County Lines (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
Archive on 4: Shane MacGowan – The Old Main Drag (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds)
The Rest Is Classified (Goalhanger) | Best Podcasts
Short Cuts (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds

“The first time I bought heroin from a child was in the city of Leicester in 2001. At the time it was quite shocking. Of course, now it’s the norm. You’re more likely to be buying off children than not.”

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Oof. Radio 4’s County Lines series opens hard. The speaker explains that when he met the young drug dealer he was “good fun, you could have a laugh with him”. But within six months that jokey child had changed into someone terrifying. “I saw him learn how to be violent. And it wasn’t in his character.” The last time the speaker saw the kid, the kid punched his head into a lamp-post.

Our host for this series is not the heroin-buying speaker. It’s Phoebe McIndoe. She has a light, RP voice; she’s clearly middle class. Her younger brother became involved in county lines drug dealing and became a “doppelganger”, someone who looked like her brother but behaved like someone completely different. She talks to her father, who remembers it too.

There are 50,000 children caught up in county lines in the UK: the opening episode of this series helps us understand the world they are living in. One decent young man needed money; his family home was without electricity for days. “People say the lust for money is the root of all evil,” he says. “No. The lack of money causes the problems.”

The sound of the series is unusual: there are moments of silence, clever use of music and noise, a sort of deadened aural atmosphere. Far from bang-it-out news analysis. There’s horror inside these stories and the sound makes us feel it.

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Tonight’s Archive on 4, presented by the Observer journalist Sean O’Hagan, is all about the late Shane MacGowan. What a warm and interesting programme this is, with high-profile interviewees – Bono, Nick Cave, Bobby Gillespie, Bob Geldof – all audibly softening when talking about MacGowan, his stunning lyrical talent and gift for melody. O’Hagan structures the show around six of MacGowan’s songs, using them to examine the life of the Irish diaspora. The archive interviews done for the BBC display uncomfortable amounts of stereotyping – an interview about Irish builders working in postwar Britain has someone describing them as “more men of brawn than men of brain”.

MacGowan was a complicated character: born in Kent but steeped in his family’s Irishness; a lover of traditional Irish tunes but also a punk; a man whose speech was slurred by drink and drugs but who sang and spoke beautifully and loved profoundly. O’Hagan brings out all facets of the singer-songwriter with elegant insight. Recommended.

Short Cuts is one of the most important programmes on UK radio. Why the BBC is cutting it is completely beyond me.

Goalhanger and The Rest Is… crew have launched another two-handed dadcast, this time about spying. Gordon Corera, familiar to many from his role as the BBC’s security correspondent (he’s just left, after 27 years), is joined by the former CIA analyst David McCloskey, now an author, for The Rest Is Classified. Their first episode concerns the 1953 Iranian coup d’etat, where US and UK spies toppled Iran’s government. I knew nothing about this, but that is, apparently, not unusual among people in the UK. In Iran, however, the coup is still remembered, far from fondly.

The Rest Is Classified has more in common with The Rest Is History, Goalhanger’s most popular podcast, than it has with, say, The Rest Is Entertainment (which I love) or The Rest Is Football, both of which analyse the here and now. But, to confess, I am one of the very few Rest Is History refuseniks, so this is not for me. I found myself zooming out, thinking: “But why was Britain so arrogant to think it could continue to exploit Iran’s oil?” “Why do the spies think the shah is better than Mosaddegh?” Ugh. I felt no personal sympathy for any of the characters, no matter how eccentric or persuasive or well connected. The Rest Is Classified will do well – it’s a good show – but I am not its audience.

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Which brings me back to County Lines. McIndoe and producer Redzi Bernard’s talents were nurtured by Short Cuts, Radio 4’s brilliant mini-documentary strand, which the BBC has announced will stop after its next six-episode series (it starts on Tuesday). There were many shout-outs for Short Cuts during the recent Aria awards. Hosted by Josie Long, it’s been going for 12 years and has, in its time, produced umpteen award-winning pieces of audio adventurousness.

Not every subject needs a series, or even a half-hour special. It might just need a few moments of exploration and care to make a small gem that remains in your mind. Short Cuts is like the indie label of audio documentaries, the small venue where new bands get to practise playing live. Without such ladder-steps you don’t get Imaginary Advice’s Ross Sutherland, recent award-winners Talia Augustidis and Nanna Hauge Kristensen, or the mighty Axel Kacoutié, who has worked magic on everything from the Guardian’s Today in Focus to The Heart.

Every culture needs its weirdo experimenters, its young outsiders. We all need more than celebrity dadcast chatathons. I’ve said in the past that Short Cuts is one of the most important programmes on UK radio, and I stand by this. Why the BBC is cutting it is completely beyond me.

A spokesperson for the corporation said: “We recognise that it is vital that new producers in the UK have a space to develop their craft. As a result we will expand BBC Sounds Audio Lab to include new short-form commissions, developed specifically with UK-based audio producers and featured in a Sounds collection.”