Saturday Review - 22/05/2010

Tom Sutcliffe and guests Adam Mars Jones, Natalie Haynes and Richard Coles review the week's cultural highlights including Herzog's Bad Lieutenant and Billy Budd at Glyndebourne According to Werner Herzog, his film Bad Lieutenant - Port of Call:New Orleans has nothing to do with Abel Ferrara's 1992 film Bad Lieutenant. It stars Nicholas Cage as a police lieutenant whose conduct during a murder enquiry is unorthodox to say the least. Benjamin Britten's opera Billy Budd has never been performed at Glyndebourne before and, in another first, it marks director Michael Grandage's operatic debut. The role of Billy is sung by South African baritone Jacques Imbrailo and Mark Elder conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Opera Italia is a three part series on BBC4 which sets out to explore the central role that opera plays in Italian history and culture. Antonio Pappano, Musical Director at the Royal Opera House, traces the story from Monteverdi to Puccini. The Chelsea Flower Show runs from 25th - 29th May. During that time 157,000 visitors will see what's new in state-of-the-art garden design, including the show garden by the Eden Project which is the largest ever to have been built at Chelsea. One group of people uniquely challenged by the new coalition government are the nation's political cartoonists. Tom and his guests have been looking at their work to assess the different ways in which the Cameron-Clegg partnership is being portrayed and to see if any enduring images are emerging. Producer: Torquil MacLeod.