COMPLINE has graced Radio 3’s schedules in Lent and Advent in recent years, and has made a welcome return on Sunday evenings for the four Sundays of this season of preparation.
The first instalment was notable for the understated, languid delivery of both the St Martin’s Singers and the unnamed priest who led the service, showcasing the almost edible acoustic of St Mary the Virgin, Tetbury. The intentional promotion of “slow radio” on Radio 3 schedules, prominent in the early 2020s, now seems to have passed — a matter of some regret — but we can hope that these seasonal broadcasts of compline continue to be a reminder that radio does not need to be pacy to be engaging.
All the more remarkably, Advent compline followed shortly after Radio 3 hosted a 12-hour Lord’s Day banquet of celebrating Christmas: Carols Across the Country: A seasonal journey ran from before sunrise until after sunset, starting at 6.30 a.m. and finishing at 6.30 p.m. A project very much in keeping with the current “This Is Our BBC” branding seeking to promote the corporation as the essential repository of regional accents and identities, six successive two-hour live broadcasts ranged from Fife to the Isle of Wight, and played from brass bands to plainchant. St John’s College, Cambridge, was even allowed to keep Advent for a few hours.
Inevitably, an endeavour of this length and complexity had occasional bumpy moments, but, overall, this was an impressive example of the BBC demonstrating that there are programmes that only it has the scale and reach to pull off, even if it was jarring to be celebrating Christmas in November.
While BBC Radio’s capacity to produce magazine programming for specialist professional audiences is one of its most impressive features, On Your Farm (Radio 4, Sunday) was an example of how it can lead to insufficiently robust programming.
Hannah Thorogood has built up a viable organic livestock farm in Lincolnshire, from scratch, on just 18 acres, staffed entirely by women. Her young adult daughters, who featured prominently in the programme, are keen to follow in her footsteps. Now, Anglia Water wants to build a new reservoir that would cover her land.
The programme acknowledged that no reservoir had been completed in the UK since 1992 (during which period the country’s population has increased by one sixth). Perhaps that is something exacerbated by a planning system that has already added three years to the timescale of a decision on permitting Lincolnshire development — which, at the earliest, will not start until 2031.
Ms Thorogood said that there were “almost empty” valleys that would offer an alternative that inconvenienced almost nobody. Rebecca Rooney, presenting, pushed back only gently, and at no time was Anglia Water asked to explain why it believed that this location might be preferred.
