´óÏó´«Ã½

Guests:
Novelist Malorie Blackman
Architect Rab Bennetts
´óÏó´«Ã½ Diplomatic Editor Bridget Kendall

Watchmen
The panel watch Watchmen, rising Hollywood star Zack Snyder’s movie version of the famous 1986-87 comic book series. The original Watchmen upended the superhero genre with a set of costumed crusaders who are variously damaged, disturbed and downright psychotic. And according to Time Magazine, it’s one of the best 100 novels of all time. So has Snyder succeeded in transforming this supposedly unfilmable graphic novel into a watchable motion picture?

Watchmen is on release now, certificate 18.

Burnt by the Sun
Fresh from recreating the English Civil War for Channel 4 in The Devil’s Whore, Peter Flannery has adapted a 1994 Russian screenplay to take National Theatre audiences into the aftermath of another internicine conflict. Burnt by the Sun is set in 1936 at the start of Stalin’s Great Terror, as he began the mass destruction of the generation who built the Revolution. So why does it look like a Chekhov play?

Burnt by the Sun continues at the National Theatre in London until 21 May.

On holiday with Le Corbusier
Tom, Bridget, Rab and Malorie visit Cabanon, the legendary architect Le Corbusier’s holiday home on the south coast of France – as recreated in central London. What kind of ‘machine for living in’ did Le Corbusier design for himself? Le Corbusier’s Cabanon is at the Royal Institute of British Architects in central London until 28 April.

Frank Lloyd Wright and The Women
The interior life of another towering architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, is the subject of the American novelist TC Boyle’s new book. The Women is the story of Wright’s quartet of marriages and his hectic love-life in general. But does it open a door into his inner life, and show us how the man who created New York’s Guggenheim Museum was built?

The Women by TC Boyle is published by Bloomsbury.

Baroque!
Art critic and film-maker Waldemar Januszczak follows the spread of Baroque art from St Peter’s in Rome to St Paul’s in London. Along the way, we learn how to tell a Fransiscan from a Dominican, the possible origins of the Spanish lisp, and what the word ‘Baroque’ actually means.

Baroque!: from St Peter’s to St Paul’s begins at 9pm on Wednesday 11 March on ´óÏó´«Ã½4 and continues at the same time on 18 and 25 March.

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