Showing results by publisher "BBC Audio" in All Categories

Writer, broadcaster and recovering comedian Natalie Haynes mixes comedy and conversation to bring the ancient world entertainingly up to date in these four radio series. Each episode sees her profiling a key figure from ancient Greece and Rome, and, aided by her special guests, creating a stand-up show around them. 

On the planet of Lobos, the Doctor halts a violent war between the native Loba and human colonists. The TARDIS crew departs - only for Ryan to discover he’s left his phone behind. Again. Upon returning, the Doctor finds that the TARDIS has slipped hundreds of years into the future - and something has gone badly wrong. The Loba are now slaves, serving human zealots who worship a figure known as The Good Doctor. It’s time for the Doctor to face up to the consequences of her last visit. With Lobos on the brink of catastrophe, will she be able to make things right?

Journey's End is an unflinching vision of life in the tranches towards the end of the First World War. The play opens in a dugout in the trenches in France. Raleigh, a new 18-year-old officer fresh out of school, joins the besieged company of his friend and hero Stanhope. But when he arrives in the trenches, he finds Stanhope dramatically changed. This vintage BBC radio production from 1970 stars Martin Jarvis as Captain Stanhope. 

Catherine McCormack, Joseph Fiennes, and Harriet Walter star in this BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's last and most remarkable novel. Passion and perception run through this fascinating study of loneliness, love, and ultimate triumph over adversity.

Following a spot of uncharacteristic intoxication, the Doctor wakes to discover that the TARDIS has materialised in the service ducting of the Vipod Mor, a huge craft which is itself floating in deep space. Furthermore, the console has detected time spillage: someone or something is tampering...

Richard Burton narrates this famous dramatic chronicle of the English Crown, a treasure of the BBC radio archive published on audible for the very first time. Vivat Rex is the landmark drama series first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1977.

Samuel West reads ten of Rudyard Kipling’s famous tales, as broadcast on BBC Radio 4. "How the Whale Got His Throat", "How the Leopard Got His Spots", "The Beginning of the Armadillos", "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin", "The Cat That Walked By Himself", "How the Camel Got His Hump", "The Crab That Played With The Sea", "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo", "The Butterfly That Stamped", "The Elephant’s Child".

Benedict Cumberbatch plays the young, feisty, devastatingly acute Horace Rumpole in this collection of cracking cases, also starring Timothy West as the older Rumpole.

Coralie is a 19-year-old student. It's the morning of the 30th April and she has just taken a Mifepristone pill, the first stage of a medical abortion. She has ordered the drugs online - illegally. She, and anyone she might confide in, could face prosecution and jail if her actions are discovered. As she waits the 24 hours until she is due to take the second set of pills which will complete the procedure, she reflects on the events that brought her to this moment.

Brian Cox and Robin Ince present a witty, irreverent look at the world according to science. The Infinite Monkey Cage has become one of BBC Radio 4’s most popular science-based programmes. In each episode physicist Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince delve into a particular field of science, with the help of guests from the worlds of science, academia, and entertainment.

Clive Merrison stars as Holmes, with Michael Williams as Watson, in this collection from the unique, fully dramatised BBC Radio 4 canon. These 12 stories range from Holmes' very first case to the epic struggle between Holmes and Moriarty high above the Reichenbach Falls.

In each episode of this BBC Radio 4 series, Mark Steel visits a UK town and researches its history, heritage and culture, after which he performs a bespoke evening of comedy for the local residents. Mark's destinations in series 3 & 4 are Berwick-upon-Tweed; Holyhead; Basingstoke; Douglas on the Isle of Man; Bungay; Wigan; Whitehaven; Tobermory; Corby; Handsworth; Ottery St. Mary and Chipping Norton. There's also a special episode recorded at the Edinburgh Festival.

Maggie Smith stars in this BBC radio adaptation of Alan Bennett's highly acclaimed autobiographical stage play. An eccentric old lady moves into a quiet street in Camden Town. There she remains, installed in her van in glorious self-sufficiency, until the council instructs her to move on. Then a kind homeowner invites her to move her van into his garden - where she stays for the next 15 years.

When Ram Mohammad Thomas, an orphaned, uneducated street kid from Mumbai, wins a billion rupees on a live TV quiz show, he finds himself beaten up and thrown in jail by the programme's producers. During his interrogation he explains, through a series of flashbacks, how he knew the answers to all the show's questions. What he describes about his life is jaw-dropping: "You learn a lot about the world by living in it." he says.

Clive Merrison stars as Holmes with Michael Williams as Watson in these 12 adventures from the unique, fully dramatised BBC canon of Conan Doyle's short stories and novels. The 12 dramatisations are 'The Illustrious Client', 'The Blanched Soldier', 'The Mazarin Stone', 'The Three Gables', 'The Sussex Vampire', 'The Three Garridebs', 'The Problem of Thor Bridge', 'The Creeping Man', 'The Lion's Mane', 'The Veiled Lodger', 'Shoscombe Old Place' and 'The Retired Colourman'.

David Tennant and Liz Carling star in the sitcom about a young couple, Daniel and Lucy, and their circle of friends. In the first series, Lucy sets up Daniel's party, but their mates seem too busy with kids. Then, when a top author gets writer's block, Lucy and Daniel get landed with an unwelcome guest. In the third episode, Daniel and Lucy's plans for a quiet weekend are hit by a stream of unplanned visitors and are later hit by other people's baby blues.

Comedian Al Murray plays his great-great-great-grandfather William Makepeace Thackeray as the unreliable narrator in this radical makeover of his ancestor’s celebrated satire on class, sex, money, hypocrisy and snobbery in 19th-century England. As the curtain rises on our ‘story without a hero’, moneyless Becky Sharp leaves school with her upper-class best friend Amelia Sedley. Clever, cunning and ambitious, Becky is determined to make her way in Regency society - and she’ll trample on anyone who gets in her way. 

Angela Carter was one of the most important writers of the 20th century. A pioneer of British magical realism, her work was described by Salman Rushdie as 'without rival and without equal'. Her radical, inventive novels influenced countless writers, while her dark, sensual short fiction turned traditional fables inside out, giving women the power over their desires and fates. Susannah Clapp, Angela Carter's literary executor and friend, introduces the productions and offers fascinating insights into Angela Carter's life and work.

A fascinating collection of archive radio programmes focusing on the life and work of crime fiction's grande dame and featuring Agatha Christie in her own words. Dame Agatha Christie published 66 detective novels and 14 short-story collections in her lifetime, but to the public she remained an enigmatic figure. This quartet of BBC radio programmes looks at the woman behind the books and explores the career of one of Britain's most famous mystery writers.

When Squire Fenton Babblewick inherits his uncle's Yorkshire estate, it's the perfect opportunity to realise his utopian dreams. He attempts to become a member of parliament, reform beetroots, win the love of lovely Lucinda, be a musical composer genius and buy a workhouse to turn it into a school. His ever present manservant - August Snipe, the true brains - watches in dismay as his master makes mistake after mistake. A sit-com set in the 18th century.