Boswell's Lives

Radio Times review

Reader, I LOL-ed. This is brilliant. For the third and final part of Jon Canter's blisteringly funny sitcom, time-travelling biographer James Boswell (Miles Jupp) meets Harold Pinter.

Harry Enfield is spot-on as the master of comic menace. There are a couple of obvious gags ("Would The Caretaker be different without the pauses?" "It would be... shorter.") but Canter writes with originality and depth.

Bizarrely, this would make an excellent introduction to Pinter's work. It's almost -- though it pains me to say it -- edutainment. Essential listening.

Tristram Fane Saunders, Radio Times, 11th March 2015

Radio Times review

Comedy writer Jon Canter's last radio hit was the engagingly barmy Believe It!, which invented a fantasy life for Richard Wilson of all people. In Canter's new series Dr Johnson's biographer Boswell (Miles Jupp) interviews historical figures (Sigmund Freud last week, Maria Callas today, Harold Pinter coming up).

It's reminiscent of the Sky Arts 1 series Psychobitches in which Rebecca Front did the same sort of thing. I preferred it because its sketch format didn't outstay its welcome. Here the material is stretched thinly over half an hour. But radio editor Jane Anderson thinks it's "a work of genius". You decide.

David McGillivray, Radio Times, 4th March 2015

Radio Times review

What an absolute delight for the brain and the ears. This new series was created by Jon Canter (the freelance comedy writer who has worked with everyone from Fry and Laurie to Smith and Jones), stars the ludicrously vocally talented Miles Jupp, and tantalises the listeners with three impossible interviews.

Each week, James Boswell, the famous biographer of Dr Samuel Johnson, travels through time to interview a historical figure he could never have met. This week it's Sigmund Freud, next up is Maria Callas and the series closes with Harold Pinter (played by Harry Enfield).

One cannot help feel pity for Boswell as every question, every response, every word he utters is immediately pounced upon and psychoanalysed by Freud (played to neurotic perfection by Henry Goodman). So much so that Boswell ends the interview believing he may well want to kill his father and sleep with his mother.

A work of genius.

Jane Anderson, Radio Times, 25th February 2015