Jonathan Coy

Gloomsbury (Radio 4, Friday) is the Bloomsbury of Harold Nicholson, Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf and Violet Trefusis as re-imagined by clever Sue Limb and recreated by a brilliant cast (Miriam Margolyes, Alison Steadman, Nigel Planer, Morwenna Banks, Jonathan Coy). It bustles along, shifting assorted real-life infatuations, elopements and enthusiasms into the higher planes of nonsense. Oddly, however, the thrust of the performances seemed greater than the grip of the narrative.

Comedy by clever Nick Warburton, starring James Fleet as Edward. He's timid, bashful. Passing local allotments one day he speaks to attractive Amanda (Joanna Monro) and decides there and then that he must get an allotment too. But first he has to be interviewed by fierce site manager Bernie (Jonathan Coy).

A way through the resulting confrontational suddenly opens when Bernie learns Edward's father was a noted local horticulturist he's admired all his life. Whew! Yes there's another surprise for all in store. And there will be three more in the series.

Ladies of Letters is forever a hair's breadth from outright panto. Tonight, Irene in Melbourne is beset by some cartoonish business with possums, ending up with a pirate's eye patch, and Vera whizzes inelegantly down a playground slide to the strains of Entrance of the Gladiators. But the spiky scripts of Hayman and Wakefi eld always root things just the right side of the fence, as does the bouncy playing of Maureen Lipman and Anne Reid. There's plenty of bite in the comedy, while the contrast in the ladies' missives adds poignancy. Irene's bravado about her inattentive beau Vincent (Jonathan Coy) is a model of concealment, while Vera's jottings are much more honest and, with her defences worn away, she admits to being "hurt and confused".