Saturday Review axed

[zola]

It states in the current Radio Times that Saturday Review on Radio 4 will be axed from the autumn to be replaced by Front Row Saturday, which will just be a cobbled together greatest hits of the previous weeks Front Row programmes. Since Front Row is more of a PR show to plug latest product with little critical input, I feel Saturday Review will be a sad loss given the disappearing arts coverage in the ( also disappearing ) newspapers.

I believe Saturday Review evolved out of the old radio 3 programme Critic's Choice ?

Saturday Essential Classics instead of Record Review anyone ?

[gurnemanz]

Gone the same way as Newsnight review. As with that programme, Saturday Review offered three reviewers, often with a refreshing diversity of view - unlike on Front Row, as you point out. I am old enough to remember Late Night Line-Up which was on when I was student - with Joan Bakewell amongst others. Melvyn's South Bank Show is gone from ITV - just about still clinging on via Sky Arts. Sad situation.

[french frank]

This is interesting - not least because I was about to say perhaps Radio 3 could take back the Critics' Forum successor, given that Radio 4 seems to have music speech programmes now:

"However, one subject, music, has been conspicuous by its absence from Saturday Review since most general critics feel unqualified to judge what is seen from the outside as a specialist area. When approached about offering some kind of Saturday Review equivalent on Radio 3, the controller Alan Davey declared himself receptive to the idea. He said the questions of criticism ‘are live to us at the moment’. He pointed out that Radio 3 already airs criticism on Free Thinking, Record Review and Music Matters, but that ‘perhaps there may be more we can do, especially in regard to younger critics’. None of these, however, take the Saturday Review form of a round table debate, though one could well imagine the entertainment value in which the variety across the arts were substituted with variety within music (a symphony, a chamber performance, an opera, a recital). Saturday Review itself had a progenitor in the long lost and fondly remembered Radio 3 programme Critics Forum, which ran for 15 years from the 1970s."

[CGR]

It states in the current Radio Times that Saturday Review on Radio 4 will be axed from the autumn to be replaced by Front Row Saturday, which will just be a cobbled together greatest hits of the previous weeks Front Row programmes. Since Front Row is more of a PR show to plug latest product with little critical input, I feel Saturday Review will be a sad loss given the disappearing arts coverage in the ( also disappearing ) newspapers.

I believe Saturday Review evolved out of the old radio 3 programme Critic's Choice ?

Saturday Essential Classics instead of Record Review anyone ?

The BBC's policy of dumbing-down continues.

[french frank]

The BBC's policy of dumbing-down continues.

If this is genuinely to make savings, there are a lot of R4 programmes that would be more expensive than a programme of this kind (comedy, drama). I expect they thought it was a convenient way to make it look as if it was only sort of being axed, but not really as there would be an equivalent (convenient) replacement.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Saturday Essential Classics instead of Record Review anyone ?

Please, no!

[DracoM]

Absolutely with FF: Tom Sutcliffe's Sat evening R4 prog is required listening and EXACTLY what R3 could / should do. Can we lobby for it replace several progs on R3 I can think of?

[french frank]

Can we lobby for it replace several progs on R3 I can think of?

You might be replacing other people's favourites

How closely does it resemble Critics' Forum?

First CF was Fri 4 Jan 1974:

A weekly discussion on cinema, theatre, books, broadcasting and the visual arts This week
Julian Mitchell (in the Chair) talks with DILYS POWELL , PAUL BAILEY and EDWIN MULLINS
Producer PHILIP FRENCH followed by an interlude

[zola]

How closely does it resemble Critics' Forum?

Not that dissimilar really given the changes that the passage of time causes with means of expression etc. Here is tomorrow's programme.

Yaël Farber's Salome at NT tries to retell a biblical story many of us half-know. Has she been misrepresented and misunderstood and is she more than the scheming woman who arranged the decapitation of John The Baptist?
Francois Ozon's bilingual film Frantz is a tale of love and lies in France and Germany shortly after the First World War. If telling the truth is too painful, can it be okay to lie?
Anything is Possible is a new novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout. Continuing the story of characters from her previous highly-acclaimed work, My Name Is Lucy Barton.
Tate Modern's newest exhibition looks at the career and output of sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti
BBC TV has dramatised the Rochdale sex abuse scandal. Starring Maxine Peake, it's not easy viewing but what what light can a drama shine upon such a notorious case?

Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Blake Morrison, Viv Groskop and Barb Jungr. The producer is Oliver Jones.

[french frank]

Leaving aside the question of what such a programme should replace, obviously Friday at 8.50pm (like the first edition) wouldn't suit a schedule which has an evening concert every evening. So when should it be on? Perhaps the Free Thinking slot? As I gave up listening when Night Waves disappeared, I don't even know how similar Free Thinking is to Saturday Review.

[Thank you, zola!]

[zola]

I think it is naturally a weekend programme and would sit quite well as an early evening programme on Sunday. I would put it in the Words and Music slot but not replacing Words and Music. Instead move everything forward and drop Private Passions which has had a pretty good run surely ? But then as you pointed out, PP is no doubt many people's favourite programme

[french frank]

I think it is naturally a weekend programme and would sit quite well as an early evening programme on Sunday. I would put it in the Words and Music slot but not replacing Words and Music. Instead move everything forward and drop Private Passions which has had a pretty good run surely ? But then as you pointed out, PP is no doubt many people's favourite programme

I just have this inkling that Private Passions might have passed into the realms of the 'Undroppable': like CotW, Choral Evensong, Jazz Record Requests, Record Review …

There was some resistance to the move of Words and Music to the early evening, but Early Music Late has now taken up residence in the later slot. I think I'd be inclined to drop the Sunday concert and revert to something like the previous schedule.

The Choir
The Listening Service
Critics Forum
Sunday Feature
Drama on 3 (7.30-9.30)
Words and Music (9.30-10.45pm)
Early Music Late

Tweakable. Though I wouldn't want people's 'favourite Radio 4 programme' plonked on Radio 3 without a bit of an R3 rethink.

[DracoM]

Free Thinking IMO seems to be more focused on themes than 'events'. 'The Tom Sutcliffe programme on R4 is very specifically on what's coming on scene. It's quickish, well-filled 45 minutes, usually well-informed, disagreement inside team is not unheard of, and Sutcliffe is an excellent 'less is more' host / chair, unlike eg Philip Dodds and Anne McElVoy.

On your list, FF, I fear The Listening Service would be my candidate for ditch. I find Tom Service v.diff to sit through. I'd suggest the R4 -model Critics Forum could be a sort of 9.30 p.m. plus, I'd say.

[doversoul1]

How about dropping the repeat of Monday’s Lunchtime Concert on Sunday and move up the rest of the programmes an hour.

I find Free Thinking varies an awful lot between sounding like a slightly highbrow chat show and an enlightening discussion depending on the subject and the participants but maybe that is the point of the programme.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Critics Forum? I'm against 'em, personally, and such a programme on R3 would be as big a turn-off for me as it has been on R4. I don't think that there is a programme on R3 (and certainly none that have been mentioned so far on this Thread) that could be replaced by a Saturday Review-type feature without doing even greater damage to R3. An outdated and irrelevant format which the airwaves are well rid of.