Saturday Morning for Saturday 11 February 2023

8.10 Welsh comedian Rob Brydon's musical trip

Incurably affable Welsh actor, comedian and impressionist Rob Brydon is perhaps best known for The Trip TV series and movie where he and Steve Coogan explore the world and middle-age together.

His other credits include TV shows Would I Lie to You?, Gavin and Stacey, Black Books, I’m Alan Partridge, and Little Britain, plus several films including 24 Hour Party People. 

If that wasn't enough, he's also an accomplished singer, scoring a number one UK hit singng with Tom Jones on ‘Islands in the Stream’.

He and his eight piece band are coming to Aotearoa in March with A Night of Songs and Laughter which tells the story of Brydon's musical journey - from South Wales' school musicals to the West End. There's shows in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

9.05 Booker winner Eleanor Catton's new novel

It’s been a decade since New Zealand author Eleanor Catton’s novel The Luminaries won the Man Booker Prize, making then 28-year-old Catton the youngest author ever to win the award.

Her almost instant international literary fame came at a personal cost, with Catton copping attacks from Prime Minister Sir John Key and broadcaster Sean Plunket who called her an “ungrateful hua” after she criticised Key's government.

This week she released her hotly anticipated third novel Birnam Wood, a psychological thriller set in the South Island, with an ecological battle between good and evil at its heart.

Based in Cambridge in the UK, Eleanor Catton plans to return to New Zealand in May. Details on public engagements have yet to be announced.   

9.40  Danyl McLauchlan: Neoliberalism and New Zealand

Scientist and writer Danyl McLauchlan joins Kim to tackle life's big questions, ideas and thinkers.

Today he's untangling the somewhat slippery term ‘Neoliberalism’, which is used to describe the economic agenda embraced by New Zealand governments from the mid 1980's, which resulted in state asset sales and deregulation of key industries.

So what is Neoliberalism? Why was it seen as the solution to the economic woes of post-Muldoon New Zealand, and what is the legacy of its implementation in Aotearoa?

Danyl is the author of two novels and Tranquillity and Ruin, an essay collection.

10.05 Jemima Khan: new film inspired by her own cross-cultural marriage

Jemima Khan drew on her own experience of cross cultural marriage, to former Pakistani prime minister and cricketer Imran Khan, when writing her new film What's Love Got to Do With it?

Directed by Shekhar Kapur, the rom-com follows a filmmaker as she documents her childhood friend and neighbour's arranged marriage to a bride from Pakistan. 

Jemima Khan is a major documentary producer, a former journalist and associate editor of The New Statesman. Last year she produced the Emmy nominated series Impeachment: American Crime Story, about the President Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal.

What's Love Got to Do With it? is being released in New Zealand cinemas from February 16. 

10.25 Prof Huhana Smith: using biochar to restore whenua 

Professor Huhana Smith, who heads Whiti o Rehua School of Art at Massey University, has spent the last 20 years focussed on the restoration of her ancestral coastal whenua and awa at Kuku Beach, near Levin. 

One of the tools she's using is Biochar, the carbon-rich remains of slow-burned wood. 

She's part of Te Waituhi ā Nuku, a collective of artists and researchers using Biochar as both a artistic medium and a tool for land restoration.

They are in an exhibition on at New Plymouth's Govett Brewster Gallery until 20 March, and will hold biochar workshops at Parihaka, Taranaki on 25-26 February. 

11.05 Jenni Quilter: experiments in motherhood and technology

The world’s first test-tube baby was born in 1978, and in vitro fertilisation has made having a baby possible for millions of people since. 

New York based writer Jenni Quilter explores reproductive technologies and the complexities of becoming a mother in her new book Hatching. 

Quilter examines the way such technologies change our understanding of the body and how fertility centres can reinforce conservative norms of motherhood and family. While marketing can treat pregnancy and parenthood like products, at the same time we celebrate the ‘natural’ while denigrating the artificial. 

A New Zealander, Jenni Quilter teaches at New York University.  

11.35 Kae Tempest: how creativity saved them from the storm

Plenty has changed for British spoken word poet, musician and playwright Kae Tempest since they last performed in New Zealand, just before the March 2020 Covid lockdown. 

In August of that year they came out as nonbinary (dropping a ‘t’ from their first name), and released their first nonfiction book, On Connection, an extended essay about creativity.

2021 saw the premiere of a play, Paradise at London’s National Theatre, a Sophoclean tragedy about the military and masculinity, reset in a present day refugee camp. Then, last year, a new album The Line is a Curve,

Tempest performs in Auckland, Wellington and at Splore Festival 24-26 February.

Books featured on this show:

Birnam Wood
Eleanor Catton 
Published by Te Herenga Waka Press
ISBN: 9781776920631

Hatching: Experiments in Motherhood and Technology
By Jenni Quilter 
Published by Riverhead Books
ISBN: 9780735213203

On Connection
Kae Tempest
Published by Faber Social
ISBN: 978-0571354023