■ Chimerica was one of the best plays of 2013. Written by Lucy Kirkwood before she had turned 30, the award-winning drama — about an American photojournalist searching for the Chinese protester who stood in front of the tanks on Tiananmen Square — is to be turned into a Channel 4 drama series. The play examined the complex relationship between the two superpowers, as well as the ethics of journalism.
I gather that Kirkwood, who subsequently wrote The Children and Mosquitoes for the stage, is not only adapting Chimerica, but updating it to encompass the 2016 US presidential election, focusing on the debate, still au courant, over fake news in our “post-truth” world. The four-parter will be directed by the rising star William Oldroyd, whose Lady Macbeth (based on Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, not the Shakespeare play) was, I reckon, the best British film of 2017. Channel 4 makes only a handful of drama series a year, but the bar is set high — the last two were Peter Kosminsky’s The State and Kiri, which concludes on Wednesday.
■ Why does it seem a given that the British Museum, of course a wonderful institution, will get the Bayeux Tapestry in 2022? There are surely other candidates, such as English Heritage, which looks after Battle Abbey, West Sussex. While the current building at the site of the 1066 clash is not large enough to contain the tapestry, a temporary structure could be erected. Locating it in Battle would also get tourists out of the capital. After all, Bayeux is a small Normandy town with a population of 14,000, but 400,000 visit its museum each year. There has also been talk of a (less realistic) bid from Coventry, which will be the UK City of Culture in 2021 and is already home both to a Graham Sutherland tapestry, in its cathedral, and to the stunning Coventry Tapestry, dating from 1500, in St Mary’s Guildhall.
More surprising is that the V&A has indicated it is not in the running. Hang on — it’s surely the most appropriate venue, thanks to its terrific tapestry rooms, which feature its Devonshire Hunting and War of Troy weaves, as well as significant curatorial expertise. The V&A also has a new gallery, opened last summer, that would be ideal for the Bayeux loan.
■ There was an exemplary interview on Today last Wednesday between Nick Robinson and Tessa Jowell, who has brain cancer: the Radio 4 programme at its best. It was, however, at its worst the previous day, when Geeta Guru-Murthy, usually on BBC World News, talked to the opera singer Angela Gheorghiu. Clearly a fan, she had seen Gheorghiu in Tosca two years before and admitted to being “so exhilarated that I could not speak by the end”. A love-in followed before her sign-off: “It has been a privilege to meet you.” Maybe she should get some tips from her brother, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, a Channel 4 News anchor, who always asks tough but fair questions. As when quizzing the Hollywood greats Quentin Tarantino, who refused to talk about film violence, and Robert Downey Jr, who walked out.