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Front Row: Anna Friel in Uncle Vanya, The Sapphires, letters from the Mary Whitehouse archive

Anna Friel in Uncle Vanya, The Sapphires, letters from the Mary Whitehouse archive

05/11/2012

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Anna Friel in Uncle Vanya, The Sapphires, letters from the Mary Whitehouse archive

Anna Friel in Uncle Vanya, Kamila Shamsie on Nick Nickelby, the Mary Whitehouse archive.

Anna Friel in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, Kamila Shamsie on modern re-workings of great literature, letters from the Mary Whitehouse archive, and Chris O'Dowd in the film The Sapphires.

With Mark Lawson.

Anna Friel returns to the stage in a new production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, with a cast which also includes Ken Stott, Laura Carmichael and Sam West. Writer and performer Viv Groskop reviews.

In 1964, a devoutly Christian Shropshire schoolteacher co-launched a Clean Up TV campaign - and it turned her into a media star. Mrs Mary Whitehouse wrote letters of complaint to programme-makers, politicians, pop stars and playwrights. A selection of her correspondence, preserved in the archives of her National Viewers And Listeners Association, has now been published. Its editor Ben Thompson discusses her targets and the reactions to her attacks.

Chris O'Dowd stars as a talent scout in The Sapphires, an Australian film about four Aboriginal women who form a group - Australia's answer to The Supremes - and whose first gig is to travel to Vietnam in 1968 to sing for the troops. Kate Mossman reviews.

The Charles Dickens novel Nicholas Nickleby receives a modern makeover in a new TV adaptation, where penniless hero Nick finds himself fighting corruption within care homes. Novelist Kamila Shamsie discusses this latest updating of Dickens, and reflects on other adaptations of literary classics, including works by Jane Austen, Chaucer and Shakespeare.


Producer Ella-mai Robey.

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