Seen and heard: June 2013

John Tyndale, the most dangerous man in England - Melvyn Bragg TV programme, bringing out the awesome level of Tyndale's defiance in producing an English translation of the Bible (as shown by the punishment he received) and his influence on the English language (the King James Authorised version of the Bible was based on Coverdale's, which in turn was based on Tyndale's). Also interesting for Tyndale's repeated image of the ploughboy as his ideal reader, the person for whom he was writing his translation. Learner-centred education, in its way.

Contact - rewatched the 1997 film on DVD. I love the high concept story, with its twin themes of contact and faith; the execution isn't quite as good as the conception, but Jodie Foster is excellent and convincing as the astronomer who picks up a signal from extra-terrestrial intelligences.

Polymnia at Wavendon garden - my choir's concert went very well, thank you, and it was a lovely afternoon for a picnic in Cleo Laine's garden.

The Americans - ingeniously and carefully scripted drama series, about undercover KGB agents in 1980s America and the FBI agent on their tail who just happens to live across the street. Remarkable how it makes you sympathise with everybody in turn - right up to the point where they do something awful.

Les revenants (English title The Returned, but this doesn't carry the double meaning of the French) - fascinating, creepy and very compelling.

Spies, novel by Michael Frayn -  super book. What I've never seen so well done, not even in The Go-Between which it partially resembles - is the exploration of the confused (to adult eyes) world of a child, in which what is real is both fluid (do they really think Keith's mother is a German spy, or do they know they're playing a game?) and subject to social pressure (especially the dominance of the more affluent, more assured older boy).

The Art of Asking - TED talk by Amanda Palmer - to which I was pointed by (draft) course materials for a new OU course The Networked Practitioner. I suspect I wouldn't like her music at all ("punk cabaret"?) but this is a very good and powerful talk about the risk of trust: her experience of asking her fans to support her - physically (crowd-surfing and couch-surfing) and economically (through Kickstarter). It's not all as beautiful as she makes out, of course, as comes out in her interview with Jon Ronson; but this is a gem of a sermon.

Romanza - extraordinary steel band version of the slow movement of Vaughan Williams Symphony number 5, commissioned as part of Jeremy Deller's English Magic installation at the Venice Biennale.