HOLY WEEK is the season of the docu-meditation: a hybrid form characterised by languid recitations from the Gospel narratives, interviews with people doing worthy things such as basket-weaving or cushion-crochet, and a soundtrack spliced together from Enya tribute bands. You are as likely to encounter theology in these shows as to be disturbed by a drive-by shooting, and the emotional glow of Passion and resurrection is low-wattage.

Of the two I sampled this year, the Bishop of Newcastle’s, Dr Helen-Ann Hartley’s, Good Friday Meditation (Radio 4) benefited from an extended treatment of the Anglo-Saxon poem The Dream of the Rood (Faith, 28 March), while the poet Jay Hulme’s Sunrise Service (Radio 4, Easter Day) did Lindisfarne and St Cuthbert, in what felt distinctly like a retread of two years ago. But, then again, distinctiveness is not the criterion by which such programmes are properly judged. They are liturgies composed for a radio audience that is, at best, indifferent and, at worst, imaginary.

For spiritual insight at this time of year, one must rely on surprises. This year, a trawl through one of the many lists of recommended podcasts brought to my attention Where Are You Going? (Loftus Productions, released Tuesdays and Fridays). The conceit here is that the presenter, Catherine Carr, strikes up conversations with people on the street, opening each one with that question. Carr has no appreciably winsome conversational skills, but one imagines that she is just one of those people on to whom you are happy to offload. Her exchange last week with a Mormon was beautifully measured and insightful, as the lady talked of her large family, diminished by the death of two sons. The concept of forgiveness implies something universal, but is realised in infinitely different ways; here, we encountered a particular and moving case.

What Carr, and other broadcasters with her skills, remind us is that everyone has something interesting to tell us, and the responsibility for finding that something lies with the interviewer. By the same token, the characters chosen for treatment in Profile (Saturdays, Radio 4) can project only what their profilers regard as significant. Thus we were left by Stephen Smith’s profile of the Bishop of Croydon, Dr Rosemarie Mallett, with only two impressions: of her commitment to racial justice in the Church of England, and the hazards attendant on consuming too much of her notorious rum cake.

She was presumably chosen as a subject because of recent controversy, as Smith attempted only a rudimentary account of her upbringing and spiritual formation; but neither did he engage with the debate over reparations in such a way as to suggest that there was a debate. One might have hoped that the BBC had a least one reporter able to summon up the energy to do the job properly.

But let us finish on a positive: the BBC’s rebroadcasting of some Drama: Hidden Treasures (Radio 4) from the drama archive, including Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter (Palm Sunday) and Dennis Potter’s Traitor (Monday of last week). It was as if the 45-minute drama slot, often handled so awkwardly, was created especially for them.