The Shows: Radio 2 Nighttime
- Presented by
- Mark Radcliffe
- Radio Station
- BBC Radio 2
- Timeslot
- Monday to Thursday, 10:30pm-midnight
- On air
- 7 June 2004 to 5 April 2007
Whilst Marc Riley left Radio 1 and was on the airwaves of 6music within eight days, his former colleague had a bit of a rest, joining Radio 2 a few months later in June.
For many long standing listeners, the Radio 2 show was to be a bit of a blast from the past for in many ways, the new Radio 2 resembled the old Graveyard Shift in more ways than one.
Well with a format that included regular live sessions and a set of regular guests, comparisons had to be made. Even more so when the list of guests was revealed to include old Graveyard Shift hands like poets Ian Macmillan and Simon Armitage!
Even the mix of regular guests was familiar in style - poets, comedians, musicians, actors... It seemed like a blast from the past. Well apart from the music which did rely less on obscure Britpop bands that had marked out the music policy of the original.
Saying that, whilst the first show was very mainstream indie, as the shows progressed, the playlist got more and more daring, even including the seminal masterpiece that was Stina Nordenstam's Little Star - a song which regularly cropped up on the Graveyard Shift, and got its first play on the Radio 2 show within a fortnight.
There was even a set of sketches - one a night, although they seemed rather crowbarred in and were dropped after a few weeks. The new show did add a quality innovation however - a feature called The Crucial Three. Three records dispersed around the show with listeners having to guess the second and third tracks in the hope of winning a Radio 2 mug.
It was like an old friend was back - abliet one who has grown a little older and wiser and without its best mate doing hand-farts and shouting 'cobblers' in the background.
The old friend lasted just under three years with the final edition being on 5 April 2007. A few weeks later, Mark Radcliffe would be back in a double act - this time with Stuart Maconie.
