ. “Exactly. You paid to be here. That’s not my fault.” I hope they’re on every week.
• This article was amended on 2 May 2023 to give the correct name for the Belfast bar where Darren Bradshaw was murdered.
