Programme Information

Michael Ball returns to BBC Radio 2 on Sunday mornings

Listeners are invited to make a Sunday Brunch date with Michael Ball as Michael continues to brighten up Sunday mornings on BBC Radio 2.

This Sunday, it's business as usual as Michael reviews the newspapers and previews the best of the week's movie, DVD, TV and radio entertainment.

There's his special guest, plus Ball's Better Than The Original, the Classic Album Track, all the best music you could wish for plus a surprise or two along the way.

Presenter/Michael Ball, Producer/Jodie Keane for the BBC

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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Johnnie Walker continues his celebration of all things Seventies, playing music from both sides of the Atlantic.

This week, Johnnie is joined by drummer Stephen Morris. Stephen reflects on the decade in which his first band, post-punk pioneers Joy Division, signed to Factory Records and released their debut album, Unknown Pleasures, in 1979.

Presenter/Johnnie Walker, Producer/Natasha Costa Correa for Wise Buddah

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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Continuing his series of programmes on the Beatitudes, Brian D'Arcy considers the blessings for those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

He explores what is meant by good ethical behaviour through music, prayer and reflection.

Hymns are performed by the Coventry Singers, directed by Paul Leddington Wright with organist Nigel Spooner, and include Stand Up Stand Up For Jesus, O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing and O For A Closer Walk With God.

Presenter/Brian D'Arcy, Producer/Clair Jaquiss for the BBC

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

Roger Allam and Jane Lapotaire star in Stephen Wakelam's historical drama.

In 1588, essayist and landowner Michel de Montaigne set out on a journey around the troubled kingdom of France. He was on a mission to reconcile the Valois King Henri the Third, a Catholic, with his likely successor, the Bourbon King of Navarre, a Protestant.

The stakes are high with the intensification of the Civil War the consequence of failure.

Jeremy Mortimer directs Roger Allam as Michel de Montaigne, James Norton as Peslier, Jane Lapotaire as Catherine de Medici, Elliot Levey as Henri Navarre, Sam Dale as Henri Valois, Sally Orrock as Francoise de Montaigne, Leah Brotherhead as Marie de Gournay, Adeel Akhtar as Sergeant Soumillon, Lloyd Thomas as Captain Guyon and Henry Devas as the courtier.

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

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The year 1911 saw the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the abdication of the last Emperor in China. One hundred years on, Isabel Hilton describes how China coped with the collapse and looks for any lingering legacy.

After living under the comparative stability of an Imperial system for so long, she explains what happened when the young Emperor Puyi was forced to stand down.

Isabel reports from the Chinese capital, Beijing, on how China set about finding a new system to govern. A century on, has the country fully recovered from the trauma of this rupture from such an ancient past and has it finally settled on its replacement?

Isabel describes China's current relationship with its Imperial past.

Presenter/Isabel Hilton, Producer/Anthony Denselow

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

Coronation Street actress Betty Driver

Betty Driver, veteran Coronation Street actress, joins Kirsty Young to choose her Desert Island Discs.

Presenter/Kirsty Young, Producer/Leanne Buckle for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Matthew Sweet looks at the influence of pocket cameras on film

As part of BBC Radio 4's film season, Matthew Sweet takes a look at how the mobile phone and other pocket cameras are transforming the way people watch and make movies – and also what lies ahead.

Technology has come a long way since French scientist Phillipe Kahn accidentally discovered he could use his mobile phone to send pictures of his new-born baby to relatives back in 1997. And yet, as Matthew finds out, we are only just scratching the surface of what can be done with film and phones.

Matthew hears from artists, film studios and advertisers about how films, either made or viewed on mobile phones, are opening a host of possibilities and shaping a new future for the moving image.

Matthew visits the Paris Pocket Film Festival. He joins a group of children at a film-making workshop in London's East End on a mission to shoot a fashion video on their phones. He trails artist film-maker Sylvie Prasad as she uses her mobile phone to shoot a film about and for her mother, who has Alzheimer's. He hears from director Clio Barnard about her reasons for choosing a mobile phone to shoot her film, Dark Glass. And Matthew talks to the people behind a landmark road safety campaign film, shot on a mobile phone, which illustrates the perils to pedestrians of drivers using their own phones.

The programme also follows and features a specially commissioned Pocket Film by British film director Gurinder Chadha, which will be available to view on the BBC Radio 4 website.

Presenter/Matthew Sweet, Producers/Susan Marling and Hannah Rosenfelder for Just Radio Ltd

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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The Completists Ep 1/5

Sunday 23 January

2.45-3.00pm BBC RADIO 4

Ian Marchant meets five "completists" – each of them driven by the need to tick off the entire collection.

The word "completist" was coined in the Fifties and was originally applied to collectors who aspired to own an entire set of records by a particular artist, usually a jazz musician. But now completists come in many different forms with different ambitions.

The internet has revolutionised this group, dragging them out of their cellars, kitchens, bedrooms and sheds and into web forums, specialist chatrooms and onto the blogosphere to exchange opinions, tips and secrets with whole tribes of fellow completists. The opportunities to complete their goal are more available because of global communication, but the logistics are harder and the goalposts are higher.

Ian, a former Charing Cross Road bookseller, is an old friend and admirer of completists. He recalls the story of one book collector who regularly asked for a particular volume, habitually adding "...but you won't have it".

When the book finally and amazingly turned up, the collector refused to buy it because, once he owned it, he'd no longer have a reason to live.

And as for Ian's completism – he owns all the records of Brinsley Schwarz – it took him 10 years to find a copy of their first album, and it turned out to be lousy.

Presenter/Ian Marchant, Producer/Peter Everett for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Classic Serial – The Moonstone Ep 1/4

Sunday 23 January

3.00-4.00pm BBC RADIO 4

Actor Kenneth Cranham stars as Sergeant Cuff in The Moonstone

Doug Lucie's dramatisation of Wilkie Collins's detective masterpiece from 1868 stars Eleanor Bron as Lady Verinder and Kenneth Cranham as Sergeant Cuff.

Described by TS Eliot as the first and best of English detective novels, The Moonstone involves a huge diamond, stolen from the forehead of an Indian deity, plundered in a siege and finally given to Rachel Verinder on her 18th birthday. The stone is said to carry a curse and mysteriously disappears on the night of the celebrations.

The cast also includes: Jasmine Hyde as Rachel Verinder; Steve Hodson as Betteridge; Paul Rhys as Franklin Blake; Stephen Critchlow as John Herncastle; Alison Pettitt as Rosanna Spearman; Mark Straker as Godfrey Ablewhite; Clare Corbett as Penelope; and Paul Battacharjee as Mr Murthwaite.

The Moonstone is recorded on location by Lucinda Mason Brown with original music by David Chilton.

Producer/Janet Whitaker for Goldhawk Essential Limited

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Poetry Please Ep 1/7

Sunday 23 January

4.30-5.00pm BBC RADIO 4

Roger McGough returns with a new series of readings of listeners' poetry requests, including work by Bertolt Brecht, Rudyard Kipling and Kate Scott.

There's something of a food-related theme to the edition, with William Carlos Williams's evocative poem describing the chilled plums he's raided from the fridge.

Kipling's poem Arithmetic On The Frontier weighs a British soldier's life against that of his adversaries and his own officers.

The readers are Jon Strickland and Phyllida Nash.

Presenter/Roger McGough, Producer/Mark Smalley for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

5 Live Sport

Sunday 23 January

12.00noon-6.00pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE

Colin Murray presents the Sunday Review with a round-up of the weekend's football so far, plus reports and reaction after the third One Day International between Australia and England in Sydney.

From 1.15pm, there's live Championship commentary of Queens Park Rangers versus Coventry City from Loftus Road.

At 4pm, there is live Premier League commentary of Blackburn Rovers versus West Bromwich Albion from Ewood Park.

Presenter/Colin Murray, Producer/Mike Carr

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

5 Live NFL

Sunday 23 January

6.45pm-3.00am BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

Listeners can enjoy commentary from the NFL as the first Championship game gets under way, with a place in the Super Bowl up for grabs.

There is also full commentary from the second Championship game, as the final Super Bowl contender is decided.

Producer/Simon Crosse for USP

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity

Post-punk pioneers Gang Of Four take over the 6 Mix.

Formed by singer John King and guitarist Andy Gill at Leeds University in 1977, Gang Of Four released a string of acclaimed singles in the late Seventies and early Eighties including Damaged Goods and I Love A Man In Uniform.

For a period of time they became one of Britain's most talked-about bands but future releases failed to live up to the hype and, by the mid Eighties, the band had drifted into obscurity.

A series of releases during the early Nineties helped them maintain a cult following but eventually the band called it a day in 1994. Many expected Gang Of Four to become a footnote in musical history. But, all of sudden, in the early 2000s, a wave of then-hot new bands including Franz Ferdinand, The Rapture and the Futureheads started citing Gang Of Four's early material as a key influence on their sound. Following this fresh and unexpected wave of interest, Andy and John reformed the band in 2004 and started recording again.

As they prepare to release their first new album in 16 years, entitled Content, Andy and John take over the 6 Mix decks to play a selection of music from the last 40 years which inspired them to make music and has informed the sound of their new LP.

Presenters/Andy Gill and John King, Producer/Rowan Collinson

BBC 6 Music Publicity