It has not been a good year for the BBC. Cuts and job losses were announced. Blue Peter got entangled in a phone vote scandal. There was widespread disgust at the vast sums paid to Jonathan Ross. Mark Thompson, seen as a safe pair of hands when he took over as director general in 2004, has looked unsure in his dealings with both public and staff.
But for once, let us not bury the BBC. For when it trusts its audience, believes in its programme-makers and remembers its original purpose, there are still some things it does better than anyone else. There is no better example of this than Radio 3’s Sunday schedule.
Radio 3 is primarily a broadcaster and provider of classical music. Yet in the breadth of its coverage, the Sunday schedule is a return to the Third Programme, Radio 3’s predecessor. As well as music, you get drama, religion, documentaries, conversation and even poetry. Like the Third Programme, Radio 3 is unapologetically highbrow.
If the Radio 3 Sunday has a fulcrum, it is Private Passions, broadcast at noon. As with Radio 4’s best programmes—Start the Week with Andrew Marr, Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time—Private Passions works so well because it is the personal fiefdom of a clever and curious man, in this case the composer Michael Berkeley. Berkeley invites another clever and curious person into the bedroom of his Suffolk house—his interviews are conducted “as live” on a desk between two beds. The guest selects pieces of music, sometimes drama or comedy. Unlike Desert Island Discs, which the show resembles, the music is played in full and dissected expertly by Berkeley, who then coaxes thoughts from his guests, in the manner of a British Anthony Clare.
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