We hate those posts that straddle months. It makes the title stretch across two lines and makes us momentarily wriggle uncomfortably in our chairs. But let's overlook that. Here's this week's selection of BBC highlights. There are more of course, but we're sensitive about word count.
For those who aren't already aware, it’s Glastonbury weekend this weekend, and for those not attending you can absorb the atmosphere, entertainment and performances with over 250 hours of radio, TV, red button and online streaming. There's a lot of it. And we're keeping our fingers crossed for no more electrical storms. We don't like them very much.
A key World War One anniversary
Saturday marks the beginning of the sequence of events that led to the First World War, 100 years ago. In a new series on Radio 4, 1914: Day By Day chronicles in real time the events that led up to battle (4.55pm, daily). Other programmes include Radio 3’s Live In Concert (3.00pm, Saturday) which will be in Sarajevo joining broadcasters across Europe for an historic event as the Vienna Philharmonic joins forces with the Opera Choir of the National Theatre of Sarajevo for music from France, Germany and Austria; the BBC’s News team will report on the day as if it was 1914 combining modern news formats with historical archived content in a live blog at bbc.co.uk/ww1.
On the World Service, The Why Factor: WW1 Special – Patriotism (7.00pm, tonight) asks what motivates people to serve their country and examines how this loyalty can be fostered, manufactured and manipulated.
Six of the UK’s most talented young singer-songwriters team up with choirmaster Gareth Malone to write and perform a song that celebrates the memory of their ancestors and WW1, in The Big Performance (5.00pm, Thursday, CBBC).
Free Thinking In The Great War (10.00pm, Monday, Radio 3) explores how trees have become central to the culture of how we memorialise our war dead.
Elsewhere on the BBC
Don’t miss BBC Two’s new political thriller series The Honourable Woman (9.00pm, Thursday, BBC Two), starring Maggie Gyllenhaal as a powerful Anglo-Israeli businesswoman striving for peace in the Middle East, but who finds her family in danger.
Imagine… Monty Python: And Now For Something Rather Similar (10.35pm, Sunday, BBC One) is a special film following the surviving Pythons as they prepare for the reunion which John Cleese dismissed as "absolutely impossible". On Simon Mayo Drivetime (5pm, Tuesday, Radio 2) there’ll be live interviews from John Cleese and Michael Palin as well as fans from the O2 ahead of the final shows.
Jon Jacob is Editor, About the BBC
