Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Sunday Feature

Documentaries

Factual

Exploring music, history, science, philosophy, film, visual arts and literature.

In-depth documentaries which explore music, history, science, philosophy, film, visual arts and literature.

Sunday Feature: Philip French and the Critical Ear

02/10/2016

Philip French and the Critical Ear

BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, Philip French and the Critical Ear

Laurence Scott pays tribute to radio producer and esteemed film critic Philip French.

Laurence Scott recalls the contribution of Philip French to the nation's critical life as producer of Radio 3's Critics' Forum and as The Observer's film reviewer.

The writer Philip French, who died in 2015 was the creator for Radio 3 of its first regular review programme, Critics' Forum. On the 70th anniversary of the station, Laurence Scott talks to those who knew Philip and explores his long involvement with arts programming on BBC Radio. 

When he died in 2015, Philip French received many and heartfelt eulogies to his intellect and sheer enjoyment of film as deployed for many decades in the review pages of the Observer newspaper. But French's contribution to shaping the taste of Britain's radio listeners was less remarked upon. This programme attempts to redress that. 

Critics' Forum was Radio 3's first formal review programme, but the network was, from its inception as the Third Programme in 1946, always the home of legendary critical voices, and this feature traces that pernickety pathway from the sometimes snooty 1940s and 50s to the more demotic 1960s when Philip French's creative voice began to be heard on the network. Laurence Scott also charts what happened after Philip French's retirement, and whether formal reviewers still enjoy power in the digital age, when it's easy to express and share an opinion on anything.

And friends remember him as a comrades-in-arms in the often turbulent world of artistic review, and talks to those who remember him even as a student arguing passionately the merits and demerits of the latest film releases while swinging down the lane acting out every Gene Kelly move from 'Singing in the Rain'...

Producer Simon Elmes.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Sunday Feature

Philip French and the Critical Ear

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3