The week in audio: Coming Out; The Great Post Office Trial; The Teen Commandments
Coming Out Radio AtlasThe Great Post Office Trial Radio 4/BBC SoundsThe Teen Commandments Sara Cox
By far the most moving and absorbing piece of audio I heard last week was on Radio Atlas, the website that showcases excellent non-English-speaking audio documentaries. Before I get to the programme itself, I feel Radio Atlas may need a reintroduction (I just checked, and I first wrote about it in 2016). Set up and run by Falling Tree's Eleanor McDowall, it finds the best audio pieces from around the world and gives them a beautiful translation into English that appears on your screen, each word timed perfectly to those spoken, so that you're not rushing ahead or catching up. It does mean, of course, that you have to look at your phone when you're listening (unless you speak the language), but that's good. These shows need your undivided attention.
Anyway, Coming Out is from Lithuania, made by Rūta Dambravaitė and Inga Janiulytė-Temporin for publicly owned radio station LRT Radijas's Radijo Dokumentika series. Billed as 'a tender love story, lived in private, across five decades', it's based around an extended interview with Vitalius, now 70, who tells the story of his 52-year relationship with Albinas, 85, whose memory is going. The pair met in a Kaunas city park, known as a meeting point for gay men and thus a place of danger. When Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union, the military police used to actively search for gay people to charge them – and worse.
Vitalius tells his and Albinas's story beautifully. His childhood is devastating: he grew up in a village where he knew no other LGBT people and couldn't imagine they existed. 'A cosmic loneliness,' he says, and your heart breaks. This documentary is the first time he's ever spoken about being gay. Usually, when people ask about his and Albinas's relationship, he lets them assume that he is Albinas's son. Though there is a moment, towards the end, when he describes telling a shop assistant exactly who he is buying a ring for – 'It's for my man' – and, honestly, I burst into tears. The music, classical and opera, chosen by Vitalius himself, is hugely and suitably romantic.
The story has a coda. During the programme, an impassioned Vitalius argues for his and Albinas's partnership to be treated the same as a straight one under Lithuanian law. The country only decriminalised homosexuality in 1993, and still doesn't recognise same-sex marriages or civil unions. When Coming Out was broadcast in early 2024, the online version became the most streamed episode in the show's history (it went on to win the Prix Europa European audio documentary of the year), and opened up a debate on human rights in Lithuania. It also led to a symbolic humanist wedding ceremony for Vitalius and Albinas, witnessed by 21,000 people, who signed the certificate. It was the first time Vitalius and Albinas ever held hands in public.
Speaking of a righteous fight to be recognised, here's dogged Nick Wallis back on Radio 4 to report on the current state of play with the Post Office scandal. He has been reporting on this for 15 years, and there are 17 other episodes to The Great Post Office Trial if you wish to catch up, though after ITV's Mr Bates vs the Post Office I can't imagine there are many who don't know what went on.
This brand new episode gives us some audio from the inquiry, which is still yet to deliver its report. Much of it is centred on ex-Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells, who doesn't come across well, being at once bewildered and bewildering; so incurious and sappy as to provoke laughter from the public gallery. We also hear from former post office operators Lee Castleton and Rooprit Gill, who are robust in their final victory, even though they're yet to receive full monetary compensation for what happened.
Wallis is great at pushing both the new interim head of the Post Office, Neil Brocklehurst, and the MP Gareth Thomas, the minister now in charge of the victims' compensation, as to why everything's so complicated and is taking so long. Of the two, Thomas seems to be more on the case, though it still seems like wading through mud. 'You've got 92-year-old Betty Brown, who's heading towards the end of her life without having received full and final compensation… what are you going to do to make things happen quickly?' asks Wallis of Thomas. From his hemming and hawing, it sounds as if Brown will be lucky to get what she's owed before her 100th year.
Radio 2's Sara Cox and her best friend, Clare Hamilton, have a new podcast, The Teen Commandments, in which they share insights on, and anecdotes about, raising teenagers and promise to reveal what they were like when they were that dread age. 'It's all karma,' says Hamilton.
I get the feeling that, like many new shows, The Teen Commandments wants to recreate the intimate, funny vibes of Miss Me?, Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver's hugely successful podcast. But that's harder than it might appear, and The Teen Commandments is sort of there, but not quite. The episodes need a specific topic rather than a jovial ramble around the edges, and are in need of listener contributions too, which no doubt will come flooding in. Until then, it's a bit formless, veering wildly between Cox and Hamilton reminiscing about how cute their kids were when they were little, and impromptu masturbation – theirs, not their kids – as a way of finding the energy for what needs to be done. 'Procrasto-wank,' says Cox; a good name for it, but perhaps not quite what listeners were expecting.
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