This Week on the BBC

Hey, let's find out what's playing this week on BBC Radio! (I listen to the Beeb a lot, and so should you!) Since they've recently extended the time period you can listen to most of their radio shows via the patented and yet oddly non-Apple iPlayer from a week to a month, there's no better time than right now (or anytime during the next month) to listen to BBC Radio programmes! (Extra M and E added for special British effect.)

Here's a handful of the shows I'm enjoying that I think the readers of this blog might like as well.

Show of the Week: Krazy Kat — A radio documentary on George Herriman's groundbreaking comic strip, hosted by noted illustrator Quentin Blake (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and other Roald Dahl books).

And here's some other cool stuff!:

• Doctor Who: Rebroadcasts of the classic Eighth Doctor Big Finish radio plays, including "Lucie Miller", "Prisoner of the Sun", "Relative Dimensions", and "The Resurrection of Mars".
• Night Waves: A segment from BBC Radio 3's arts show on fifty years of Doctor Who.
• The Goon Show: The brilliant and fast-paced anarchic, surrealist BBC radio comedy from the 1950s (it inspired Monty Python!), starring Harry Secombe, Spike Milligan, and Peter Sellers (yes, that Peter Sellers!). Episodes currently available on the BBC iPlayer include "The Moriarty Murder Mystery" (one of my faves; highly recommended), "The String Robberies", and "The Curse of Frankenstein" ("Blast!" he says.) Follow along using the Goon Show Scripts website!
• Ian Fleming's Thrilling Cities: Simon Williams (no, no, not this guy, sorry) reads abridged chapters from Fleming's travelogue of the world's most exotic cities. Three episodes are available: Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Chicago and New York.
• I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again!: Another of my all-time most-loved British radio programmes, a fast-moving sketch show starring John Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie (of The Goodies) and the proverbial "and the rest" (okay, Jo Kendall and David Hatch). Pretty much every episode has some fantastic stuff in it.
• Jeeves Live: I'm a nut for P.G. Wodehouse, and here's The Man Who Reads Everything (Martin Jarvis) doing his one-man show of Wodehouse classics before a live audience.
• Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation: There's still time to catch most of the brand-new series of left-wing comedian and commenter Jeremy Hardy (frequent panelist on The News Quiz) walking you through his acerbic guide to life. This is Series Ten, which means there's nine whole more series out there to look for after you enjoy these.
• The News at Bedtime: For all you comics fans, here's a sum-up of the concept behind this comedy show: imagine if Bill Willingham's Fables series had a nightly newscast of the events in their mystic land. Starring Jack Dee (the current host of the long-running I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue panel game) and a guy you may have heard of named Peter Capaldi. There's still time to catch the last few episodes of the series.

So there y'all go: lots of cool stuff to listen to on BBC Radio recommended to you by a Little Stuffed Bull, and you don't even have to pay the licence fee! Ha!