Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British-themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!

Last week for British Isles Friday, Sim shared her fun plans to walk the London Underground, virtually. Mark reviewed the second book in the Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins mystery series and enjoyed it as much as the first. Tina was also reading a mystery series and reviewed Book #10 about DCI Alan Banks by Peter Robinson.

Tom Sutcliffe, host of Saturday Review on BBC Radio 4

As I mentioned in the spring, I enjoy listening to The Archers, the world’s longest running soap opera, as a podcast from BBC Radio 4. I also listen to another show from BBC Radio 4: Saturday Review. The host, Tom Sutcliffe, invites three guests to share cultural experiences with him during the week. On Saturday, they discuss each in turn. Often, they read a book, attend an exhibit, and watch one or more of a play, film, or TV show. Sometimes the guests are professional reviewers, but, often, they are writers or other creative professionals and, occasionally, they are experts in a field like history or theater.

Review programs, of course, are great for finding cultural experiences that I want to participate in myself. Even though this is a British show, I can usually get hold of the books or figure out a way to see the films and, sometimes, the TV shows. Oddly enough, though, it’s not the experiences that I can partake in that fascinate me about this show.

Benedict Cumberbatch as Hamlet

What I enjoy most about Saturday Review are the experiences that I enjoy vicariously through the reports of the reviewers. I will never see most of the exhibits or plays. And, yet, for a few minutes, I can pretend I’m watching Benedict Cumberbatch play Hamlet in London or I’m wandering the Edinburgh Festival Fringe or I’m visiting the newly refurbished York Art Gallery.

Have you heard Saturday Review? What do you think?