BBC DRAMA XIII
BBC DRAMA XIII
F:\B\BBC Drama XIII
===================
****Julia and David work together in the family archives. One day, a mysterious envelope arrives for David
with letters from 43 women, all answering a lonely hearts advert that he didn't place.
BBC Drama - 43 Letters by Rony Robinson
****This is a story, based on the author's own experience, about a boy dealing with a serious injury to his eyes.
BBC Drama - A Darkening of the Moon by James Follett
****Laurence Olivier Award 2008 for Best New Play & 2007 Critics' Circle Theatre Award
for Best New Playinspired by the collaboration during the 1910s between two of the most
remarkable pure mathematicians of the twentieth century, Srinivasa Ramanujan, a poor
Brahmin from South India, and Cambridge university don G.H. Hardy.
BBC Drama - A Disappearing Number by Simon McBurney
****Gillian Clarke's play is a poetic celebration of rural summertime, set against the
revelation of a family secret, previously concealed by respectability, religion and
embarrassment.
BBC Drama - A Field of Hay by Gillian Clarke
****A woman visits her elderly parents in Spain after a fire which has destroyed their retirement home
and hospitalised her mother. She discovers that her perceptions of her family's history are not the full story.
BBC Drama - A Fire In The Sun by Robin Mukherjee
****DS Dave Davis is investigating the murder of a drunken football supporter on the Leeds to
Manchester train. A strange pink letter arrives at the station.
BBC Drama - A Helping Hand by Mike Stott.
****A father becomes increasingly frustrated by his grown-up children's refusal to fly the nest, so decides
to move the family to a smaller house. However, adjusting to the change in living conditions proves harder
than expected, especially since the previous owner has neglected to tell them a few things - her cat comes
with the property, a psychiatrist expects to use the spare room for counselling, and a film crew are making
a documentary about Emily Bronte.
BBC Drama - A Home of Their Own by Martyn Wade.
****Owen Meany hits a foul ball while playing baseball in the summer
of 1953 that kills his best friend's mother, an accident that Owen is sure
is the result of divine intervention.
The story of John Wheelwright and his best friend Owen Meany growing up
together in small New England town during the 1950-60s; Owen is a quite
remarkable boy in many ways, he believes himself to be God's instrument
and journeys on an extraordinary path of death, birth, love, disclosure and
sacrifice.
BBC Drama - A Prayer for Owen Meany 1.5 by John Irving
BBC Drama - A Prayer for Owen Meany 2.5
BBC Drama - A Prayer for Owen Meany 3.5
BBC Drama - A Prayer for Owen Meany 4.5
****A Thriller.
BBC Drama - A Resistance to Pressure by Steve Gallagher (90 minutes)
****Darwash is now 30 years old, searching to understand his famous father, the first Palestinian ever
drafted into major league baseball. The story goes that baseball club owner Lou Jacobson first saw
Ahmed Darwash on television, when cameramen caught him throwing stones at Israeli soldiers...and
hitting them. The rest, as they say, is history. Or, in this case, fiction. A Stone’s Throw is the story of an
intersection of professional sports and politics, a wry documentary-style telling of the short, brilliant career
of a baseball pitcher who never existed.
BBC Drama - A Stone's Throw by Jason Sherman (50 minutes)
****The play that made Brando famous.
BBC Drama - A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (2 hours)
Also,
Hear a scene from the original
>>> (A Radio Play) - Critic's Choice - 1948
A Streetcar Named Desire
(Brando, Tandy, Hunter, Malden, Kazan)
****What would you do if fate suddenly made your dreams come true? A SUNSET TOUCH tells
the story of what happened to Mr. Menheniot, a middle-aged London bank clerk, who all his life
had dreamed of a return to his ancestral Cornish estates, even if only to end his days in one of
the lodges. For years he had devotedly traced the history of the family and knew he was the last
descendant. In one unexpected stroke, fortune brought him both sudden wealth and the estates.
The effect on him of this change makes an unusual and fascinating story. He who had so long
shrunk from his fellows was now hurled among them; he who had feared women now found
himself pursuing one while being persued himself by another.
BBC Drama - A Sunset Touch 1.2 by Howard Spring
BBC Drama - A Sunset Touch 2.2
****A Suspension of Mercy, a masterpiece of noir fantasy. With this novel,
Highsmith revels in eliciting the unsettling psychological forces that lurk
beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life.
BBC Drama - A Suspension Of Mercy by Patricia Highsmith
****At his best, Wingfield is outstanding: witness
A TEST TO DESTRUCTION
an early play in which an explosives expert, seemingly caught in a desperate
trap, keeps his nerve and thinks ahead.
Taut little thriller with a surprise in store. Radio Times said the following:
'For John Somersham, the Department of Scientific Warfare always comes first, but when the safety of his small son is
at stake he faces the most agonising crisis of his life'.
BBC Drama - A Test to Destruction by R D Wingfield
BBC Drama - A Thousand Ships by Mark Haddon - The story of Helen of Troy, the face that wiped a city
from the face of the earth.
****It is 1936 and Phyllis Pearsall has had enough of getting lost in LONDON because all the maps
are out of date. So she begins the arduous task of walking 3,000 miles and mapping 23,000 streets,
in order to fulfil her dream of producing the first A-Z of LONDON.
BBC Drama - A To Z by Lucy Catherine
BBC Drama - A View to a Haunt by Peter Redgrove (2 hours)
****In A Visit from Miss Prothero, a man "dozing in his armchair which is as
worn, cosy and comfortable as he is, unless one counts the budgie, he is alone."
But things are all set to change with a visit: cue the arrival of Miss Prothero -
who is neither worn, cosy or comfortable.
Little by little she picks away at poor Mr Dodsworth - all of course achieved with
Bennett's customary wit, poignancy and delicious observation.
BBC Drama - A Visit From Miss Prothero by Alan Bennett
****Victor's ashamed of his cruelty towards a girl he knew a long time ago. Will his past catch up with him?
BBC Drama - A Visitation by Don Taylor
****We meet Lear, played by Sir Derek Jacobi, in a
creative trough. He has lost touch with his
creations and can only snatch glimpses of them
across a dark wood.
The Owl, the Pussycat, the Quangle Wangle and
Lady Jingly Jones feel similarly bereft. Without Lear
they have no existence, and no purpose. So they
set out on a journey to look for him. A journey in
which they sing a few songs and meet a number
of friends - a Jumbly girl, the Dong with the Luminous
Nose, the Pobble, and the Yongy Bongy Bo.
BBC Drama - Abominable Bestiary by the Coast of Coromandel by Lavinia Murray
****Roz and Colin are having a difficult time with sex, largely because of an invisible yet forbidding barrier
between them. Roz became pregnant after being raped and had an abortion. Roz is not sure she made
the right decision and Colin is not altogether convinced his wife was raped.
BBC Drama - Abortive by Caryl Churchill
****Satirical vision of events at the White House in a post-Bush era. A congressional hearing tries to make sense of
what went wrong with the former US leader's regime
BBC Drama - Abrogate by Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H)
****Two Victorian murder mysteries by Pieter Rogers, in which there is some doubt as to whether the
accused woman is guilty of murder. Director CELIA DE WOLFF....
BBC Drama - Accused of Murder, My Beloved Husband by Peter Rogers
BBC Drama - Accused of Murder, The Alabama Belle by Peter Rogers
****In fear for his life under Stalins terror, Dimitri Shostakovich
withdraws his Fourth Symphony from production. However, others inspire
him to dare to write the Fifth.
BBC Drama - An Informer's Duty by Greg Cullen (90 minutes)
**** Journalist Ellie Rogers is sent to Norfolk to investigate rumours of witchcraft. She witnesses some
terrifying events. Stunning; frightening, terrific.
BBC Drama - Book of Shadows 1.3 by Scott Cherry
BBC Drama - Book of Shadows 2.3
BBC Drama - Book of Shadows 3.3
****A news network is in heaven with sole access to the boy's story. But he finds a way out and comes
in the back door.
BBC Drama - Boy in the Well
****The only survivor from a village decimated by an erupting volcano... ..
BBC Drama - Breath of Fire
****In 1992, police went berserk in Brazil's notorious Carandiru jail, killing 111 inmates.
The prisoners disagreed on what actually sparked off the riot. Some said it was over a
drug deal, others a five-pack-of-cigarettes debt, still others merely an argument over a
game of football. Whatever it was, bad feeling spread rapidly through cellblock 9 of
São Paulo's Casa de Detenção, known as Carandiru - a sprawling 1950s-style concrete
complex housing over 7,000 inmates, more than twice the number it was designed for.
The riot is the *end* of the story. The story is the prison itself. ageing transvestites, their
bodies misshapen by backstreet injections of industrial silicone; his expert medical
assistant Edelso, who, with no formal qualifications, had passed himself off as a doctor
on the outside; the serial murderer who came to Varella as a patient, worried because
"he had lost his capacity to kill". It was a world peopled by men with eccentric nicknames
beloved of Brazilians: the flamboyant transvestite Lady Di, the midget Minimum Wage
and the amateur philosopher No Way.
On the morning of October 3 1992, 111 prisoners lay dead; not one of Guimarães's men had been killed.
BBC Drama - Carandiru by Drauzio Varella
****The further adventures of Dick George and his soon-to-be-ex-wife Dora. A play in the style of a
Hollywood Comedy/Thriller of the 30s.
BBC Drama - Case of the Vanishing Vamp by Sarah Maxwell.
****Dodging impending fatherhood, Dan has escaped to the beach he used to visit as a child in search
of answers. What he finds is himself, aged nine.
BBC Drama - Excerpt From A Dog's Ear by Karya Siddhi
****Two couples, Julia and Fred and Willy and Jane, are happily married and the best
of friends until a postcard arrives with news of an imminent visit from Maurice, a
handsome Frenchman carrying strong ties from the past.
BBC Drama - Fallen Angels by Noel Coward
BBC Drama - Gormenghast Trilogy 1.8 by Mervyn Peake (8 hours)
BBC Drama - Gormenghast Trilogy 2.8
BBC Drama - Gormenghast Trilogy 3.8
BBC Drama - Gormenghast Trilogy 4.8
BBC Drama - Gormenghast Trilogy 5.8
BBC Drama - Gormenghast Trilogy 6.8
BBC Drama - Gormenghast Trilogy 7.8
BBC Drama - Gormenghast Trilogy 8.8
****Traditional tales told by Old Peter to his two grandchildren
BBC Drama - Old Peter's Russian Tales II 1.5 - Salt by Arthur Ransome
BBC Drama - Old Peter's Russian Tales II 2.5 - Fish Tales
BBC Drama - Old Peter's Russian Tales II 3.5 - Prince Ivan
BBC Drama - Old Peter's Russian Tales II 4.5 - The Stolen Turnips
BBC Drama - Old Peter's Russian Tales II 5.5 - Frost
****Vikas Swarup's spectacular debut novel opens in a jail cell in
Mumbai, India, where Ram Mohammad Thomas is being held after
correctly answering all twelve questions on India's biggest quiz show,
Who Will Win a Billion? It is hard to believe that a poor orphan who has
never read a newspaper or gone to school could win such a contest.
But through a series of exhilarating tales Ram explains to his lawyer
how episodes in his life gave him the answer to each question.
BBC Drama - Q and A 01.10 (Slumdog Millionaire, Academy Award nominee)
by Vikas Swarup
BBC Drama - Q and A 02.10
BBC Drama - Q and A 03.10
BBC Drama - Q and A 04.10
BBC Drama - Q and A 05.10
BBC Drama - Q and A 06.10
BBC Drama - Q and A 07.10
BBC Drama - Q and A 08.10
BBC Drama - Q and A 09.10
BBC Drama - Q and A 10.10
****A black comedy based on real events.
The Great Kalanag, Adolf Hitler's favourite conjuror, is touring America during the 1950s
when he is confronted by his dubious past in Nazi Germany. Has he used the skills of a
magician, in particular the techniques of misdirection, to create an illusion of his entire career?
BBC Drama - Smoke and Mirrors by Paul B Davies
****Dr. Ransom enters the increasingly pressing conflict between
science and ethics and embarks on a mysterious journey.
The story is set in post-war England in a small university town, in which
the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (acronym "N.I.C.E."),
a fictional scientific agency led by fallen eldila, attempts to alter the true
nature of mankind through an exploitation of its members' pride and greed.
The goal, if mankind continues down its current path, is the conquest of
human nature, making true man a lost memory. Dr. Ransom represents
the watchful Christian, willing to do God's bidding in order to foil the N.I.C.E.
The reawakened Merlin, of the Arthurian legends, as a conduit of angelic
power, shows that only through the divine can the battle against the forces
of darkness end in victory for the light.
BBC Drama - That Hideous Strength 1.4 by C S Lewis
BBC Drama - That Hideous Strength 2.4
BBC Drama - That Hideous Strength 3.4
BBC Drama - That Hideous Strength 4.4
****A maritime adventure originally published in 1951. Set in the
Second World War, two ships and their crews of about a hundred
and fifty men are involved in defending Atlantic convoys against impossible odds.
BBC Drama - The Cruel Sea 1.2 by Nicholas Monsarrat
BBC Drama - The Cruel Sea 2.2
****Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award
and the Governor-General's Award, and short-listed for the Booker Prize.
The Stone Diaries is the story of one woman's life, a truly sensuous novel
which relects and illuminates the unsettled decades of our century. This is
the story of Daisy Goodwill, from her birth on a kitchen floor in Manitoba,
Canada, to her death in a Florida nursing home nearly ninety years later.
Through Daisy's life, Shields reflects and illuminates the unsettled decades
of our century in this rich and poignant novel.
BBC Drama - The Stone Diaries 1.5 by Carol Shields
BBC Drama - The Stone Diaries 2.5
BBC Drama - The Stone Diaries 3.5
BBC Drama - The Stone Diaries 4.5
BBC Drama - The Stone Diaries 5.5
****A mystery originally published in 1965, featuring DS Colin Thane
and DI Moss of Glasgow's Millside Division, who investigate a scam
involving a famous brand of whiskey liqueur, taking them from a sprawling
housing estate to a lonely peat-bog.
BBC Drama - The Taste of Proof by Bill Knox (sound a bit muddy)
****Miss Jones, a missionary, lives with her brother in the Alas Islands. They are scandalised
by the presence on the islands of Ginger Ted, a drunkard and womanizing scoundrel.
The Vessel of Wrath is a novella, published in 1931 by W. Somerset Maugham. It first
appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine.
The story has been adapted for film and television at least four times:
BBC Drama - The Vessel of Wrath by Somerset Maugham.
****This Roald Dahl classic tells the scary, funny and imaginative tale of a
seven-year-old boy who has a run-in with some real-life witches! In fairy
tales witches always wear silly black hats and black cloaks and they ride
on broomsticks. But this is not a fairy tale. This is about REAL WITCHES.
REAL WITCHES dress in ordinary clothes and look very much like ordinary
women. They live in ordinary houses and they work in ordinary jobs. That is
why they are so hard to catch. Witches, as our hero learns, hate children.
With the help of a friend and his somewhat-magical grandmother, our hero
tries to expose the witches before they dispose of him.
Grotesquely delightful Ages 7-12
BBC Drama - The Witches 1.2 by Roald Dahl
BBC Drama - The Witches 2.2
****"See if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look
as though she had ever done housework, or are milker's hands like mine." So Rhoda Brook, the
abandoned mistress of Farmer Lodge, is jealous to discover details of his new bride
in 'The Withered Arm'
BBC Drama - The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy
****Monologue exploring the mind and motives of the young Czech student, Jan Palach, who
set fire to himself in the centre of Prague 40 years ago.
On 16 January 1969, a few months after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, a philosophy
student named Jan Palach stood outside the National Museum in Prague, poured petrol over his
head, and set himself on fire. It was, apparently, an attempt to revitalise his demoralised countrymen.
Palach died three days later. Half a million Czechs turned out in the rain for the funeral procession, and the grave
became a shrine for opponents of Soviet domination. A number of his compatriots swiftly followed his example.
BBC Drama - Torch No 1 by David Pownall
****When a popular colonel loses a promotion, it sets the stage for
conflict with his new superior officer.
BBC Drama - Tunes Of Glory by James Kennaway (90 minutes)
****In TURN, TURN, TURN the action is set in the past and framed by
a light Jamesian sub-plot, in the course of which he tells the story.
Steve Hodson is remarkable in this one, that tortured patrician utterance
exactly matching the damn-your-eyes recklessness of his character, caught
up in turbulent events that quickly move beyond his control.
BBC Drama - Turn, Turn, Turn by Sheila Hodgson
****Analyzing the idea of 'Time'.
BBC Drama - Unforgiving Minute (60 minutes)
**** Ray Connolly's dramatic account of the day he was due to fly to New York for an interview with
his friend John Lennon - just before the singer was shot by Mark Chapman. Besieged by colleagues
in the aftermath of the murder, the journalist struggles to separate the man he knew from the growing legend.
BBC Drama - Unimaginable by Ray Connolly
****Emma is a well-off university student rather bored by her studies. She meets Andy, who works
in a bar but has an exciting and dangerous past in the army in Iraq. When he suggests things are
not as they seem, Emma is frightened but intrigued.
BBC Drama - University of Lies by Peter Kesterton.
****Mrs Vernay and her husband live in a flat above the Chambers of Brian Culsworth Q.C.
in the Temple. One day Mrs Vernay receives a visit from a Mr Sampson and she gets the
impression that he is a blackmailer. She then immediately seeks advice from Mr Culsworth
in his chambers below. Mr Culsworth's client, a Mr Baker is bringing an action to recover his
share on a win on the pools. The story of these people becomes inextricably linked in a brilliant
novel of suspense and humour.
BBC Drama - Unlawful Occasions by Henry Cecil (90 minutes)
****A story of Alfred Lord Tennyson (90 minutes)
BBC Drama - Visitor by Joe Anderson
****'Wild Swans is based on a story by Hans Christian Anderson
BBC Drama - Wild Swans 1.3 by John Peacock
BBC Drama - Wild Swans 2.3
BBC Drama - Wild Swans 3.3
****Series exploring the twentieth century through diaries and correspondence of real people,
dramatised by Margaret Wilkinson
BBC Drama - Writing the Century 1946-1948 - Out of the Ashes 1.5 by Margaret Wilkinson
BBC Drama - Writing the Century 1946-1948 - Out of the Ashes 2.5
BBC Drama - Writing the Century 1946-1948 - Out of the Ashes 3.5
BBC Drama - Writing the Century 1946-1948 - Out of the Ashes 4.5
BBC Drama - Writing the Century 1946-1948 - Out of the Ashes 5.5
****A vivid portrayal of odd goings-on in a writers' group. Ellen is recently widowed, and so joins a
writing class to keep her mind occupied and to make new friends. A widower in the group soon
becomes more interested in her than her writing, but he is pompous and self-opinionated. Her
way of dealing with the situation is highly original, and is revealed as she reads her story to the others,
a little each week. There is also a nice twist at the end.
BBC Drama - Written to Death by Lesley Glaister
****When electricity pylons start to go up across the valley, traditional Welsh village life is bound to change.
But then a stranger appears, amid reports of an escalating nuclear threat. No one will be untouched
by the events that follow.
BBC Drama - You Shouldn't Have Come by Meic Povey
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Total 0 folder(s); 96 file(s)
Total files size: 1028 MB; 1028310 KB; 1052989255 Bytes
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^