SUSAN JEFFREYS’ Radio Week

ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH

SATURDAY, 3PM, RADIO 4 ★★★★ This tale of dogged survival has been dramatised from the novel by the Nobel Prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. John Hollingworth plays Ivan, a prisoner struggling to survive in Stalin’s Gulags.

THE POWER OF NEGATIVE THINKING

MONDAY, 9.30AM, RADIO 4 ★★★★ One person wins £13 million in a lottery and another becomes a wheelchair user. In this documentary, Oliver Burkeman hears that, according to research, neither event will make much difference to either person’s overall happiness.

PASSENGER LIST MONDAY-FRIDAY, 2.15PM, RADIO 4 ★★★★★

Atlantic Flight 702 crashes, killing everyone on board – yet after the event, the dead appear to be making contact with the living as this cracking series resumes, taking us through some very sinister goings-on.

SIMON EVANS GOES TO MARKET

TUESDAY, 6.30PM, RADIO 4 ★★★★ Simon Evans, the stand-up comedian, takes a walk down some of our shutteredup high streets and wonders what could fill the vacuum left by the closed-down department stores and empty shops.

SOUL MUSIC

WEDNESDAY, 9AM, RADIO 4 ★★★★ The old Scottish song The Parting Glass can be a fond farewell at the end of a convivial evening. In this programme, we hear memories associated with this song of friendship, love and thanks.

PAUL IS DEAD FRIDAY, 2.30PM, RADIO 4 EXTRA ★★★★

In 1969, a rumour claimed Paul Mccartney had died, and that The Beatles’ Abbey Road album was full of clues about his death. This archive programme hears how millions of fans believed all this nonsense.

FIRST NIGHT OF THE PROMS

FRIDAY, 7.30PM, RADIO 3 ★★★★★ The BBC Symphony Orchestra will open the season with a concert that begins with Vaughan Williams’s Serenade To Music, and includes the world premiere of James Macmillan’s When Soft Voices Die.

ARCHERS UPDATE

Deathwatch beetles tapped away at the ageing timber of Honeysuckle Cottage, and the gable end collapsed one dark night, causing Nelson Gabriel, all tucked up in his black silk sheets, to pass out cold. Siobhan Donovan fell in love with the cursed cottage, hoping to build a happy home there – and look how that worked out for her! Now, more trouble brews under the picturesque thatch as Ian’s suspicions reach fever pitch. Undaunted by this sad example of love gone sour,

Roy spruces himself up and sets off to meet his online date, Leyla. Will it work out for him, or will his former squeeze, Kate, nip this romance in the bud?