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Culture

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Culture stories

Dish of the Day

Jean Renoir's Boudu Saved From Drowning (FilmFour, 6.0pm) dates from 1932, but you'd never notice, since the tramp who is saved and taken in as unpaying guest in a previously civilised household is a very 1968 figure - somebody who needs there to be system and order so he can blithely ignore them. All done with the social knowingness of Renoir (esp. the tramp's seduction of his saviour's wife) and his modern easiness about mobility of camera - amazing when you think how the early talkies rigidified the shooting of scenes. It's all very swift and light.

By Vera Rule5 Jan

Television Tuesday

Weight Of The Nation (BBC-1, 8.0pm) Out with the Old Year and in with the New You, exhorts the Beeb, urging us to put recent excesses behind us, stick to the resolutions and go for a fresh start. The new Fighting Fat, Fighting Fit season of programmes, running on both TV and radio, is a heavyweight health campaign aimed at getting the nation into better shape. The new-look, reduced-fat Dale Winton eases us in with an entertaining assessment of British attitudes to eating and exercising, which also introduces the campaign's teams of experts and guinea-pigs.

By Sandy Smithies5 Jan

Radio

As the Christmas decorations come down, Ainsley Harriott confirms the end of the festive season with Fighting Fat, Fighting Fit, Radio 2's contribution to a BBC radio and television health campaign. It's been sparked by the discovery that nearly one quarter of the British population is already overweight, largely through gluttony. The breakfast-table audience gets the first blast from Sarah Kennedy (Radio 2, 7.30am).

By Harold Jackson5 Jan

Last night's TV

The Cops were not real cops but they were sold as being more real than the real thing. Already there are adverts for a new police documentary series which tells us that now that we have seen The Cops we can see real cops in Mersey Blues, a documentary about a real police force. It can only be a matter of time before the fake thing, such as The Cops, appears more real than the real thing, such as Mersey Blues. We will have to wait until tomorrow night to find out how Mersey Blues measures up.

By Desmond Christy5 Jan

So farewell, Alf, you old skinflint

"Dead don't make you better" - comedian Alan King's father on his brother-in-law Nat Alf Roberts, spookily named after Mrs Thatcher's father, who was also a grocer and alderman, died in his chair at a New Year's Eve party. No one noticed for a while. With Alf, you had to look closely.

4 Jan

Television Monday

Carol Vorderman's Better Homes (ITV except Ulster, 8.30pm) Not to be confused with Dream House, about futuristic architecture, which starts on BBC-1 on Wednesday, presented by. . . you guessed? This takes the home makeover challenge a stage beyond Changing Rooms (which returns the same night and hasn't as yet been Vordermanned, but give it time). Two lots of neighbours are asked to make structural alterations; the ones who improve their property value the most get a cash prize.

By Sandy Smithies4 Jan

Radio: Listening Brief

As eleven nations give birth to the Euro, Wake Up To Money (Radio 5 Live, 5.45am) and Today (Radio 4, 6.0am) report from the currency dealing rooms on its early progress.

By Harold Jackson4 Jan

Great legs. Even for an antelope

'Strange creatures, women. Like bloody antelopes. One wrong sound and they panic.' Things hadn't gone according to plan for Reggie: the bloody antelope in question had bolted, and Big Bad Boy hadn't been called into action.

By Sam Wollaston31 Dec

Radio

We're embarking on the centenary year of Noel Coward, which gets off to a mixed start. Tonight (Radio 4, 8.30pm) revives two plays in which The Master starred in the '30s. Still Life was screened as Brief Encounter, with the ending cleaned up for the censor (the original gets the waiting-room lovers into bed). Why anyone should revive Red Peppers is a complete mystery. Its portrait of a failing variety act doesn't rate one rotten egg.

By Harold Jackson31 Dec

Watching brief

Naked Eurovision (BBC-1, 8.30pm) A cheery dark-days reminder that the sun will shine again, that le tout Europe will once again be united in song and cheesy dance routines, that Cyprus will again achieve nul points.

By Sandy Smithies31 Dec

Watching brief

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Welcome To The Hellmouth (BBC-2, 8.0pm) Young fans of Wes Craven's fang-in-cheek slasher horror movie Scream will be instantly at home with this imported series, made in the same jokey, knowing style, which opens with a feature-length episode. Already a hit in the States, it casts Sarah Michelle Gellar, from Scream 2, as the teenage newcomer to a high school in affluent southern California who has a secret life as undoer of the undead. And yes, the British actor who plays her mentor is familiar: he's Anthony S Head, who conducted a long-running coffee commercial dalliance.

By Sandie Smithies30 Dec

Listening Brief

In 1770, the Crown granted Robert Edwards, a Welsh naval officer, 78 acres of land in the newly conquered colony of New York. He leased most of it to the local church on condition it returned to his descendants after 99 years. That should have happened in 1877, but the Edwards family is still battling for its inheritance. There's some understandable opposition: the property is in the heart of Manhattan (Radio 4, 11.0am) and valued at $680,000 million.

By Harold Jackson30 Dec

It's about the economy, stupid

We British are just as fascinated by Bill Clinton as the Americans, perhaps because our popular culture is drowning in brain-dead Americana and we've seen the way our Prime Minister sits up and begs for a dog-biscuit whenever Clinton whistles. In The Clinton Complex (BBC2), Mark Lawson wanted to know why a nation regarded by Europeans as being 'all Bibles, flags and bombed abortion clinics' continues to rally behind President Bill. The more embarrassing the revelations about the ways he amuses himself during those long afternoons in the Oval Office, and the more his Republican opponents foam at the mouth about his vile moral turpitude, the more Americans seem to love him.

By Adam Sweeting30 Dec

Last night's TV

So do you feel lucky, monk? The bizarre losses of identity suffered by McCallum or Dangerfield have not yet reached 12th century Shrewsbury. Cadfael (ITV) has not replaced its title character with stand-ins called Beowulf or Gawain, but continues to be built around Derek Jacobi as the medieval gumshoe. Comfortingly, he still potters about in a humble hessian smock with tonsured head, dispensing arcane herbal remedies and potted platitudes.

Adam Sweeting24 Dec

Dish of the day

The Magic Keeper (C4, 7.30am) Seventies children's icon Johnny Morris (looking like a rather elderly ruminating camel himself these days) takes his zoo-keeper's uniform out of mothballs for this trip round Bristol and Twycross zoos, set to music by French composer Darius Milhaud.

Jonathan Creek24 Dec

The Rachel capers

Once again she was front-page news in Australia. The papers reported that Rachel Griffiths walked in, covered in glitter wearing a crown of thorns - and topless. One of her more outre roles? No, this time Griffiths was campaigning against a massive new casino owned by the treasurers of the rightwing Liberal Party. She was outraged at the development of a "big, ugly conglomerate pimple on the face of Melbourne".

By Howard Feinstein18 Dec

Britain's Oscar hopes

This week the first 'For Your Consideration' film adverts have appeared in Variety, the showbiz bible. These are aimed at members of the American Academy, who will soon be deciding the nominations for next year's Oscars. Those three words invariably appear above the ads in hope as much as expectation.

By Derek Malcolm10 Dec

The prime of Ms Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep glitters with tiredness. She's on a black-coffee trip that has carried her from a 7am arrival at Dublin airport through two days of interviews, a meet-the-worthies gala screening of her latest film, and which will whirl her up to Donegal to go through the whole mad jig again in the village where her latest film, Dancing At Lughnasa, is set.

By Claire Armitstead27 Nov

Nolte but nice

When Robert Mitchum and James Stewart died within 48 hours of each other, tribute after tribute sighed that they don't make stars of that calibre any more. And it's largely true. But one man can be compared to Mitchum at least, right down to a reportedly roistering private life.

By Derek Malcolm2 Oct

Shoe-shine star

The true heart of Rio de Janeiro is not Copacabana beach or the outstretched arms of the statue of the Redeemer - but Central do Brasil station. Four hundred thousand people pass through Rio's Central Station every day. At the intersection of all main rail networks and Rio's metro system, a moving wall of travellers and commuters passes hundreds of stalls where young boys shine thousands of shoes, and professional letter-writers sit waiting for their illiterate customers.

24 Aug

One of them

Sir Ian McKellen had been taken into the midwinter afternoon by the photographer, who wanted a picture of him on a bench in front of the Thames, and when he came back he hurled himself at the radiator. 'So Cold!' he lamented loudly, inspecting me from the corner of his eye.

By Marianne Macdonald8 Mar

Culture

Culture stories

Dish of the Day

Television Tuesday

Radio

Last night's TV

So farewell, Alf, you old skinflint

Television Monday

Radio: Listening Brief

Great legs. Even for an antelope

Radio

Watching brief

Watching brief

Listening Brief

It's about the economy, stupid

Last night's TV

Dish of the day

The Rachel capers

Britain's Oscar hopes

The prime of Ms Meryl Streep

Nolte but nice

Shoe-shine star

One of them

Red Roses suffer back-to-back defeats for first time in a decade as Canada make statement

Ukraine war briefing: Russian diesel tankers headed for North America, says Moscow, as US tries to revive peace talks

Ramaswamy accuses Acton of ‘lying’ about attack ad, but court records contradict mother’s claim – live

Embattled Greens senator Jordon Steele-John confirms leave from parliament after allegations against him made public

Helen Haines’s condition improves days after losing both legs from alleged attack

Rubio tells Cubans ‘now is the time’ to act to see political change