Radio National has announced details of its summer schedule, including a variety of new series as well as some classic dramatisations and ‘best ofs’.
Broadcaster, writer and actor Nell Schofield presents Summer Breakfast from Monday, 9th December. Nell has been a regular on Radio National programs such as Arts Today and Breakfast and presented the series The Story of Pop. She currently hosts The Director’s Cut on pay TV and writes for a variety of publications. Her first book First Kiss was published this year.
Radio National broadcasts the classic BBC dramatisation of Lord of the Rings weekdays at 5.30pm from Monday, 23rd December to Monday, 27th January. The cast includes Ian Holm, Michael Hordern and John Le Mesurier.
Other drama on the station includes: Louis Nowra’s The Divine Hammer, 3pm, Sundays in January. This superb ABC production gives listeners every reason to rediscover radio drama. The entertaining ‘whodunit’ features David Roberts, Joel Edgerton, Tony Llewellyn-Jones, Lisa Hensley, Kris McQuade, Jessica Napier and Anthony Phelan. And also Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, 20th-24th January at 11am, which features an all-Indian cast and recorded entirely on location not far from Bollywood.
Bioscope at 8am each Sunday from December 22nd is a six-part series on interesting lives and times.
In the feature on Charles Dickens, Nell Schofield interviews British actor Simon Callow on the connections between Dickens’ life and his fiction. Other portrayals include Merle Oberon, George Orwell, Nugget Coombs and Primo Levi, one of Italy’s most revered post-war writers who documented his time in Auschwitz, considered the most accurate account of Nazi atrocities.
City Lights, 11am from Monday, 23rd to Friday 27th December, is a series of five personal portraits of cities by leading radio feature makers and personalities in the cities they know intimately. It includes a tour of San Francisco with the city’s luminary and famed poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Listeners will also hear fresh journeys around London, Helsinki, Damascus and Sydney. Edge of Asia, broadcast weekdays at 10am from Boxing Day until Thursday 2nd January, is Radio National’s first co-production with BBC World Service. Presented by the ABC’s Tony Barrell, the series received rave reviews after its broadcast on BBC World Service. It investigates the social, cultural and historical realities of life on the northeast edge of Asia.
In Summertalk, weekdays at 6pm from 6th-17th January, a range of guests including Claire Martin, John Brogden, and Michael Leunig talk directly and intimately about subjects close to their heart.
Various BBC music specials include the five-part series Real Wild Child, 6pm, 20th-24th January, which looks at some of rock music’s more controversial figures namely Keith Moon, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Ozzy Ozbourne, Hank Williams and Elvis Presley.
The Cole Porter Story, 9pm on Saturdays 21st December to 8th February, explores Porter’s legacy with the help of friends, family and the stars with whom he worked, including archive recordings of Cole at the piano.
Other regular Radio National programs will broadcast highlights from 2002 making the summer season an excellent opportunity for new listeners to discover Radio National for the first time.
Aside from Summer Breakfast, the majority of the new schedule starts on Monday, 23rd December.
The full summer line-up will be available to view on the website abc.net.au/rn from next week.