Peter Hall was on Today the other morning, berating “the BBC” for neglecting Chekhov, Ibsen and Shakespeare, and for now calling plays “films”. John Humphrys, his inquisitor, let this pass. He should have asked, but did not: “Aren’t you referring only to television?”

For Radio 3 does not ignore Shakespeare, as tonight’s Othello bears witness. This is a specially recorded version of the recent Donmar Warehouse production, which sold out in five hours because Ewan McGregor was playing Iago - though in the studio, as on stage, he is completely eclipsed by Chiwetel Ejiofor as the Moor.

Though two hours and 45 minutes long, it has still been (expertly) cut in every scene, but not at the expense of any of those great lines about the green-eyed monster or the beast with two backs.

Majestic as it is, it would have benefited from a short introduction - to the Venetian setting, the themes of betrayal, jealousy and malevolence, and to the language of 1604 (which in this play includes lovely but obscure words such as antres, sequent, carack, mountebanks and coloquintida, all of which I had to go and look up).

Why is British radio so lazy about this and American radio so good, not just with drama, but with opera, too? Anyone unconvinced that it can help the listener should tune in to the Los Angeles production of David Mamet’s play The Shawl, about a strange seance, this coming Saturday on the BBC World Service. Susan Lowenberg’s five- minute introduction to the author, his work, his distinctive dialogue and the cast is a model of its type. Radio 3 should hire her at once. Or revert to Richard Eyre, who also provided pithy, informative prefaces to Radio 3’s 17 Shakespeare productions in 1999.

If Othello shows radio’s commitment to established writers, then yesterday’s Cigarettes and Chocolate reminds us how it also encourages new ones. First heard in 1988, this was the play - about a woman who retreats into silence - that helped to launch Anthony Minghella, who died in March of a haemorrhage, aged only 54. It was repeated on Radio 4 in tribute. Radio 3 will join in on Saturday, when it airs his play Hang Up and a 10-minute talk in which he ponders the process of transferring Patricia Highsmith’s thriller The Talented Mr Ripley to the big screen.

Harold Pinter, who (unusually) occupies the Afternoon Play slot with a double bill this Thursday, is another who owes a debt to BBC radio for nurturing him when he was young, poor and unknown.

Though it is protected on Radios 3 and 4, drama is threatened beyond those networks.

In future, Radio 2 will commission new Friday-night readings only for seasons or anniversaries (Robson Green reading Private Peaceful for last year’s Remembrance, for example), and will otherwise fill the slot with repeats. The World Service has cut its 52 hours a year for drama to 16. Commercial radio has axed it altogether: plays used to be broadcast on LBC, Capital, Clyde and Downtown Radio, in Northern Ireland, but no more.

“I’m not aware of any current drama productions running on commercial radio,” says the industry’s spokeswoman. “As you know, this is the most expensive form of radio to make.”

Apart from anything with Jonathan Ross in it, perhaps - but there goes that green-eyed monster again.

paul.donovan@sunday-times.co.uk

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