Crossing Continents

Radio 4, 11am

Julian Pettifer has built an extraordinary story of the desperate straits of ordinary Zimbabweans. Inflation is hovering at around ten million per cent, a figure that recalls the deepest depths of the Weimar Republic. Banks limit the amount of money account holders can withdraw to a few billion dollars — enough to buy three onions. Schools have closed or barely function while in the capital, Harare, there are water shortages and sewage is flowing back into people’s homes. Could it get any bleaker? Probably — although Pettifer also finds, amid the devastation, a few small crumbs of comfort.

Grange Hill — Soap Pioneer

Radio 4, 11.30am

So farewell, then, Grange Hill. After more than 30 years, the school TV drama series will soon breathe its last (on September 15), much mourned by a generation of viewers, but largely unnoticed by its present target audience, which has moved on to other sources of cutting-edge, true-to-life entertainment (Hollyoaks, mainly).

Anthony Minghella was among those who cut his teeth there, while it also became an incubator for EastEnders actors (including Todd Carty, Letitia Dean and Patsy Palmer). It broke controversial ground — rape, Asperger’s syndrome, attempted suicide and, most famously, Zammo’s heroin addiction. It even had a gay character long before this was commonplace. But now it is out of its time, and its timeslot. Robin Ince talks to many of those involved, not least Phil Redmond, the show’s creator, who saw the end coming a long time before the BBC’s commissioning editors did.

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