Radio review: Re-imagining the City, and last week's highlights As Andrew Marr said yesterday on Radio 4"s Start the Week, it's the time of year for resolutions and remorse. Expect both from me today. If, for instance, you missed Re-Imagining the City (Radio 4, Saturday) because I didn't recommend it strongly enough, apologies. Indeed, grovelling apologies. I thought it was going to be an ordinary sort of Radio 4 Saturday morning travel show, bland, thin, formulaic. It turned out to be a really good programme, writer Nik Cohn on New Orleans, a city he first knew through reading about it, picturing it in his mind. When at last he went there he loved it. But this documentary was about him going back and back again, seeing it clearer, thinking about it, understanding it better, loving it for deeper reasons. Thoughtful and richly textured, it was a memorable essay. The Eustace Diamonds (Radio 4, Sunday afternoons for the past three weeks) has been a very good listen. Rose Tremain's subtle adaptation brought out the unexpected nuances of Anthony Trollope's novel. The plot seems simple. Should pretty widow Lizzie Eustace own the diamonds her husband had given her? Or were they a family heirloom, not his to give? What made this version so engrossing were the shades of character that came through in dialogue and performance. No one was absolutely good or bad. All had reasons for being and acting as they did. It wasn't played as a heavy allegory of wife ownership, of class snobbery, of marriage as social transaction. Tremain and her director Gordon House trusted us to perceive the characters and situations yet, as our perspective on them changed, still grasp them. Pippa Nixon, as Lizzie, was dazzling. A cloud of Classic Serial remorse hangs over me. Previewing The Count of Monte Cristo in November I wondered whether this would be Jeremy Mortimer's last production for the BBC. It was not. He has a serial version of George Orwell's 1984 coming (with Pippa Nixon in it, too) and two Afternoon Dramas about Orwell, plus new plays for Radio 3 from Craig Warner and Mark Ravenhill. He leaves the BBC in March but will not, I am delighted to learn, be retiring. The Reluctant Spy (Radio 4, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) came highly recommended by me in previews. Listening to it on successive afternoons I got a bit lost. Written and directed by John Dryden, it was about Duncan Kavanagh (Nigel Lindsay), an expert on Coptic churches, eking out a living in Cairo. The time is now. His Egyptian wife went away to make a film and never came back. Their teenage daughter is caught up in student politics. He has a fling with an American tourist. She gets him involved in what turns out to be a tangle of intrigue and killing. That was all in Episode One, taut and comprehensible. In Episode Two and Three we were taken into back stories, the past flickering into the present. The confusion was intentional, part of the plot, but by Episode Three I was lost in the mazes of flashback. Resolution: concentrate harder. I also resolve not to listen to Radio 4"s Sunday night comedy slot until I have built up a stock of goodness and loving kindness that doesn't evaporate at its first swear word. Nick Mohammed in Bits, the most recent performer, had the studio audience in fits of laughter. On radio he shouted. And shouted. I realise this is comedy of character but did it have to be so childish, loutish, lumpy, obvious, loud? Ah, but I was all those things while listening to Radio 4"s Today on Saturday. The item was about children's radio, the peg for it being the death of Daphne Oxenford, for many years the introductory voice of Listen with Mother. Evan Davis quoted BBC reasons for dropping children's programmes (more adults heard them than children) and asked if there was still an audience? A man from Fun Kids, a digital commercial radio station, said there is. A children's author said there should be. Davis quoted dismal ratings on Radio 7 for CBeebies. No wonder, I shouted, loud and lumpishly. They were TV shows, "re-tailored" for radio, horrible to hear. It you wanted to switch children off radio that was just the show to do it. Resolution: to keep shouting. Provision is made for "family" listening on Radio 4 Extra. It isn't good enough. Sometimes Radio 4 will have a play that children would like but not regularly enough to form a habit. Good evidence exists that learning to listen assists learning to read. Resolution for the BBC Trust: read it.