BBC Drama IX
BBC Drama IX
***The Club Of Queer Trades by G. K. Chesterton - 6 whimsical short stories by brilliant, witty,
English author, poet and critic. Improbable plots, marvelously funny episodes, evocative
descriptions of late Victorian London distinguish delightful tales focusing on a club devoted to
completely original and unusual professions.
BBC Drama - Club Of Queer Trades 1.6
BBC Drama - Club Of Queer Trades 2.6
BBC Drama - Club Of Queer Trades 3.6
BBC Drama - Club Of Queer Trades 4.6
BBC Drama - Club Of Queer Trades 5.6
BBC Drama - Club Of Queer Trades 6.6
***"Everything that Colette touched became human . . . She was a complete
sensualist; but she gave herself up to her senses with such delicacy of
perception, with such exquisiteness of physical pain as well as physical
ecstasy, that she ennobled sensualism to grandeur." --The Times "Chéri is her
masterpiece."--Michael Straight, The New Republic "Dramatic and moving . . .
[Chéri] endears itself to the reader partly because of its subject, but more
because of the manner of its telling."--The New York Times
BBC Drama - Cheri 1.5 by Colette
BBC Drama - Cheri 2.5
BBC Drama - Cheri 3.5
BBC Drama - Cheri 4.5
BBC Drama - Cheri 5.5
***The novel deals with the life of the Cossacks living in the
Don River valley during the early 20th century, probably around
1912, just prior to World War I. The plot revolves around the
Melekhov family of Tatarsk, who are descendants of a cossack
who, to the horror of many, took a Turkish captive as a wife during
the Crimean War. Accused of witchcraft by Melekhov's superstitious
neighbours, she is killed.
BBC Drama - And Quiet Flows The Don 1.2
by Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov
BBC Drama - And Quiet Flows The Don 2.2
***Blood, Sweat & Tea is a book by ambulance technician Brian Kellett, writing under the
pseudonym Tom Reynolds, about life in the London Ambulance Service.
BBC Drama - Blood Sweat and Tea by Tom Reynolds
***BBC Drama - Chameleon - Comedy thriller by Vicky Meer - Mo is being relocated
under a witness protection scheme, his previous identity totally eradicated. How will a
Porsche-driving London drug dealer adapt to life as a vegetarian postman living in a
former council semi in Gretna?
BBC Drama - The Idiot 1.4 by Dostoevsky
BBC Drama - The Idiot 2.4
BBC Drama - The Idiot 3.4
BBC Drama - The Idiot 4.4
***'Big, hilarious, intricate, furious, moving' - Guardian Telling the stories of the wealthy
Winshaw family, WHAT A CARVE UP! is a riveting social satire on the chattering and
all-powerful upper classes.
BBC Drama - What a Carve Up 1.8 by Jonathan Coe
BBC Drama - What a Carve Up 2.8
BBC Drama - What a Carve up 3.8
BBC Drama - What a Carve up 4.8
BBC Drama - What a Carve up 5.8
BBC Drama - What a Carve Up 6.8
BBC Drama - What a Carve Up 7.8
BBC Drama - What a Carve Up 8.8
***the exploits of Winston and the decidedly odd middle-class Empson family, to whom he
attaches himself, as they struggle to make sense of the world around them.
BBC Drama - Winston 1.6- by Peter Tinniswood - A Happy Family
BBC Drama - Winston 2.6- Weaving the Spells
BBC Drama - Winston 3.6- Without a Doubt
BBC Drama - Winston 4.6- What Do You Reckon
BBC Drama - Winston 5.6- Whacko Jolly Dee
BBC Drama - Winston 6.6- The Village Fete
***Based on a true story of love, lust, and betrayal, Blood Wedding is one of the most
powerful and innovative plays written this century. ...
BBC Drama - Blood Wedding 1.2 by Federico García Lorca
BBC Drama - Blood Wedding 2.2
BBC Drama - The Blood Of Strangers by Frank Huyler - True Stories from
Emergency Room Medicine
BBC Drama - Cribbins At Christmas 1.4 - A Walk in the Park with Hodges -
Alan Plater's story exploring the relationship between a man and his dog.
BBC Drama - Cribbins At Christmas 2.4 - Ho! Ho! Ho! - By Stephen Wyatt.
Do people spare a thought for the man in the Father Christmas costume?
BBC Drama - Cribbins At Christmas 3.4 - Happy Prince - By Oscar Wilde.
A swallow longs to migrate south but stays behind to obey a gilded statue.
BBC Drama - Cribbins At Christmas 4.4 - Mr Bromley's Folly - By Roy Apps.
A canine lapse in concentration causes chaos during the making of a movie.
BBC Drama - A Case of Spirits by Peter Lovesey - a comic mystery
BBC Drama - Detective Wore Silk Drawers by Peter Lovesey -
Sergeant Cribb finds himself immersed in the world of nineteenth-century
pugilism, investigating illegal bare-knuckle boxing. Cribb sends in
Constable Jago, the police boxing champion, undercover to the gang's
secret training centre. Cribb must think on his feet in the final rounds
of this mystery.
***A sadistic practical joker is haunting the popular music halls of London,
interfering with the actors and interrupting their acts by orchestrating
humiliating disasters that take place in view of the audience. A trapeze
artist misses her timing when the trapeze ropes are shortened. A
comedian who invites the audience to sing along with him finds the words
of his song “shamefully” altered. Mustard has been applied to a sword
swallower’s blade. A singer’s costume has been rigged. The girl in a
magician’s box is trapped. Then the mischief escalates to murder.
Or was murder intended all along? That indomitable detective team,
Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray of Scotland Yard, must track down
the elusive criminal.
BBC Drama - Abracadaver by Peter Lovesey -
BBC Drama - Wobble To Death by Peter Lovesey - Set in London in 1879,
featuring Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray who must race to catch
a ruthless killer.
***At the end of World War I Richard Hannay ("The 39 Steps") has retired to the Cotswolds.
There, news comes to him of three kidnappings and a plot of political and financial magnitude.
Hannay abandons his idyll to counter the threat and his adventures lead to an encounter with
his most formidable enemy.
(See also BBC Drama V - The Adventures of Richard Hannay)
BBC Drama - Three Hostages 1.2 by John Buchan
BBC Drama - Three Hostages 2.2
***Couples is the book that has been assailed for its complete frankness and
praised as an artful, seductive, savagely graphic portrait of love, marriage, and
adultery in America. But be it damned or hailed, Couples drew back the curtain
forever on sex in suburbia in the late twentieth century. A classic, it is one of those
books that will be read -- and remembered -- for a long time to come.
BBC Drama - Couples 1.2 by John Updike
BBC Drama - Couples 2.2
***In this story, the main character is introduced to Mr Septimus R. Podgers by
Lady Windermere, a chiromantist, who reads his palm and tells him that it is in his
future that he will be a murderer. Lord Arthur wants to marry, but decides he has no
right to do so until he has committed the murder.
BBC Drama - Lord Arthur Saville's Crime 1.2 by Oscar Wilde
BBC Drama - Lord Arthur Saville's Crime 2.2
***Memento Mori is a Latin phrase meaning "Remember you must die".
Something eerie & uncanny besets a group of elderly friends in 1950s
London. Considered to be Dame Muriel's greatest novel.
Dame Lettie Colston, 79 and pioneer penal reformer, has much in
common with the elderly residents of the Maud Long Medical Ward. All are united by scorn,
resentment, boredom - and the humour that masks the awareness of impending death.
Then the insidious telephone calls begin...
BBC Drama - Memento Mori 1.2 by Muriel Sparks -
BBC Drama - Memento Mori 2.2
***Candide's adventures begin when he is ejected from his home after a liaison with
the buxom Cunegonde.
BBC Drama - Candide (or "Optimism") by Voltaire
BBC Drama - Vicar Of Wakefield 1.3 by Oliver Goldsmith (3 hours)
BBC Drama - Vicar Of Wakefield 2.3
BBC Drama - Vicar Of Wakefield 3.3
***Gentleman spy Richard Hannay is off on a new adventure. The title - Mr Standfast - refers
to a character in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, to which there are many other references
in the novel; Hannay uses a copy of Pilgrim's Progress to decipher coded messages from his
contacts, and letters from his friend Peter Pienaar.
Set in the later years of World War I, Brigadier-General Hannay is recalled from active service
on the Western Front to undertake a secret mission hunting for a dangerous German agent at
large in Britain. He is forced to work undercover disguised as a pacifist, roaming the country
incognito to investigate the deadly spy and his agents, and then heads to the Swiss Alps to
save Europe from being overwhelmed by the German army.
BBC Drama - Mr Standfast 1.2 by John Buchan
BBC Drama - Mr Standfast 2.2
***Who killed Marius Steen, the theatrical tycoon with a fortune to leave his young mistress Jacqui?
And who killed Bill Sweet, the shady blackmailer with a supply of compromising photographs?
Charles Paris, a middle-aged actor who keeps going on booze and women, takes to detection in
Cast, In Order of Disappearance, by assuming a variety of roles, among them that of a Scotland Yard
Detective-Sergeant, and the results are both comic and dramatic. As the mythical McWhirter of the
Yard, he actually precipitates the crime; as one of the blackmailer's victims, he finds himself in bed
with the blackmailer's wife; as a small-part player in a horror film (The Zombie Walks), he gets
shot at by a murderer. And he arrives at the solution by way of the petrol crisis and an abortive
attack of the German measles. It's a light-hearted frolic that is, at the same time, a beautifully
ingenious puzzle, and it fizzes with fun and wit.
BBC Drama - Cast in Order of Disappearance 1.6 by Simon Brett - Baron Hard-Up
BBC Drama - Cast in Order of Disappearance 2.6- Transformation Scene
BBC Drama - Cast in Order of Disappearance 3.6- Inside the Giant's Castle
BBC Drama - Cast in Order of Disappearance 4.6- Enter the Funny Policeman
BBC Drama - Cast in Order of Disappearance 5.6- Slapstick Scene
BBC Drama - Cast in Order of Disappearance 6.6- King Rat
***It is World War II and American soldiers stationed in rural England have made friends,
especially with the local girls. After a dance to celebrate the pressing of the apples into
cider, the resentment of the local men leads to violence and a murder. Later, a child is
born, a girl. When she grows up, she tries to find out more about her soldier-father. And
long-forgotten jealousies and hatreds come frothing to the surface. Rough Cider was
nominated for an Edgar Award.
BBC Drama - Rough Cider 1.2 by Peter Lovesey
BBC Drama - Rough Cider 2.2
***The Sword of Honour trilogy by Evelyn Waugh is his look at the Second
World War. It consists of three novels, Men at Arms (1952), Officers and
Gentlemen (1955) and Unconditional Surrender (1961, published as
The End of the Battle in the U.S.), which loosely parallel his war time
experiences. Waugh received the 1952 James Tait Black Memorial Prize
for Men at Arms.
The story of Guy Crouchback, a Catholic and a gentleman commisssioned into
the Royal Corps of Halberdiers during World War II. High comedy in the
company of Brigadier Ritchie-Hook is only part of the shambles of
Crouchback's war. When action comes he discovers not heroism, but humanity.
BBC Drama - Sword of Honour 01.11 by Evelyn Waugh (11 hours)
BBC Drama - Sword of Honour 02.11
BBC Drama - Sword of Honour 03.11
BBC Drama - Sword of Honour 04.11
BBC Drama - Sword of Honour 05.11
BBC Drama - Sword of Honour 06.11
BBC Drama - Sword of Honour 07.11
BBC Drama - Sword of Honour 08.11
BBC Drama - Sword of Honour 09.11
BBC Drama - Sword of Honour 10.11
BBC Drama - Sword of Honour 11.11
***The "Palliser novels" are six novels by Anthony Trollope.
The common thread is the wealthy aristocrat and politician Plantagenet Palliser and (in all but the last book)
his wife Lady Glencora. The plots usually involve English politics in varying degrees, specifically in and
around Parliament.
The books are:
* Can You Forgive Her? (1864)
* Phineas Finn (1869)
* The Eustace Diamonds (1873)
* Phineas Redux (1874)
* The Prime Minister (1876)
* The Duke's Children (1879).
BBC Drama - Pallisers 01.12 by Anthony Trollope (12 hours)
***With a rich cast, a fast-moving story line, and dialogue that displays all the wit and panache
for which Frederic Raphael is famous, Fame and Fortune is a powerful sequel to his bestselling
classic, The Glittering Prizes.
Success as a novelist and Hollywood screenwriter has brought fame and its pleasures to
Adam Morris, whose public cynicism continues to mask his private anguish.
He still moves warily amongst his ambitious Cambridge contemporaries, but for them, as for him,
success has proved a double-edged sword.
For Adam, a startling sexual encounter, as well as the defection of his son, Tom, and his brilliant
daughter, Rachel, threaten to capsize his complacency and his marriage. In Mrs Thatcher's
golden years, money and power can do little to ensure the glittering prizewinners from the trip-wires
that lace their upward path - or from the violence and death that stalks and strikes
BBC Drama - Fame And Fortune 1.6 by by Frederic Raphael
BBC Drama - Fame And Fortune 2.6
BBC Drama - Fame And Fortune 3.6
BBC Drama - Fame And Fortune 4.6
BBC Drama - Fame And Fortune 5.6
BBC Drama - Fame And Fortune 6.6
***This thrilling novel of a doctor's life has been the subject of a Mobil
Masterpiece Theatre dramatic series on PBS. "Cronin's distinguished
achievement. . . . No one could have written as fine, honest, and moving
a study of a young doctor as "The Citadel" without possessing
great literary taste and skill".--"The Atlantic Monthly".
BBC Drama - The Citadel 1.4 by A J Cronin
BBC Drama - The Citadel 2.4
BBC Drama - The Citadel 3.4
BBC Drama - The Citadel 4.4