Time for our regular look at what's on at the South Bank in London in August. Everyone's probably going to be on holiday, but c'est la vie.

Most of the TV-related material is part of the "From Stage to TV Screen" season, which is probably self-explanatory, but there's also an afternoon run: Missing Believed Wiped Special: The Lost Cartiers, looking at the work of legendary 1950s/60s director Rudolph Cartier.

• 2nd/4th: Play of the Month: Look Back In Anger
  John Osborne's play, shot for the BBC1 on the 20th anniversary of its first Royal Court performance. Stars James Hazeldine
• 10th/14th: Theatre 625: Chicken Soup With Barley
  The first play of Arnold Wesker's trilogy concerns the history of a communist working class family
• 12th: Rat in the Skull + Panel discussion
  Brian Cox and Gary Oldman star in an examination of Irsih sectarian psychology. The panel interview with Max Stafford-Clark and Simon Curtis discuss the influence of Royal Court productions on TV drama.
• 19th/25th: Performance: Top Girls
  Caryl Churchill's fantasy dinner party, starring Lesley Sharp among others
• 20th/29th: Performance: Suddenly, Last Summer
  A production of Tennessee William's play starring Maggie Smith, Natasha Richardson, Rob Lowe and Richard E Grant
• 22nd: It is Midnight, Dr Schweitzer
  Part of the Missing Believed Wiped Special: The Lost Cartiers season, this in the earliest surviving complete UK TV drama, and stars André Morrell
• 22nd: The Wednesday Play: The July Plot + Out of the Unknown: Level Seven
  Part of the Missing Believed Wiped Special: The Lost Cartiers season, The July Plot is based on the 'Valkyrie' plot to assassinate Hitler, and was directed by Rudolph Cartier. Level Seven is a 'chilling instalment about nuclear war'
• 27th/30th: Performance: Six Characters in Search of An Author
  Starring John Hurt, Brian Cox and Tara Fitzgerald

Members' priority booking opens: 11.30am July 7
Public booking opens: 11.30am July 14

Prices
£7.60 (members)
£5.25 (member concs)
£9.00 (non-members)
£6.65 (non-members concs)
Under 16s £5.

All shows are £5 on Tuesdays. Conc prices are available to senior citizens, students, unwaged and disability visitors. Proof of eligibility may be required.

As always, visit the BFI web site for more details

PS Cy Young's standing for the board of governors. Vote for Cy Young everyone!

Could be good, if only because Sally Phillips is in it. You may remember Miranda Hart from Hyperdrive and Not Going Out:

Miranda is desperate to fit in, but can't.

Her public school background and posh accent make her a misfit down the pub. She has never fitted in with 'the girls' (not least because she's a foot taller than them) and due to years of agoraphobic tendencies she doesn't know how to behave socially or how to avoid embarrassment, especially around men.

She's a constant disappointment to her mother Penny, who's desperate for her to get a proper job, or even better, a husband, but Miranda's happiest playing with and making up silly games in her joke shop.

Lacking any real capacity for business, Miranda employs her childhood friend Stevie to manage the shop. Stevie tries to run the business like she's competing to be Alan Sugar's apprentice, but her principal task is keeping Miranda's childish absurdities under control.

It doesn't matter what Miranda attempts in life - be it dating, joining the gym, or dealing with her overbearing mother, she always seems to fall flat - literally. She can never seem to leave a room without knocking something over.

Partly based on the character of comedian Miranda Hart, 'Miranda Hart's sitcom' is a farcical, affectionate sitcom about being the odd one out.

Starring Miranda Hart, Sarah Hadland as Stevie, Patricia Hodge as Miranda's Mother, Penny, Tom Ellis as Gary, and Sally Phillips as Miranda's boarding school friend Tilly.

Recording on Sundays 5, 12, 19 and 26 July and 2 and 9 August at the BBC Television Centre, Wood Lane, London. Doors open at 7pm.

To apply for tickets, visit the BBC Tickets Website or call the BBC Ticket Line on 0370 901 1227

I don't normally cover "up north" – I'm sure there are better sources of information than I, for starters – but thanks to this brave new web world I've entered recently, I've just learnt via Twitter about some interesting showings at Derby QUAD as part of their "Future is Now" season.

• 5th: Sapphire and Steel – Adventure 4. Includes a Q&A with director David Foster.
• 13th: Year of the Sex Olympics – Nigel Kneale's 1968 prescient look at television.

You can book online right now.

Read other posts about: Sapphire and Steel

What an interesting idea. Over in Canada, CBC has an annual 'open doors' event in which you can tour the network's facilities and meet the stars. Look, here's Erin Karpluk of Being Erica being told she's the next Carrie Bradshaw.

I wonder if the Beeb could do something similar. What do you think?

Time for our regular look at what's on at the South Bank in London in July. First though, just a mention that there's been an addition to the BFI May programme – they're showing a preview of Psychoville tonight, followed by a Q&A with Reece Shearsmith, cast member Daisy Haggard and producer Justin Davies. It's on at 6.15pm, so get your skates on.

There's going to be quite a lot of TV fun at the BFI in July, thanks to a moon season in particular, but also a large number of previews of forthcoming TV shows:

• 1st: Canada Day TV Special – Bernard Braden
  Episodes of On the Braden Beat and Now and Then
• 3rd: Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 + Q&A
  ITV 'Docu-fiction' about the the moon landing, starring James Marsters and Andrew Lincoln
• 3rd: Doctor Who – The Moonbase + Moonbase 3 – Departure and Arrival
  The two surviving episodes of Patrick Troughton Cyberman story The Moonbase followed by the opening episode of futuristic sci-fi soap The Moonbase, written by famed Who writers Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts back in 1973
• 6th: The Planets – Moon + Stranger than Fiction – The Truth Behind the Moon Landings
  Documentaries about the origin of the moon (BBC) and the possibility the moon landings were staged (Five).
• 14th: Desperate Romantics + Q&A
  Preview of the first episode of the BBC1 drama about the 19th century Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, based on Franny Moyle's book. Q&A with writer Peter Bowker, producer Ben Evans and co-exec Franny Moyle.
• 21st: Charles Dickens' England + Q&A
  A Sky Arts documentary featuring Derek Jacobi and various Dickens experts as they look at the various towns and villages that feature in Dickens' work. Q&A afterwards with Derek Jacobi and Film London CEO Adrian Wootton.
• 21st: Everyone's Going to the Moon + Horizon – Beyond the Moon
  ITV documentary about the training of astronauts followed by James Burke on BBC's Horizon discussing the US space programme
• 31st: UFO – Survival + Space: 1999 – Breakaway
  A lone alien attacks SHADO's moonbase in the Gerry Anderson show, plus the first episode of the sequel show which saw the moon escape the earth's orbit

Members' priority booking opens: 11.30am June 2
Public booking opens: 11.30am June 9

As always, visit the BFI web site for more details

UPDATE: The BFI tells me that Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 will now include a Q&A with Richard Dale, head of research Dan Parry and (hopefully) cast members.

It's there all week for the Urdd National Eisteddfod in the Bay.

Time for our regular look at what's on at the South Bank in London in June. Not much, basically, but here's what I found:

• 12th: Torchwood: Children of Earth – Day 1. The first episode of the third series, followed by a Q&A with members of the cast and crew
• 18th: Chandleresque: Raymond Chandler on Film & TV. An illustrated talk featuring film and audio clips.

For those that want the full description of that Torchwood episode (why?), here you go:

1965: Twelve children are gathered on a deserted moor, before being surrounded by a harsh, bright light… and then they are gone! Today: All over Earth, children stop moving. Stop playing. Stop laughing. Then, as one, they begin to speak with the same voice, announcing the imminent arrival of a new alien threat. 'We are coming…' As the British government closes ranks, it issues a death warrant against Captain Jack and Torchwood…

Anyone want to help out?

There's also a "Jazz at Ronnie Scott's" season, but if you think I'm wasting more than a nano-second on that, you're wrong.

Members' priority booking opens: 11.30am May 5
Public booking opens: 11.30am May 12

As always, visit the BFI web site for more details

Read other posts about: 24, Torchwood

The BFI's remembered to send me the brochure this month, so here's our regular look at what's on TV-wise at the South Bank in London in May.

• 9th: The Best of Ianucci
  Armando Ianucci's choice of his best work as performer and writer-director
• 9th: Ianucci in person
  A career interview in which Armando Ianucci will talk about his TV work. Asking the questions: Graeme Garden of The Goodies. No, seriously.

However, other than that, everything else is dedicated to a John Mortimer retrospective.

• 4th/22nd: The Sunday Night Play: The Wrong Side of the Park; Monitor: Mortimer's Hampstead
  A play about a malicious lodger and a Monitor item providing context.
• 8th: Television Playhouse: Collect Your Hand Baggage; Shades of Greene: Special Duties and The Invisible Japanese Gentleman
  Kenneth More as a man who has never grown up; John Gielgud as a CEO who hires a nun to buy him out of purgatory; Denholm Elliot musing on the curse of 'the writer's eye'.
• 10th/18th: A Voyage Round My Father; The South Bank Show
  Mortimer's best-loved play, followed by a special devoted to Mortimer's methods and philosophy.
• 14th: Thirty Minute Theatre: Bermondsey; Knightsbridge; King's Cross Lunch Hour; and Mill Hill.
  A heady and controversial mix of gay sex and class; high farce; Mortimore's most Pinteresque play; and a dentist's sexual fantasies.
• 17th: Play for Today: Rumpole of the Bailey
  The very first appearance of Rumpole. BBC4 showed it recently and it's very good. Followed by:
• 17th: John Mortimer Remembered
  A panel of guests who knew John Moritmore discuss his work and influence. Includes Daisy Goodwin, Jacqueline Davis, Colin Rodgers and Alvin Rakoff.
• 21st: Will Shakespeare (episodes one and two)
  Tim Curry plays William Shakespeare in this demonstration of how events in his life fed into his plays.
• 22nd/28th: Playhouse: Unity
  A dramatisation of the English aristocracy's collusion with fascism.
• 23rd: Titmuss Regained
  A three-part satire of the Thatcher era starring David Threlfall.
• 29th/31st: Edwin; On Reflection: Mortimer on Oscar Wilde
  Alec Guinness wonders whether a friend's son really is his son. And Mortimer refelcts on Oscar Wilde – obviously.

Meanwhile, back in the Mediatheque, there's a season of 'Funny Girls' that includes episodes of Sykes, Fawlty Towers, Wood and Walters and The Mrs Merton Show, as well as the pilot of Meet The Wife.

Members' priority booking opens: 11.30am April 7
Public booking opens: April 14

As always, visit the BFI web site for more details

UPDATE: Yes, Tim Curry as Shakespeare:

Normally, I'd have done a rundown on what's on at the BFI in April by now. Unfortunately, I've just realised, I think during my house move, the latest brochure must have gone astray or not got delivered. Or I threw it out.

Anyway, I've had a look through the online version and there's not much for TV lovers in April, by the looks of it, apart from a season dedicated to documentary series Monitor. Doesn't really float my boat, but it might float yours.

The only other thing is that there's going to be a showing of Marty, on Wednesday 22nd April, accompanied by a Q&A with star Ernest Borgnine. Off you go, Airwolf fans!

As discovered by me not so long ago, radio comedy Safety Catch, starring among others – oh look – Joanna Page from Gavin & Stacey, has been awarded a second series. Now the recording dates have been announced. Need anyone ask if I've booked my tickets already?

Safety Catch
1 and 8 March, BBC Radio Theatre

A second series of Laurence Howarth's black comedy of modern morality set in the world of arms dealing.

Simon McGrath is generally is nice man who likes to think of himself as a good citizen. He donates blood, although not bone marrow because he's heard that hurts. He recycles his newspapers, bottles and some of his cans. He's adopted two tigers. But he has to pay his mortgage like everyone else and that's why he's currently working as an arms dealer.

Of course his real love is electronic music and this is just a stop gap until he finds the perfect outlet for his music - okay so it's a five year stop gap but it's a stop gap nonetheless.

Anyway, as his mum says, people will always want to kill each other, there's nothing Simon can do about that and the job pays well, gives him good job security and enables him to buy a decent car. So that's alright then......

Starring:
Darren Boyd (Green Wing, Saxondale, Little Dorrit) as Simon
Joanna Page (Gavin & Stacey)
Sarah Smart (Wallander, At Home With The Braithwaites)
Brigit Forsyth (Calendar Girls, Whatever Happened To the Likely Lads,)
Lewis McLeod (Look Around You)

Recording on Sunday 1 and 8 March at the BBC Radio Theatre, Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London. Doors open at 7.15pm.

To apply for tickets, call the BBC Ticket Line on 0370 901 1227* or visit the BBC Tickets Website.

We are delighted to announce that we are now issuing E-tickets for all of our shows, so please keep an eye on the email address that you enter when applying as that is where your tickets will be sent.

We look forward to seeing you in our audience very soon.

Kind regards

BBC Studio Audiences
www.bbc.co.uk/tickets

Read other posts about: Gavin and Stacey