The Moral Maze
| Genre | Individual cross examinations of successive witnesses by a group of panellists on live radio |
|---|---|
| Running time | 45 mins (Wednesdays 20.00) |
| Country of origin | UK |
| Language(s) | English |
| Home station | BBC Radio 4 |
| Hosted by | Michael Buerk |
| Created by | Rev Ernie Rea |
| Produced by | Dan Tierney (BBC Religion & Ethics) |
| Recording studio | BBC Manchester |
| Original release | 20 August 1990 – present |
| Website | Website |
The Moral Maze is a live discussion programme on BBC Radio 4, broadcast since 1990. Since November 2011 it has also been available as a podcast.
Four regular panellists discuss moral and ethical issues raised by a recent news story. Michael Buerk delivers a preamble launching the topic, then a series of 'witnesses' - experts or other relevant people - are questioned by the panellists, who then discuss what each witness said.
The regular panellists are:
The panellists mainly fall into two opposing camps of broadly left- and right-wing viewpoints, and the discussions hence often revolve around whether newer liberal values are eroding more traditional values. This binary split is often complicated by differing philosophical views the panel hold which do not conveniently sit in a simple left-right political divide.
Notable former panellists include Rabbi Hugo Gryn (who died in 1996), Janet Daley, Edward Pearce, Geoffrey Robertson, Michael Mansfield, politician Michael Gove, Ian Hargreaves, Kenan Malik, scientist Steven Rose, philosophers Simon Blackburn and Roger Scruton, and historian David Starkey, who often attracted controversy for his allegedly blunt manner.
The first programme on Monday 20 August 1990 was forty minutes long from 11am, and followed by Poetry Please. It was made by the Factual Unit of Religious Programmes (later called Factual Programmes Religion) at BBC North in Manchester. It was hoped that the programme format would involve the panellists' views being revised during the course of a programme, but this rarely happened.
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