Features

Terry Deary: 'I'm not some Koko the Clown coming over to perform for you'

As the BBC takes 'Horrible Histories' primetime, its creator, Terry Deary, speaks his mind to Kunal Dutta

Inside Features

Jodie Whittaker: 'I work a lot and no one knows who I am'

Saturday, 18 June 2011

At just 28, she's the queen of prime-time drama, yet has somehow kept a low profile. Now two major literary adaptations are about to change that. Gerard Gilbert meets Jodie Whittaker

The Week In Radio: A memorable look at the middle-class meltdown

Thursday, 16 June 2011

Listening to that vale of tears The Archers recently I began to wonder whether the undercurrent of gloom detectable in radio drama could be entirely down to the economy. It's noticeable that while the ongoing financial crisis gets endless attention on news and current affairs programmes, writers and artists have only patchily responded. There was an interesting exploration of this in Radio 3's Europe – the Art of Austerity, which compared today's response to that of European artists during the recession of the 1930s. Could The Archers' current weeping and wailing, the deaths, the dead people's birthdays, the living people's breakdowns, be some 21st-century equivalent of Brecht?

TV credit where credits are due

Tuesday, 14 June 2011

With ‘Dexter’ and ‘Mad Men’ leading the way, TV title sequences are outdoing their film forebears. Gerard Gilbert celebrates the rebirth of an art form

Move over, Keira! Introducing a new generation of young British acting talent

Sunday, 12 June 2011

From maths-induced panic attacks to ballet-inflicted bone spurs, the road to stardom hasn't been easy for the emerging generation of British actresses

Underground, overground: The return of the Wombles

Sunday, 12 June 2011

As the furry TV superstars re-emerge from a 30-year hibernation to play Glastonbury, the man behind their greatest hits relives the pleasures and pitfalls of the glory days – and reveals how he survived 'career suicide'

The Week In Radio: A flying success from the stiff upper lips

Thursday, 9 June 2011

Like most stereotypes, the British stiff upper lip is way past its use-by date. The reticence in the drama of Terence Rattigan, whose centenary it now is, might as well be coming from another planet compared to the emotional incontinence of today. At a time when every passing thought becomes a tweet and marital differences are arbitrated by Jeremy Kyle and a couple of bouncers, we look back at Rattigan's repressed English characters with a kind of astonishment. Compared with the shouting and weeping we're used to in radio drama, where even the Archers moan endlessly about "coping", Rattigan's conflicts are played out with exquisite understatement and restraint. But then, when the emotion finally seeps through the cracks in those upper-middle voices, how potent it sounds!

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Area 51 uncovered

Friday, 3 June 2011

As information from the top secret US military base is declassified, The Independent talks alien conspiracy theories, the Cold War and UFOs with a man who was there

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