The Business of Film with Mark Kermode (Radio 4) | iPlayer
A History of Britain in Numbers (Radio 4) | iPlayer
Zane Lowe (Radio 1) | iPlayer

It is always a pleasure to hear Observer film critic Mark Kermode talking about film. Whether you agree with him or not – and I know plenty who don’t – his passion and gift for performance lift his opinions above the usual movie obsessive. He’s also a great interviewer, though this is often forgotten. With his new three-part series, The Business of Film, starting today, we’re reminded: we hear him asking questions that get to the heart of his subject, assuming intelligence in his interviewees, not trying to dominate or show off. People who work hard – and people in film work really hard – like to talk about what they do. Kermode lets them.

The first instalment opened with a great speech from a producer who described how her film was collapsing almost every day; every day she had to save it from disaster. The point was made that every movie is an enormous business, created entirely from scratch. Those who invest are sinking money into a very risky enterprise that can be derailed at any point. No wonder that for some big films the financiers put together their preferred cast list.

This was an interesting programme, absolutely packed with information without being too overwhelming. I particularly enjoyed Matthew Vaughn’s contributions, his absolute belief that films should not be subsidised but survive on their own merits – and how close his two big successes (as producer and director), Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Kick-Ass, came to not being shown at all. Vaughn pulled some amazing strokes, some intentional, some not, and his films went on to make a profit. But, crikey, it was a close-run thing.

Speaking of numbers, which film buffs always do, Andrew Dilnot had a new run of his A History of Britain in Numbers series this week. I very much enjoyed his last series, which focused on the individual; I was a little less enamoured of last week’s five programmes, which looked at the state. This was nothing to do with Dilnot’s presentation skills, which are still excellent. His choice of words is always lovely – “the awful creativity of war”; “Britain counted its way to victory”; “war echoes through the history of state like thunder” – and he’s never less than clear; it’s just harder to get excited about the faceless bean-counters at the top of the pile.

Also, there was much discussion of the first and second world wars and how they changed the way our state worked and, you know, we’ve heard an awful lot about war on Radio 4 recently. I also had a strange feeling that the numbers just weren’t quite as important as they were in the first series. We were given statistics (Dilnot is chairman of the UK Statistics Authority) by an unnamed female voice that told us how much of GDP was spent on defence, for instance, but it all seemed a little less woven through, a little less about pure numbers than I would have liked. This is all a bit nit-picky, if I’m honest; but, you know, maths buffs like precision.

And finally, to another mad enthusiast, Zane Lowe. Lowe is leaving Radio 1, hanging up his BBC headphones to work with Apple in the States. He leaves Fearne Cotton and Scott Mills as elder statespeople at his old station, and Annie Mac in his slot as new music champion. I think Mac is the right choice. She’s been a little sidelined at Radio 1 for a while, her presenting skills kept to weekend shows, when dance music really is the pop music of the moment. Plus Lowe leaving means someone else can win the music broadcaster of the year in whatever form the Sonys take when they return.

I hope Apple use Lowe well; he really is a one-off in music presenting, a unique, dedicated, exceptional broadcasting talent as happy with the button-pushing techy side as with new music curation as with the ‘Come-on!’ personality element. He might have got on our nerves occasionally – the UK can find it hard to deal with someone that seems upbeat all the time – but we will really miss him when he goes.