A creepy bedtime story for you: the first episode of Richard Matheson’s classic post-Apocalyptic Vampire tale I Am Legend [MP3] from BBC7. Forget the recent Will Smith remake, or even Charlton Heston’s Omega Man - this is the real thing. If I was on Watchification I’d have been adding all the British B-Movie stuff BBC4 has been featuring, but you’ll have to be satisfied with this classic pulp instead. You can catch the rest of the episodes here.
I was very excited to hear - on Radio 4 -that the weekend past was going to be a Paul Scofield tribute weekend over on Radio 7. BBC Radio 7, graveyard of the forgotten sitcom and the deservedly banished panel game, might actually be worth listening to.
Paul Scofield was one of our greatest Shakespearean actors until his death in March, noted for his distinctive voice and delivery, and most famous for his generation-defining Lear, and his Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons. Personally, my favourite role of his is the droll, slightly camp narrator of Patrick Keillor’s peerless London, and its follow-up Robinson In Space.
Unfortunately, this tribute turned out to be simple rebroadcasts of just three plays, which are all a bit long for Speechification, but if you have an hour and a half to spare, this is a heads-up that they’re all available on Listen Again for the next week:
In our house we are exceptionordinarily fond of Lauren Child and especially of Clarice Bean, her resourceful and funny character for 8-12 year-olds. I’ve read all three of the Clarice Bean novels to my older two kids and we really definitely can’t wait for her to write another one (although we suspect that her absolutely mega-blockbuster picture book brand Charlie & Lola is probably taking up all her time right now).
BBC7 just ran an excellent reading (by Elisha Mansuroglo) of Clarice Bean Spells Trouble in the early morning Big Toe Books slot (I keep meaning to put the show on while we’re having our breakfast. I wonder if a nice story might suppress the breakfast-time shouting and violence). So here, in a departure from our usual programmes with blokes talking about caves or electro music, is part one. There are seven parts all together and you can listen to them all on the Big Toe page until 23 April.
Ivor Cutler inhabits my dreams. As a kid I often drifted off to sleep to the muffled sound of Cutler in the next room (he wasn’t actually in the next room but my Dad’s old tape recorder was). I’m not going to waste any more energy describing an almost perfectly strange and beautiful artist like Cutler. He just was. This is the first in a six-part series that went out in 1990 - a collaboration with his long-time partner Phyllis King. BBC7 ran it again this morning in the early hours but I can’t tell if they’re going to run the other five (you figure it out). MP3.
A blog of Radio 4. Not about Radio 4 but of it. We point to the bits we like, the bits you might have missed, the bits that someone might have sneakily recorded. Other speech radio from around the world will no doubt find its way here too.
Of course, one day this might turn into something else, maybe a new way of curating speech radio, or maybe it won’t.
Your hosts on this not very wild ride are Steve Bowbrick, Russell Davies, Dan Hill, Bobbie Johnson, Roo Reynolds and James Bridle. Drop us a line with your thoughts, unless you wish to complain about continuity announcers and their accents.
You might also enjoy the square-eyed sister site, Watchification.
Things tagged with 'speechification'
