The week in audio: Woman's Hour; Naga Munchetty

Woman’s Hour (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
Naga Munchetty (Radio 5 live) | BBC Sounds

New Year, New Lockdown! And commiserations to anyone who spent last weekend ironing their back-to-school clothes. It’s harder to muster that go-get-’em gusto in all-day PJs, but needs must. I’d say “alas”, but I don’t want to trigger you.

Anyway, there are some people out there for whom the first week in January has meant change. Some have even got a new job. The big audio newbies last week were two very experienced BBC broadcasters making moves to different studios: Emma Barnett taking over from Monday to Thursday at Woman’s Hour, and Naga Munchetty moving from TV (BBC One’s Breakfast) to Barnett’s old weekday morning show at 5 live. Both big appointments and thus both under scrutiny.

Each started well. Barnett, used to a three-hour rolling news show, had to work hard to squeeze three items into 45 minutes (Woman’s Hour is not an hour: the last 15 minutes is always “drama”, for some insane reason). After a message from the Queen, which Barnett read out, to mark the programme’s 75th birthday, the first item was a pre-recorded interview done just before the show. This was presumably because Barnett and the producers hoped it would generate headlines. But Sonia Khan, the Treasury aide who marched out of her civil service job in 2019 on Dominic Cummings’s orders, was not on Woman’s Hour to create waves. Instead, she said, she wanted to encourage people from less privileged backgrounds to go into politics or high public service jobs. (I’m not sure her treatment would do this, but that’s not her fault.) This was followed by a piece on Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and a rushed chat with Imelda Staunton. Still, it was an assured performance by Barnett, who banged everything through.

Over on 5 live, Munchetty was excellent too: fluent, welcoming, professional but not without character. She has a tendency to “um” and to rustle her papers too close to the mic, but these small tics will iron themselves out. She’s also very keen to be nice to everyone, from sports reporters to texter-inners. “That’s lovely, isn’t it?” she said to the news announcer on Tuesday, after reading out a text from a woman who gave an elderly neighbour some minestrone soup. “You a soup fan?” Such mad cheeriness could become a little wearing: never-ending gratitude can grate in the same way as non-stop moaning.

Actually on Tuesday, as there was only one news story – lockdown and, especially, schools – the shows overlapped a little, which felt odd. But it was Wednesday when things came unstuck, for Barnett, anyway. Woman’s Hour took the whole show to reflect upon the #MeToo movement, using the anniversary of Harvey Weinstein’s court case as a peg. Actors Rosanna Arquette and Caitlin Dulany, who both accused Weinstein of sexual assault, were interesting speakers, but Barnett’s tone veered off slightly: she concentrated for too long on whether men have been adversely affected by #MeToo. And when interviewing Gudrun Young, a defence lawyer, and Sarah Green, director of End Violence Against Women, Barnett again went off-beam, bringing the talk round to the tired trope of men being falsely accused of rape or sexual assault. This is a very small percentage of cases, and Green brusquely put Barnett straight.

Next, the show had author and tedious controversialist Lionel Shriver on as a guest. As I listened to Shriver whining about Black Lives Matter, I wondered where the black voices were on the programme, especially given that #MeToo was started by a black woman. Immediately after the show, actor Kelechi Okafor revealed that she had been booked, but walked off air just before she was due to appear because Barnett had spoken about her in a way she did not like. Okafor called her treatment “degrading” and “vile”. “You can have a genuine concern about something you’ve been told about me and address it in a manner that is kind,” she tweeted. “That wasn’t what took place .”

Later, Barnett issued a statement saying that she’d been briefed that Okafor had made alleged antisemitic remarks in the past, and in the light of Weinstein being Jewish she discussed this with her producers, which Okafor had overheard. “I then directly talked to Kelechi about the allegations,” said Barnett, “standing by my queries and said she could put her response across in the programme.”

Though Barnett has a right to ask tough questions, Okafor has a right to walk too. It was a mistake that Okafor heard, but Barnett’s up-to-the-wire discussion with the producers would have felt like an ambush to anyone who is not a politician. More importantly, why weren’t there more women of colour booked as #MeToo speakers in the first place?

Barnett is brilliant, and I enjoy her cage-rattling style. I also admire her dedicated anti-racism work around antisemitism. Still, the treatment of Okafor was disrespectful and careless, especially given that she was the only black woman present. It doesn’t have to be cosy, but Woman’s Hour has to ensure that women who aren’t part of the Radio 4 establishment feel as included as everyone else. Otherwise you get radio full of the same confident blusterers – and we all know how that sounds.

Three new shows to take your mind off things

The Cipher
BBC Sounds
This is a good drama to get stuck into: great writing, believable performances, excellent sound work. All the best audio dramas are mysteries at the moment, and most have an otherworld twist. The Cipher is no different, though its alternative reality is, initially at least, a virtual one. Sixteen-year-old Sabrina, from Wolverhampton (Anya Chalotra: great), cracks an online cryptic puzzle and suddenly everything turns weird. Scientists are being murdered and there are cryptic symbols left at death scenes. Sabrina needs to track down a serial killer, but they might not be human. Produced for BBC Sounds by Goldhawk Productions, which made the excellently spooky Passenger List.

Bunk Bed
Radio 4
Peter Curran and Patrick Marber are back and as sleepy and funny as ever. Now on its seventh series, Bunk Bed still manages to delight. It’s a bit like a radio version of Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse’s fishing programme: just two middle-aged men chuntering on, teasing and reminiscing, belying the idea that blokes can’t talk to each other. They can, as long as they’re not actually facing each other when they do – and Bunk Bed is recorded in the dark, with Curran, Marber and their guest lying down in bed. This series opens with the always brilliant Kathy Burke and the munching of crisps. How to eat them in bed? She has the technique (of course she does).

Relatively
relativelypodcast.com
A new interview series about siblings, presented by Catherine Carr. This is a sweet programme that reveals a lot about its interviewees: as, of course, we can’t be anything other than real with our brothers and sisters. Not the usual choice of speakers either: the three episodes so far feature MP Jess Philips and brother Luke Trainor; drag queen Divina de Campo and sister Carys Cliffe; and actor and musician Johnny Flynn and sister Lillie. I can’t get enough of hearing how families work, and Carr coaxes everyone to talk as honestly as they can. Lovely stuff.