On my wavelength

Fans of baroque opera should set time aside for Opera on 3 (tonight, Radio 3, 6.30pm) featuring the Royal Opera House’s well-received new production of Handel’s Alcina with soprano Lisette Oropesa in the title role. Story-wise it is one of Handel’s weirder confections, but the music is glorious. On a contemporary note, in Saturday Night at the Movies (Classic FM, 7pm) Andrew Collins reveals his year-end selection of the best TV and film music of 2022.

Andrew Carter’s evocative soundscape Between the Ears: Dying Embers: The UK’s Last Coal-Fired Power Station (Sunday, Radio 3, 6.45pm) is a homage to his engineer father who was one of the workers who built the coal-fired power stations that underpinned Britain’s electricity network for decades. Those stations have almost all been shut down now, but here he captures the extraordinary sounds of the soon to be decommissioned West Burton A plant in Nottinghamshire and the recently closed Cottam power station.

Abraham Badru was 14 years old when he rescued a young woman being gang-raped at a party in east London. Almost as soon as police arrested the suspects, he began receiving threats, and for years he lived in fear until he was eventually shot dead 12 years later in 2018. Please Protect Abraham (Mon-Fri, Radio 4, 1.45pm) is a 10-part series centred on this disturbing case, investigating how the police and judicial system protect – or fail to protect – witnesses who risk their own safety by testifying against violent criminals in court.

Their previous series of

A Thorough Examination with

Drs Chris and Xand (Tuesday, Radio 4, 3.30pm), on food addiction, had some memorable moments. Now the twin medics are back with another series, looking at how we might change habits and personalities. Their opener looks at how behavioural studies of twins have helped psychologists to reach a greater understanding of the differing impacts of genetics and environment.

The second of this year’s Reith Lectures (Wednesday, Radio 4,

9am & World Service, 10.06am) is delivered by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, at Swansea University. Again the theme is taken from Franklin D Roosevelt’s “four freedoms” speech, focusing on the second, Freedom of Religion; it argues that for people of faith, this must mean the liberty to openly express religious convictions as well as the freedom to worship.

John Taylor & Co in Loughborough is the only major bell foundry left in the UK, and still supplies bells large and small to churches, public buildings, clockmakers and others. Bells

That Still Can Ring (Thursday, Radio 4, 11.30am) is an evocative half-hour, taking listeners on a tour of the foundry’s cluttered Victorian workshops, meeting the people who work there and telling stories from its rich history.

Last year’s trio of Dead Ringers Christmas Specials (Friday,

Radio 4, 6.30pm) were among the sharpest radio comedies of the festive season. Beginning tonight, this promises to be another bumper year. The cost-of-living crisis, yet another new prime minister, a Scrooge-like chancellor and the world under threat from Vladimir Putin, are all sure to provide rich pickings for Jon Culshaw and his team of gifted impressionists. We might even get news of what Boris is up to and a bigly news bulletin or two from his soulmate Donald Trump.