At the Darkest Point, review: The power of human stories to shine a light

Radio 4 presenter John McCarthy delved into the dark underbelly of human emotion

These are dark times for radio-lovers looking for some festive cheer. While regular BBC presenters snooze contentedly on their sofas and producers activate their out-of-office auto-replies, the schedules are filled with substitute hosts silently weeping over hearing Michael Bublé for the 273rd time.

If you've visited Radio 4 in the past few days, you might have wondered if Christmas had been cancelled. Because as listeners have been panic-buying bargain-bucket toiletries, Money Box was fretting about the Swiss bank charging negative interest rates, and Open Book's Mariella Frostrup was examining the merits of Norwegian literature.

Among the network's rare seasonal offerings was At the Darkest Point, though I use the word seasonal in the literal, rather than Christmassy, sense. Midwinter – and thus the day during which we are most starved of natural light – fell earlier this week. So what better time for John McCarthy to delve into the dark underbelly of human emotion in At the Darkest Point?

Drawing on the testimony of artists, composers, writers and adventurers, the presenter examined the dark nights of the soul experienced by people when light is in short supply. There was an extract from the diary of Richard Byrd, who spent five months at a meteorological station in Antarctica in 1934. He'd gone in search of peace and quiet but found nothing but cold, darkness and existential gloom.

"The mind turns sluggish and the nervous system slows up.... Try as I may I find I can't take my loneliness casually. It is too big," he wrote.

We heard from the composer and sound artist Janek Schaefer, who reflected on the darkness and melancholy of his music, while the poet Jen Hadfield wrote with great elegance of the winter gloom in Shetland, where she lives. I'd have liked to have heard more from McCarthy himself but, even so, these were nicely chosen pieces for an evocative and unapologetically miserable programme.

iPM, the show in which listeners offer up their own stories for broadcast, was similarly keen to remind us that life at this time of year isn't all about twinkly lights and merriment. We heard from Sophie, who was on her way to her night shift with the Samaritans when she encountered a woman sitting by a river in clear distress. "I asked if she was OK and she said, 'No'," Sophie said.

The woman asked Sophie if she could help her over the barrier and into the river, so she sat down and asked what had brought her to this. She also called the police and stayed until they arrived.

"I just felt she wasn't in the right place to make a decision about ending her life then and there," she remarked. It was sad story but one with a happy ending, and typical of iPM's visceral and candid real-life storytelling.

"I still find it quite upsetting," sniffed Alan Bennett after hearing Mary Ellis singing Ivor Novello's "I Can Give You the Starlight" on Private Passions. The song had catapulted him back to childhood and the singalongs led by his late Aunt Evelyn.

Near the end, Bennett said he wished he could go up to his younger self and tell him, "'It's all going to be all right'. And it has been all right. I've been very lucky."

Twitter: FionaSturges