Radio catch-up: James Bond, Doctor Who, and an Adam and Joe encore
Ian McKellen Rosamund Pike and Toby Stephens take on Goldfinger and the Doctor regenerates on Radio 7, as well as TV
Goldfinger
All star: Goldfinger's radio cast. Photograph: Jarvis and Ayres/BBC
Radio 4's Goldfinger (Saturday | Listen here) was a starry affair. Ian McKellen was the titular villain, Rosamund Pike was Pussy Galore, and Tom Hollander and Tim Pigott-Smith were also in the cast. As the production unfolded, you could hear why all the actors involved had said yes: it was hammy, over-the-top and enormous fun. Toby Stephens's Bond was rather more boyish than his suave screen incarnations – after understanding Goldfinger's larcenous plans, he gasped: "He wants us to work for him. On a crime!" – and closer to Ian Fleming's style. That brought slightly mixed consequences. After an aide met her end he noted: "She was like a broken doll … poor little bitch". Pike maximised Pussy Galore's presence with a superb Southern drawl ("miaoooooow!") and Martin Jarvis, playing Fleming with his usual brilliance, was the director too. All-round top class radio.
Another giant of British fiction had an outing in Radio 7's Doctor Who and the Giant Robot (Monday-Thursday | Listen here), an eight-part adaptation of Tom Baker's first adventure as the Time Lord which continues on the station. Baker himself narrates, with those unmistakable tones an absolute treat on the airwaves (if inevitably summoning thoughts of Dead Ringers). Pleasingly, in the week we saw Matt Smith take on the TV role, the story contained a description of the Doctor's transformation from one physical form to another: "those familiar features began to blur and change … suddenly a new face [was there], like but unlike". The first episode – which told a tale of murder, "disintegrator guns" and top-secret MOD plans – was irresistible. Let's hope the standard holds up.
Jamie Cullum's new show on Radio 2 (Tuesday | Listen here ) is a relaxed affair, with Cullum (here to showcase "jazz and music rooted in jazz") proving an appealing radio presence. He's generous – Ethiopian musician Mulatu Astatqe was "amazing", singer Andreya Triana "great" – and happily plugs other people's tour dates. One of the reasons he decided to do the show, he said, was to get access to the BBC archives: "I get to dig around, like a little ferret."
It's been a week of riches for Adam and Joe fans on 6 Music: an Easter special, Adam Buxton's new solo show and re-runs of podcasts from the duo's original show. Tuesday's was called Minor Surgeries (Listen here) - "little operations you're performed on yourself or your friends". Really, it should have been called "a tick in the todger" because it was an anecdote about a listener's friend who acquired an unwanted parasite in a delicate part of his anatomy while camping in Australia that really inspired the pair. The texts and emails flooded in, becoming more and more grisly. "Some of this is a bit extreme – we're looking for the lighter side of self-surgery" they protested unconvincingly, soon giving in to the temptation to share the worst details. "I once removed a verucca with a Lego brick," they relayed with relish.
