State of independence

Radio Reveiw: A radio production company that calls itself Mixed Bag is really handing it to a reviewer on a plate, but it is a fair description of The Greatest Stories Ever Told (Lyric FM, Sunday).

Programmes made by independent production companies, as opposed to ones made in-house by station staffers, have started to crop up on RTÉ radio; 10 years ago when the same thing happened on RTÉ TV, the independent sector injected new ideas, voices and energy and if that happens on radio, then it's a welcome development.

Mixed Bag's programme, the first in a five-part series, goes behind the scenes in the making of classic movies and it started with The Wizard of Oz. Presenter Garret Daly mixed clips from the score with curious facts that are probably too well known for true movie buffs but interesting for the rest of us. The film apparently was a flop when it was first released in 1939, it went though five directors and MGM wanted to drop Over the Rainbow because it considered it undignified that one of its rising stars was singing in a barn. Shirley Temple was the first choice to play Dorothy and early in the troubled shoot, the Wicked Witch of the West was so badly burned by an accident on set that she could only just about bear the green greasepaint on her face and wore green gloves for the rest of the shoot. Where the programme went astray was in the choice of contributor - and why only one? Instead of having a movie expert, or someone from the vast army of Oz chroniclers and academics, or even cinema practitioners, the only other voice heard was actor and theatre director Alan Stanford, chipping in with what sounded like top-of-the-head luvvie stuff - "as long as there are children, the film will be popular", "if they ever remake it, it would be a crime against humanity and I would be one of those people who would burn down the set". Desperately pompous and worse still, tediously meaningless in the context of what otherwise had the makings of a strong arts programme.

Another bought-in programme is Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion (RTÉ1, Saturday). It's a US public radio institution, recorded in front of a live audience and it's been going for 30 years. It's an old fashioned mix of sketches, live music, interviews and Keillor's "news" from the fictional Lake Wobegon "where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking and all the children are above average". Fans of the show, and there are millions of them - RTÉ is only one of 500 stations that buys it - consider it a wry take on middle America by one of that country's finest humourists and certainly in this week's show the audience laughed like drains at just about everything, from the interview with a woman pretending to be a Barbie doll to the Listerine Quartet who gargled a song. In between it all was Keillor sounding like a folksy preacher telling how local place names came about and other homespun yarns. Maybe it would take a greater knowledge of the "flyover states" - America between the coasts - to really find the show humorous but it played the same in my house as Scrap Saturday would in Preoria. Little Britain (BBC7, Tuesday) the citrus-sharp satire of middle England which made the crossover to TV, is a far funnier proposition.

When Pat Kenny and Marian Finucane leave for their peculiarly long holidays, there has been a tendency in the past to rummage around the B-list for a replacement presenter for a light entertainment morning show. This year, however Tom McGurk has been taken off the Sunday Show, which since Christmas has been particularly strong, and given the morning slot to present an intelligent magazine programme, Summer Days (RTÉ1, daily). On the first week's showing, it's working and its proving to be an entertaining mix.

McGurk's strength is that as a broadcaster and journalist he can handle both light items and serious current affairs with the same ease and enthusiasm. He also sounds genuinely interested in each item and has a robust interview style which makes for lively listening - though maybe to suggest that a caller on Tuesday who phoned in to criticise RTÉ should "get a life" is on the rude side of robust. But whoever is choosing the music is doing their best to destroy the upbeat mood. It's mostly dreary, folksy, hippy stuff straight out of a Rathmines bedsit record collection circa 1982. James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, even a Judy Collins dirge - all the playlist is short of is Janice Ian. I can't recall hearing any music made this century, though I could have missed it. And couldn't they have got somebody other than Des Cahill to do the sports item? If you've listened to the station since Morning Ireland, by 10 a.m. you'll have heard Cahill say much the same thing three times - it's a Groundhog Day too far.