... This femme was fatally good By Moira Petty There was sex and something approaching shopping (the eponymous queen petulantly trying on 30 dresses from her wardrobe) in a stunning reworking of Jean Racine's Phedre (Festival Radio for R3. Sunday, June 11). Racine's original was set in the Ancient World and adapted from that beguiling storehouse of sexual intrigue and political machination, Greek ...

... A touching story of filial duty BY MOIRA PETTY Michael Mears is the Aiec Guinness of afternoon drama. Like Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets, Mears took every role in Stow Train to Woking (R4, Wednesday, July 5), like him, his touch was light with no shrill caricature. Mears was not merely the entire cast of this touching comedy about filial duty and how the parent/child relationship comes, ...

... Comic sociology in cartoon form By Moira Petty He is invisible, a cog in the monolithic Chester-Perry Organisation, gyrating comically like a hamster on its wheel. Returning for another series based on the Frank Dickens cartoon strip, Bristow (R4, from Friday, July 7), was, as ever, a one-man crusade against the conspiratorial powers that be. Like his blood brothers, Reginald Perrin and Diary ...

... Surreal comedy worth opening the door for By MOIRA PETTY Playwright Martin Smith borrowed nemesis, hubris and a Crook chorus from the Ancient tragedians and transplanted them to a factory's packaging department in his exuberant comedy Jeff's Kingdom (R4. Wednesday. August 2). The humour became blacker, richer and more frenzied as those tools of the gods swung into action to bring retribution ...

... They turned on, tuned in and dropped out BY MOIRA PETTY What happens to old hippies? Some grow fat, bald and become the backbone of the local council planning department, according to Peter Roberts. In Raising the Sage (R4, Friday, August 4), his hilarious account of the search for one of the former gurus of sixties cool, erstwhile trendies were dis interred by Californian academics ...

... Moving drama with pedigree BY MOIRA PETTY Those time-honoured doggy commands sit, wait and down may not be the obvious catch words of the self-help, psychobabble generation. Yet the discipline of dog training became an allegory for getting on with life in Dogged Persistence (R4, Friday, August 25). This entertaining comedy was written by Martyn Wade for its two redoubtable leading ladies. ...

... Moving child's eye view BY MOIRA PETTY Sometimes the Afternoon Play offers a piece, like Lulu (R4, Thursday, September 7), which is so funny, warm and original that it begs to be heard by audiences who aren't looking for an accompaniment to ironing or motoring at 2.15pm. Perhaps there is a case for a night-time repeat of daytime drama, like that of John Peel's Home Truths. What made Lulu ...

... Trap of deadly dignity BY MOIRA PETTY Commemorating the dead can be a portentous business, as Michael found out in Soft Stones (BBC Manchester for R4, Tuesday, September 12). He wanted some kind of a memorial to mark the life of his boyhood friend, dead at 35, and was planning to write a poem. While he considered this, he joined a guided tour of Leeds and noticed how the solemn dignity of ...

... Pinter's mortal choice By MORIA PETTY The 70th birthday celebration production of Moonlight (R3, Sunday, October 8) was chosen by Harold Pinter as the work he would most like to hear on radio and act in. Fittingly, he selected a piece which dealt with the imminence of death. First seen at the Almeida in 1993, it explored the ultimate taboo. The issue of mortality was refracted through the ...

... Hell-tale update BY MOIRA PETTY When TV has themed nights, it is all low-brow culture viewed with the regulatory post-modem irony. How liberating for those working in radio drama that they can, without blushing, take their cue from culture with a capital C. And how dangerous An updated version of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is an undertaking, especially as 2000 Tales (R4, from Monday, ...

... Mystery is a weak tribute BY MORIA PEETY Anniversaries of eminent births, deaths and probably barmitzvahs, give the semblance of themed programming in radio drama. Recently we have had Harold Pinter's 70th, and no doubt the centenary of Oscar Wilde's death will launch a flotilla of events but. first, comes the 50th anniversary of the death of fellow Irishman GB Shaw. Quite what GBS would have ...

... Strange but seductive fare BY MOIRA PETTY There is nothing like a little bewilderment to make Saturday night go with a swing. Mark Ravenhili's Feed Me (R3, Saturday, November 18) resembled a party where the Martinis are a little too stiff; characters blur and you have trouble following conversations but the sensation is seductively moreish. The play, launching The Wire, a bold and ...