Weekend TV and radio

This was very much a mixed bag.

The best programme I heard was Private Passions. 

This programme – on a midday on Radio 3 – is presented by Michael Berkeley and is a fusion of interview and music, much better than Desert Island Discs.  

When I switched on 5 minutes after the programme began I had to listen to a ghastly Moroccan dirge.

I thought the subject might be a African writer asserting her rights, but slightly to my surprise the interviewee was Esther Freud.

Being the daughter of Lucian Freud and great-granddaughter of Sigismund makes her interesting enough but she is literally in her own write an author too.

Her choice of  music was eclectic, including a delightful rendition in German of a Kurt Weill/Berthold Brecht song.  It’s a rerun so you can hear the programme on the Private Passions website.

Next up two TV programmes  featuring anti-semitism.

The first was the latest import from over the Channel Police Paris 1900.

Set in post-Dreyfus Paris, where anti-semitism is rife and the police are investigating the decapitation of bodies.

The programme is gory with one anti-semite slitting the throat of a pig dressed in uniform to resemble Alfred Dreyfus.

A butcher is suspected of the decapitations so there are many abattoir scenes of an animal being cut up.

Anti-semitism also featured in the second Ridley Road. 

I hoped that this would be more engaging than the first with Colin Jordan (Rory Kinnear) going centre stage and his relationship with Vivienne (Agnes O’Casey) developing.

It was one of those programmes that, after 30 minutes, I was on my iPad.

Before that there was documentary on Alexander Pope.

Simon Callow played the aphoristic, thinker and poet. I had no idea that as Catholic he was denied proper education.

Finally I must mention Succession. 

It’s the sort of series based on great wealth and a mega-rich dysfunctional family which might appeal to a certain American audience but not me.

There is style of American energised acting which returns me right off and after 20 minutes I switched off, never to return.