... Concentrated emotion By Moira Petty When Jane Davis, mother of l9-year-old Shannon, one of the victims of the Pan Am flight which exploded over Lockerbie on December 21, 1989, visited the site, she saw passport photos of the 270 dead and realised the extent of the pain. But the strength of producer Dave Batchelor's Postcards from Shannon (BBC Scotland for R4, Friday, March 10) was in ...

... The Doctor lives again By MOIRA PETTY IN A wet and variable summer which somehow sums up the mood of the decade, radio has been looking back at long, hot summers when passions flared as well as the trousers and people had ideals they thought were worth fighting for. The best was The Monday Play Chicago Conspiracy Trial (R4; Monday August 23) which, in a riveting two hours, caught the whole ...

... LIUMPHREY LYTTELTON and his band have an impressive line-up of radio and TV dates in coming weeks. On February 6 Humph records a contribution for the Radio Lux embourg show, Stars On Wings for future transmission. On February 17. he will be heard on the BBC Home Service pro gramme, In Town Today dis cussing, with Richard Dingley, his 14 years as a bandleader and his successes, as a trumpet ...

... THE Postmaster General has turned down the application from South Western Broadcasting Limited, the West Country local radio and television company, to make a limited number of experimental sound radio missions in the Bristol area next spring. The reply to the application, which was submitted on Septem ber 25. states that until the Pilkington Committee have re ported and the Government ...

... Harden is a delight among the mayhem and murder by MOIRA PETTY THE LATTER part of this century has seen a burgeoning of religious fundamentalism, of sects, and, if recent reports arc to be believed, a wave of affirmative Christianity in which worshippers speak in tongues. Peter Roberts' play Devil's Province (BBC Pebble Mill for R4; Monday, June 20) was rather timely then, with its ...

... Tuning into the spirit of radio By MOIRA PETTY TELEVISION seems increasingly to be jettisoning the spiritual in favour of the corporeal. On ITV, Sunday nights are marked not by hymns from a far-flung cathedral but something thought more appropriate for families, films like the pugilistic Karate Kid. Even on the BBC, there is a sense of religion being allowed out of the box only on ...

... 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 ...

... Friel makes good sense BY MOIRA PETTY Brian Friel knows that the greatest acts of heroism are contained in the smallest lives. The great Irish playwright never extends erudition into pretentiousness or self-insight into ennui. His penchant tor aeiivenng a series of neatly-interlocking set- pieces on apparently ordinary lives is seen again in Molly Sweeney (BBC Belfast for R3, Sunday, April 27) ...

... Meldrew's the new Victor of the airwaves BY MORIA PETTY Victor MeMrew, the peerless old codger from One Foot in the Grave (R2. from Saturday, January 21), who is forever fulminating on life's minor injustices, has made the transition from television to radio. The traffic usually goes m the opposite direction so it was inter esting to see how David Renwicks radio adaptation, fea turing the ...

... Artful dissection of friendship By Moira Petty Power struggles are always riveting. Shakespeare's Richard II talked of buckets in a well spilling from one to the other. The friends in Yasmina Reza's Art (Mentorn Radio for R3, Sunday, May 7) experience similar shifts in their relationship as a vigorous ment or, more likely, a crotcnety put down, placed one ahead of the others. A huge success ...

... 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 ...

... Drama to top the year's best BY MOIRA PETTY There have been few dramas this year as engaging as James Friel's dramatisation of Iris Murdoch's dark novel of human frailties, A Falrty Honourable Defeat (Catherine Bailey productions for R3, Sunday, December 10). me source maienai was sat isfying of course Murdoch's tale of the malign influence of Julius King, an Eastern European intel lectual ...