... 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 ...

... Somebody has got it right BY MOIRA PETTY When the mannerisms and stylised gags of situation comedy are fused with sharp characterisation and a density of emotion, the result can be compelling entertainment. Liz Wainwright's superb Somebody (R4, Saturday, Jury 25) was not flagged as sitcom but the casting of Lynda Bellingham in the lead female role and the script's frothy humour led it in that ...

... Comedy of the highest calibre Marcy Kahan has previously written six radio plays and if they were the calibre of the latest, it is my misfortune to have missed them. Everybody Comes to Schicklgruber's (R4, Monday, July 8) was an exquisite comedy of Jewish manners and thwarted ambition. Kahan is the thinking woman's Ruby Wax several of the play's set-pieces made me laugh until I ached. ...

... Treads a likeable path BY MOIRA PETTY I had not thought of Rosalind as a control freak before this new As You Like It (R3, Sunday, April 23). It may have appeared so only to my ears, for the direction by Kate Rowland was light and unforced, allowing the magic of this forest of Arden setting to creep over the characters, much assisted by Harvey Brough's music. In a way Helena Bonham Carter ...

... Going on a surreal holiday BY MOIRA PETTY John Hegley is the man of the moment in radio drama--his jaunty jingles are everywhere. Fresh from his zany children's play last month, September saw his first comedy series, The Adventures of John and Tony (R4, from Tuesday, September 7). Hegley played John, with Simon Munnery (alias Alan Parker, Urban Warrior), in his first acting role as the bossy ...

... Glitzy characters, drab script The Women In His Life (R2. from Tuesday. October 22) were plentiful: jostling by his sick bed, sulking in New York, Paris, London or Berlin, popping up with interesting surprises (Max, I am your real mother, whispered an ancient nun), hurling themselves xo tneir aeains rrom me xop ot decorators' ladders. In fact, the fawning females in this eight part radio ...

... Bar room banter mesmerises BY MOIRA PETTY Some of the greatest human dramas are encompassed in the most humdrum of activities. Conor McPherson's mesmeric play The Weir (R3. Sunday, March 8) is about the business of being mortal, the fragility of life. Even as a picture of cholia emerged, so did the heal ing nature of conviviality over a bottle. The more robustly human the craic the earthy, ...