1968 Day by Day, Radio 4<br/>A Charles Paris Mystery, Radio 4
And here's the news – from the past
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Your support makes all the difference.You might remember the TV programme The Rock and Roll Years: music from the times played over contemporary footage, no commentary necessary; it worked often brilliantly, with about a dozen spooky connections between music and image every 15 minutes.
Radio 4 is doing something similar with 1968 Day by Day: five minutes in the early evening devoted to some of that day's news highlights. It's a lovely idea, but then the devil is in the details.
I can see why it might be considered appropriate to play "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" to accompany 17 March's anti-Vietnam demonstrations, but, as every schoolchild knows, the song was not available to the public until 22 November. I know, I can imagine the producers of the programme holding their heads in their hands and despairing of such pettifogging, nit-picking criticism, but, well, once the thought of this discrepancy had popped into my head I found it impossible to dislodge.
As for how relatives of victims of the Aer Lingus crash of 25 March will react to a clip of Creedence Clearwater Revival's version of "I Put a Spell on You" being played over the archive material ... well, let's just hope they don't hear it.
But it's still a very pleasant diversion. John Tusa would not necessarily be one's first choice to convey the spirit of rock'n'roll 'n' rebellion, but at least there is a man-of-history feel to him. It was an amusing insight into the team's priorities that the item they led with for 24 March was Alistair Cooke's 1,000th Letter from America. I suppose it must have been a slow news day; but then the impression we get from this show is that, in 1968, slow news days were few and far between.
A word in praise of A Charles Paris Mystery. I know it's a repeat and I raved about it first time around, but this is still an object lesson in How to Do Radio Comedy Drama. Actually, it's astonishingly simple: hire Bill Nighy. But the adaptation was perfect, and the supporting cast – particularly Suzanne Burden as the ex-wife and Julian Rhind-Tutt as the pretentious Romanian theatre director – were also superb. I didn't know Rhind-Tutt could do accents. Until the credits, I thought they'd hired a real pretentious Romanian theatre director.
Meanwhile, in Ambridge, Usha has accepted the vicar's marriage proposal. One reflects that had the Reformation never happened, we would have been spared this grisly scene.
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