Even for BBC’s Radio 4, What the Papers Say sticks out. The station provides a deft yet dizzying programming mix of current events, sitcoms, news, comical news quizzes and soap operas, justified by the loose rubric “spoken word.” (On its website it describes itself as “a speech station for curious minds.”) What the Papers Say provides that theatrical and journalistic mix within one short weekly show.

What the Papers Say presents stories from the week’s newspapers simply by reading them aloud in a dramatic fashion. This is a great change from the usual BBC newsreaders, a corps of interchangeable voices who deliver the headlines in a flat, clear manner so devoid of overt regional or national accents that the style has been labeled “The BBC accent,” as if it’s a linguistic culture unto itself.

While emotive, What the Papers Say’s voices aren’t particularly realistic—the voices fall into clichéd attitudes that have graced mainstream theater characters for centuries: Upper-class burbling, lower-class snarling, snippy academic instruction, imperious political pronouncments. Americans invariably have Texas drawls.

Before its current BBC incarnation (which kicked off with a special election-time series in the spring of 2010 before becoming a Sunday night staple, What the Papers Say was a TV institution. It aired for 52 years on a number of different channels or networks, becoming the second longest-running program in British TV history.

For all the shortsighted current blather about how political rhetoric has become increasingly theatrical and sensationalisitic, this is evidence (as if any was needed) that stageworthy essay-writing or incendiary speechmaking nothing new. What the Papers Say also demonstrates how inflammatory rhetoric can be more about delivery than content.

The newspaper excepts which What the Papers Say turns into a radio script were not intended to be read aloud. When they are, they fall easily into categories which fit the actors’ stereotypical characterizations. Headlines, when stripped of their original need to be concise yet directly informative, come off as needlessly shouty and simplistic. Op-ed columns, which contain a strong first-person voice yet are carefully composed for print, seem abjectly scolding or patronizing.

Sometimes the cross-media interpretation adds to the pithiness or pertinences of the print-writers’ points. Other times, not so much, turning the well-turned phrases into punchlines.

What the Papers Say isn’t at all What the Papers Mean. It isn’t even What the Papers Might Say If They Could Talk. It’s “Papers Say the Darnedest Things,” in the manner of another long-running TV humor bit which got most of its comedy from formalizing them and taking them out of context—Art Linkletter’s interviews with precocious youngsters on his old House Party series. On the surface, such comedy is surefire. But you don’t have to think about it long before you realize that this is due to the misshaping of vulnerable material.