| Friday 17 July 2009 - 22.30 BST - BBC TWO Presented by Gavin Esler From the web team: From Gavin Esler Quote for the Day "What we seem to be witnessing in Iran is the first spasm of the death agony of the Islamic Republic" - Writer Martin Amis. In tonight's programme - we will be trying to figure out if Martin Amis is right - especially in the light of comments by the former President Rafsanjani today which may well stir the Persian political pot. But we'll be leading on the fight against swine flu. How well are we doing? How much can really be done? Why do we have so many cases in Britain - is it because we are simply better at reporting it than other countries? Our Science Editor Susan Watts reports from one of the hot spots, Birmingham which has important lessons for the rest of the country. And in Newsnight Review - we'll be examining the flipside of the American Dream. The latest Thomas Pynchon novel - Inherent Vice - has at its heart a spaced out private eye, Doc Sportello, who smokes so much weed it is not entirely clear what he's investigating. Plus we'll have the Oscar contender Frozen River, about the smuggling of illegal immigrants over the Canadian border; the latest Adam Curtis documentary It Felt Like a Kiss which explores in typical Curtis style part of our love-hate relationship with the United States; and the great American novel, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath - but how well does it adapt to the stage? The academic and critic Sarah Churchwell, historian Dominic Sandbrook, and the writer and London Correspondent for The Nation DD Guttenplan are with me. Plus Martha will be at a rather rainy Latitude festival in Suffolk with some guests of her own to assess the state of the British festival scene. With three cabinet ministers due to turn up there this weekend, has it all got a bit tame? Gavin We'd like to hear your suggestions - leave your comments by clicking here.. Do join Gavin Esler for all that and more at 10.30pm on BBC Two. | 
BBC Daily E-mail
Posts
