mon 31/03/2025

BBC

Reissue CDs Weekly: The Kinks

The Kinks:  The Kinks at the BBCKieron Tyler“Meet a group that recently came from nowhere to the top of the hit parade. A rhythm and blues outfit with long, shoulder-length hair and the strange name of The Kinks.” With that, Brian Matthew...

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Tusa wraps up for the World Service

With the electrics being dismantled today at Bush House, central London HQ of the BBC World Service for 70 years, Sir John Tusa, its former MD (and chairman of The Arts Desk) presents a Radio 4 programme of memories of radio broadcasts from the...

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George Entwistle is BBC's new DG

The new Director General of the BBC is George Entwistle, previously the director of BBC Vision and a former editor of Newsnight. He will take up his new post in the autumn, replacing Mark Thompson, who has held the position since 2004. Reflecting...

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The Voice: The Final, BBC One

I love the BBC. “Auntie Beeb” really is the appropriate nickname for the Corporation, at least when it comes to television, because you just know when they try and get involved with any kind of pop culture it's going to be with all the gaucheness of...

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Tales of Television Centre, BBC Four

“It’s like Big Ben. It’s like the Houses of Parliament. It’s like St Paul’s,” observed Susan Hampshire, reflecting on the iconic properties of Television Centre, the BBC’s 52-year-old nerve centre. Steady on, Susan, you thought, let’s not overdo it...

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Arena: Jonathan Miller, BBC Two

A director who is “passionate about biology”; a humorist who “hardly ever mocks”; an artist who speaks fluently about the origin of species; a non-musician who has directed some of the best-received opera productions of the modern era; a doctor with...

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Classical CDs Weekly: Falla, Rameau, Nikolaus Harnoncourt

 De Falla: Nights in the Gardens of Spain, The Three-Cornered Hat, Homenajes Jean-Efflaum Bavouzet (piano), Raquel Lojendio (soprano), BBC Philharmonic/Juanjo Mena (Chandos)Spanish conductor Juanjo Mena has recently succeeded Gianandra Noseda...

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The Spirit of Schubert: Hughes, BBC Philharmonic, Mena, Media City UK, Salford

Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Only the last umpteen hours left of BBC Radio 3’s The Spirit of Schubert marathon. After some 200 hours of broadcasting to mark the 215th anniversary of his birth, Franz can perhaps be left to rest easy for a while. The poor...

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Opinion: do we really need more classic novels adapted?

Wanted: classic novel, preferably 19th-century but 18th will do, or early 20th. Anything reeking of period before television acceptable, though preferably not too working class. English if poss. Barnaby Rudge need not apply.Is there a crisis in the...

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Christmas Dance on Cinema, TV & Radio

No more is dance the preserve of the few sitting in the theatre - larger companies are leaping hungrily for TV and now cinema screens, having found various ways around the longstanding obstacle of copyright. The BBC is experimenting with live 3D...

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Downton Abbey aims to rule Yuletide schedules

ITV has been cunningly trailing its Christmas bumper edition of Downton Abbey, which will feature guest stars Nigel Havers and Samantha Bond and the spectacle of Mr Bates being dragged before the beak for murdering his first wife. Now that details...

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David Croft, 1922-2011

Few comedy writers can claim to have extracted so much mirth from the slightly foxed fabric of British life as David Croft, who (with his writing partner Jimmy Perry) created It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Hi-de-Hi! and, above all, Dad's Army. Though the...

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