John Eliot Gardiner, Le Week-End, Breathless - a podcast by BBC Radio 4

With Mark Lawson

Breathless is a new prime-time period drama from ITV set in a London hospital during the early sixties. The programme follows the lives of a group of doctors and nurses and, like Mad Men and The Hour, combines period glamour with historical social commentary. Neurosurgeon Henry Marsh reviews.

Le Week-End stars Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan as a middle aged couple who embark on a trip to Paris to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary, with less than romantic results. The comedy is the latest collaboration from writer Hanif Kureishi and director Roger Michell. Jenny McCartney reviews.

The conductor John Eliot Gardiner discusses the life and music of JS Bach, who he regards as the greatest composer. Gardiner's book, which he has spent the last decade writing, presents an "unsanitised" version of Bach, revealing his brutalising schooling, his brushes with the law, and the difficult conditions in which he wrote such masterpieces as The St Matthew Passion and the B Minor Mass.

Producer Stephen Hughes.

Further episodes of Front Row: Archive 2013

Further podcasts by BBC Radio 4

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