On My Wavelength

Unless you’ve been living in a nuclear bunker for the past few months, you’re unlikely to have missed that Kate Bush has been enjoying a career fillip thanks to the hit Netflix drama Stranger Things utilising her 1985 single Running Up That Hill. Tonight, in Kate Bush: The Power of Strange Things (Radio 4, 8pm) US broadcaster Ann Powers looks back through the archive at her own longstanding love of Bush’s music, and how it has been “building worlds and transforming lives” for decades.

Irish novelist Marian Keyes writes books that sell by the millions. In Now You’re Asking (Sunday, Radio 4, 7.15pm) she brings the same naturalness, humour and sure feel for a good yarn to her agony aunt-style podcast hosted with her actress pal, Tara Flynn. The first series, in which they “inexpertly” but very entertainingly set out to talk through problems sent in by listeners, was an instant hit when it launched in January; sensibly, they don’t mess with the winning formula in this second run.

Alfie Moore returns with another series of It’s a Fair Cop (Monday, Radio 4, 6.30pm), the stand-up comedy show based on his 20 years’ experience as a police officer. This rib-tickling edition is based around the topic of workplace theft. Immediately afterwards, on The Archers

(Radio 4, 7pm), you can raise a glass to the great Jill Archer (and

Patricia Greene, who’s played her since 1957), who celebrates her 92nd birthday tonight. Hip-hip…

Huw Brentnall’s radio debut About a Dog (Tuesday, Radio 4, 2.15pm) is a broad-brush comedy of tested loyalties. Recorded on location in Suffolk, it recounts the unintended consequences of a road-kill incident involving a pheasant, a crate of moonshine and an entirely innocent dog. Hilarious, and original, fare. Canines are in the firing line, too, on Costing the Earth (Radio 4, 3.30pm) when Tom Heap assesses the carbon paw-print of the UK’s 10 million dogs. Is man’s best friend set to be the green lobby’s new pet hate?

In The Compass: On the

Border (Wednesday, World Service, 9.06am & 8.06pm) foreign-affairs journalist and bestselling author Tim Marshall explores how the challenges of living in border areas affects communities. The opening edition finds him in the Dutch city of Maastricht, which sits on the border with France and, since

1992, has been synonymous with the founding treaty of the European Union.

Back in April, just weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, comedian Anton Tymoshenko got up on stage at the Comedy Cellar in Kyiv (“It’s really easy to do stand-up in Kyiv now – you just go into a cellar and everyone’s already in there”) and told jokes about the war. In Live in Kyiv: Comedy from a War Zone (Thursday, Radio 4, 11.30am) he reflects on what the conflict has taught him about the need to laugh in the face of extreme adversity.

On Friday, Cerys Matthews and Jeffrey Boakye are back with Add to Playlist (Radio 4, 7.15pm), tracing unlikely links between wildly different genres of music. “One of the most hopeful sounds in music is the perfect fourth,” says guest Richard Stilgoe of the opening to Ennio Morricone’s score for Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The journey from there to Afro Blue by Melanie De Biasio, via Elvis Presley’s Love Me Tender, Madonna’s Don’t Tell Me and the first movement of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No 3, is a joy from beginning to end.