Radio listener

Published on Friday 11 September 2009 18:03

Stand by for outbursts of spooky theme music as we embark on a week of murder, mystery and the paranormal on Radio 4, which kicks off tonight with Archive On 4 – Agatha Christie's Life In Her Words, as Scottish crime writer Val McDermid listens to the disembodied voice of Christie herself, as preserved on archive tapes.

The sanguinary Fifer also talks to guests including Christie's biographer, Laura Thompson, TV director Enyd Williams and archivist John Curran, who has spent the past few years transcribing 73 notebooks containing Christie's plot outlines and drafts. Not surprisingly, Poirot actor David Suchet also makes an appearance, and for aficionados, three of Christie's stories will be broadcast, Tuesday to Thursday, featuring two of her own favourite characters, the enigmatic Mr Quin and his companion Mr Satterthwaite.

The mysteries deepen, darken and get much weirder as investigative reporter Tom Mangold ventures Inside the Bermuda Triangle ... and returns unscathed, to compile a ten-part series on the phenomenon which has allegedly swallowed up scores of ships and planes in a half-million square mile area that sits roughly between Bermuda, Miami and Puerto Rico. Mangold goes to original sources, and particularly examines what happened to two British South American Airways flights that vanished 50 years ago. He also looks at the case of the US naval vessel Cyclops, which disappeared – with a 300-plus crew – in March 1918.

Finally, cue the famous wobbly two-note theme tune. You're Entering the Twilight Zone time-hops back half a century to when Rod Serling's imaginative scripts and bargain-basement special effects ushered TV into The Twilight Zone. These excursions into contemporary fantasy and Cold War paranoia also offered exposure for emerging actors such as one Robert Redford. Where is he now?

Archive On 4 – Agatha Christie's Life In Her Words

Tonight, Radio 4, 8pm

Agatha Christie's Mysterious Mr Quin

Tues-Thurs, Radio 4, 3:30pm

Inside the Bermuda Triangle – The Mysteries Solved

Monday, Radio 4, 3:45pm

You're Entering the Twilight Zone

Tuesday, Radio 4, 11:30am