Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Radio Days (1987)

Then Aptly, after thinking about this for days, I can’t remember when I first saw Radio Days, but that’s because for a period in the early nineties I’d watch it practically every weekend, one of a group of films which included The Big Chill (“What are you watching?” “Don’t know.” “What's it about?” “The man in the hat did something bad …”) and Adventures In Babysitting (“Nobody leave this place without singin’ the blues…”). Imagine my surprise, years later, noticing William H Macy as an extra.

Now In this period in the UK when the very nature of what radio should be doing is open to discussion, Radio Days is a reminder that at its heart it's about information and entertainment, aspiration and connectivity. Obviously since the 1930s and 40s other media have taken hold and provided those things, but radio still exists and arguably the one communication form which provides a feeling of community. That’s why the crushing of 6Music and the Asian Network has created such passion – for a group of people, millions, they’re their meeting spaces, the points of similarity and familiarity between them.

It’s also a reminder that sometimes, media ends. Television programmes are cancelled. Newspapers close. DJs retire. And whole radio stations are dismantled. At some point in the future even if it’s saved now, 6Music will go, gone to join our collective memory. Perhaps some future film maker will work a fictionalised version of it into their story including Lauren Laverne as a Sally White figure though presumably with slightly more mundane stories connected to her (“Remember when she accidentally egged that group on to swear on the radio? God, I miss Kenickie …”) but she will endure. It all will. Even bloody George Lamb.

Radio Days is the subject of the volumous book, Woody Allen On Location. Author Thierry de Navacelle was on set every day from the November 1985 to May 1986 and like a court stenographer catalogues seemingly everything which happened in minute detail from the weather to the mood Woody was in that day to the content of every take. It’s fascinating and demystifying in equal measure. I’ve never been able to read it cover to cover because I don’t really want to know exactly how films are made, I like to have some of the magic retained. It’s one thing to hear an anecdote on a dvd commentary, quite another to be able to list all the days when shooting had to stop because of bad light.

A brief word on casting. Robert Altman is the director who was usually renowned for being able to marshal huge range of recognisable faces, but the cast of Radio Days is volumous and features representatives from nearly all of his previous films. Even Jeff Daniels, in the same year that Something Wild smashed, turns up in a tiny role as a radio adventurer. It’s the only film to feature both Mia and Diane Keaton, luminously lit from the front singing the closing song like a ghost from Christmas past. It should be distracting, but each of them is so perfectly cast between Allen and Juliet Taylor that it instead has the effect of adding to the nostalgic reverie as we think back, but just to radio days, but to Woody’s earlier work.