Showing results by publisher "BBC Audio" in Genre Fiction

Northumberland, 1838. The TARDIS crash lands on board a sinking steamship. Stranded, the Doctor and the few survivors fight for their lives – while the local lighthouse keeper’s daughter, Grace Darling, risks her life to row to their rescue. Lauded a heroine, Grace struggles to cope with her new-found fame. But the Doctor senses something else troubling Grace. She’s been tormented by the terrifying vision she saw out at sea in the storm. There’s a monster in her mind, wrecking ships and stealing the souls of the drowned. And it’s real.

Hilda Tablet is a fictitious ‘twelve-tone composeress’ created by Henry Reed in a series of radio mockumentaries. She first appeared in the play A Very Great Man Indeed, which follows the quest of a fictional biographer, Herbert Reeve, who is writing the biography of the equally fictional novelist Richard Shewin.

Before Jane Austen, there was Fanny Burney. In the 1780s, she was England’s most celebrated female author, having achieved extraordinary success with two hit novels. She went on to become a royal servant, marry an exile from the French Revolution and undergo a gruelling mastectomy without the aid of anaesthetic – all events chronicled in her diaries, which were published posthumously to great acclaim. Contained here are dramatisations of her first and most famous novel, and her remarkable journals and letters.

Victorian adventure writer Henry Rider Haggard is most famous for his novel King Solomon’s Mines, which launched the ‘Lost World’ genre of SF, featuring the discovery of long-forgotten or legendary civilizations. His follow-up, She, was also hugely successful, and has been hailed as ‘one of the great classics of fantasy fiction’. The radio dramatisations of both tales are collected here, with casts including Tim McInnerny, Adjoa Andoh, Finlay Robertson, Oliver Chris and Mia Soteriou.

Somewhere outside space and time there waits the Celestial Toymaker, an enigmatic being who ensnares unwary travellers into his domain to play out his dark and deadly games. Separated from the security of the TARDIS, the Doctor is forced to play the complex trilogic game with the evil magician. Meanwhile, Dodo and Steven must enter into a series of tests with, among others, the schoolboy Cyril and the King and Queen of Hearts.

Life for supply teacher, Phil (Jim Sweeney), is turned upside down when his wife, Sarah (Caroline Quentin), is offered a new job. Phil agrees to give up work and become a stay-at-home dad to daughter Sophie - after all, how hard can it be? Phil quickly realises parenthood isn’t all coffee mornings and cake. He has to grapple with playgroups (when he can find them), new friends (some a little more ‘out there’ than others), a ‘helpful’ mother-in-law (she isn’t) and when Sarah goes to Paris with work, can Phil contain his jealousy?

Joanna Lumley and Roger Allam play a married couple who met in the Summer of Love and have stayed together ever since. Children of the '60s, they are still free spirits, drawn together by their love for music and one another. We follow their conversations from the café to the kitchen table, taking in everyday chores, dealing with problems with long-held friendships and tackling their frustrations with each other. With warmth, wit and honesty, they talk about the indignities of ageing, their desire to still be seen as attractive and their fears and vulnerabilities around growing older.

Dublin-based Dessie (David Kelly) and Violet Doyle (Pauline McLynn) are trying to keep their theatrical costumier business afloat amidst drama, scandal and farce so brilliant it should be on stage itself. Attempting to embrace modern working practices, the pair find themselves in uproarious situations with a cast of colourful characters and multiple narrative threads… Listen and laugh as the beleaguered couple embrace an offer from a local nun’s drama group which might help, if only they don’t get things mixed up with the Gaiety Theatre’s opera production.

With its wickedly funny mimicry and on-point parodies, Dead Ringers became an instant classic when it hit the airwaves in January 2000. In these four series, first broadcast between 2020 and 2023, the team give us their inimitable impersonations of the famous and infamous: from Donald Trump and Joe Biden to Liz Truss, Professor Chris Whitty and Holly Willoughby.

Meet Dot and her friend Millie, who only communicates in catchphrases; Wendy Clapper, who thinks TV, credit cards, swimming pools and soup are nothing but trouble; and Jonathan Tudge, who just can't help putting his foot in it. You’ll also encounter the worst therapist in the world, the travel agent who won't let anyone go further than Lowestoft, a registered platitudopath, a bag lady turned sacred icon, and the furniture removal men who think they're on Antiques Roadshow.