Radio Plays XXXXVI
  




A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr
******In J. L. Carr's deeply charged poetic novel, Tom Birkin, a veteran of the Great War 
and a broken marriage, arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where he is to 
restore a recently discovered medieval mural in the local church. Living in the bell tower, 
surrounded by the resplendent countryside of high summer, and laboring each day to 
uncover an anonymous painter's depiction of the apocalypse, Birkin finds that he himself 
has been restored to a new, and hopeful, attachment to life. But summer ends, and with the 
work done, Birkin must leave. Now, long after, as he reflects on the passage of time and the 
power of art, he finds in his memories some consolation for all that has been lost.




The Good Listener by Neil Brand 
******Cath Davis, head of an MI5 surveillance team is renowned for her skill in using the most advanced 
listening techniques. But when she finds herself detailed to bug a close friend from her past, she can 
have had no idea of what she is about to discover.


Storm in a Teacup by James Bridie.
******STORM IN A TEACUP spins a complicated web of comic frustration from an unrenewed dog licence. 
A reporter writes an article that embarrasses a politician. Meanwhile, the newspaperman is also attracted 
to the politician's daughter.



Amazonia by Garry Lyons
******Years before he found fame with Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome 
was swept up in the dramatic events of the Russian Revolution, living a dangerous 
double life as a journalist and agent for both the Bolsheviks and the Foreign Office. 
War, revolution, espionage and romance feature in this biographical portrait of one 
of our best-loved children's authors.



A Charles Paris Mystery Murder in the Title 1.4 by Simon Brett (wBill Nighy)
A Charles Paris Mystery Murder in the Title 2.4
A Charles Paris Mystery Murder in the Title 3.4
A Charles Paris Mystery Murder in the Title 4.4
******A series of nasty accidents befall
the cast of the play Charles is appearing in.
Is it bad luck or is someone out to sabotage the production?
As ever, Charles is his own worst enemy, a louche lush who can resist anything except temptation 
especially in the form of women and alcohol. His intentions may be good but somehow the results 
always go wrong
He's been out of work so long now he feels he may never get a job and he's driving Frances his 
semi-ex-wife mad.
So when he's offered a small role in an awful play up in Rugland she nearly pushes him out the door.
But as always with Charles murder is never far behind.


The Power of Dawn by Emlyn Williams
******An old lady recalls how Russian writer Leo Tolstoy talked to her 
about his life on the night he died. 
Stars Michael Redgrave.



The Pillow Book s03e01 by Robert Forrest
The Pillow Book s03e02
The Pillow Book s03e03
The Pillow Book s03e04
The Pillow Book s03e05
*******Robert Forrest's thriller set in the Palace of the Sun Goddess in 10th-century Japan




Coming Down by Dave Sheasby
******As mountaineers mourn a friend, a journalist speaks to his widow, 
and someone who was on the fatal climb. 



Amadeus by Peter Shaffer (2+ hours)
******At the opening of the tale, Salieri is an old man, having long outlived his fame, 
and is convinced he used poison to assassinate Mozart. Speaking directly to the 
audience, he promises to explain himself. The action then flashes back to the 
eighteenth century, at a time when Salieri has not met Mozart in person, but has 
heard of him and his music. He adores Mozart's compositions, and is thrilled 
at the chance to meet Mozart in person, during a salon  at which some of Mozart's 
compositions will be played. When he finally does catch sight of Mozart, however, 
he is deeply disappointed to find that Mozart's personality does not match the 
grace or charm of his compositions. When Salieri first meets him, Mozart is crawling 
around on his hands and knees, engaging in smutty talk with his future
                     bride Constanze Weber.
Starring Paul Scofield as Salieri, Simon Callow as Mozart, and Felicity Kendal as Constanze.




A Dance to the Music of Time 01.26 by Anthony Powell - Spring - A Question of Upbring  
A Dance to the Music of Time 02.26 - Spring - A Question of Upbring  
A Dance to the Music of Time 03.26 - Spring - A Buyers Market 1.2 
A Dance to the Music of Time 04.26 - Spring - A Buyers Market 2.2 
A Dance to the Music of Time 05.26 - Spring - The Acceptance World
A Dance to the Music of Time 06.26 - Spring - The Acceptance World
A Dance to the Music of Time 07.26 - Summer - At Lady Molly`s Party  
A Dance to the Music of Time 08.26 - Summer - At Lady Molly`s Party  
A Dance to the Music of Time 09.26 - Summer - Casanovas Chinese Res  
A Dance to the Music of Time 10.26 - Summer - Casanovas Chinese Res  
A Dance to the Music of Time 11.26 - Summer - The Kindly Ones 1.2 
A Dance to the Music of Time 12.26 - Summer - The Kindly Ones 2.2 
A Dance to the Music of Time 13.26 - Autumn - The Valley of Bones 1  
A Dance to the Music of Time 14.26 - Autumn - The Valley of Bones 2  
A Dance to the Music of Time 15.26 - Autumn - The Soldier`s Art 1.2  
A Dance to the Music of Time 16.26 - Autumn - The Soldier`s Art 2.2  
A Dance to the Music of Time 17.26 - Autumn - The Military Philosop  
A Dance to the Music of Time 18.26 - Autumn - The Military Philosop  
A Dance to the Music of Time 19.26 - Winter - Books Do Furnish A Ro  
A Dance to the Music of Time 20.26 - Winter - Books Do Furnish A Ro  
A Dance to the Music of Time 21.26 - Winter - Books Do Furnish A Ro  
A Dance to the Music of Time 22.26 - Winter - Temporary Kings 1.3 
A Dance to the Music of Time 23.26 - Winter - Temporary Kings 2.3 
A Dance to the Music of Time 24.26 - Winter - Temporary Kings 3.3 
A Dance to the Music of Time 25.26 - Winter - Hearing Secret Harmon  
A Dance to the Music of Time 26.26 - Winter - Hearing Secret Harmon  
******A Dance to the Music of Time - his brilliant 12-novel sequence, which chronicles the lives 
of over three hundred characters, is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

The novels follow Nicholas Jenkins, Kenneth Widmerpool and others, as they negotiate the 
intellectual, cultural and social hurdles that stand between them and the "Acceptance World."



The Caretaker by Harold Pinter (2010)
******David Warner and Daniel Mays star in Harold Pinter's dark comedy. 
The late author was considered before his death to be one of a handful 
of living British dramatists. And this play is considered by many critics 
to be his finest.The style and comedy employed are reminiscent of post-war 
European drama, especially the plays of Samuel Beckett. 
That said, this is a powerful and original play.

Aston (Tony Bell) rescues Davies (David Warner) an elderly, homeless man from a fight 
in a café and brings him home to recover.

The tramp tells of the hiding he would have had from one of the café staff if Aston hadn't 
intervened. Aston also had trouble in the same café some time ago. The men bond.

The old man's past is murky. He lives under an assumed name and seems unsure of his real 
identity. He talks of going to Sidcup to get his papers, to confirm the matter.

Aston offers Davies the job of caretaker of the dingy West London house, owned by Aston's 
brother Mick.

Davies is reluctant to accept the job, and the responsibility involved. Even when Mick arrives 
and repeats the offer. Perhaps Davies realises it is not just the building he might have to care-take. 
This is confirmed at the plays darkly comedic climax, puts the situation the characters into perspective.



Paradise Place 1.5 by Amanda Whittington
Paradise Place 2.5
Paradise Place 3.5
Paradise Place 4.5
Paradise Place 5.5
******In the fourth of Amanda Whittington's linked plays set in a shared house in Bristol, 
inspired by Woman's Hour listeners' stories and experiences of desire, Ella has put teenager 
Jaz to work in the garden with handyman Adrian in an attempt to help her through a difficult 
time. Adrian's troubled past has left him longing to prove himself, and when he and Jaz develop 
an unlikely friendship, he starts making plans for Jaz's education which cause a clash with the rest 
of the household. Meanwhile, Ella tries to stop thinking about Jules, who is in Manchester and not returning her calls.



The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut
******When Laurence Waters arrives at his rural hospital posting, Frank is instantly 
suspicious. Laurence is everything Frank is not - young, optimistic and full of new 
schemes. The two become uneasy friends, while the rest of the staff in the deserted 
hospital view Laurence with a mixture of awe and mistrust. The town beyond the 
hospital is also coping with new arrivals, and the return of old faces. The brigadier - 
a self-fashioned dictator from apartheid days - is rumoured still to be alive. And down 
at Mama's place, a group of soldiers have moved in with their malign commandant, 
a man Frank has met before and is keen to avoid. Laurence wants to help - but in a 
world where the past is demanding restitution from the present, his ill-starred idealism 
cannot last. In gleaming prose Damon Galgut has created a literary thriller out of an unlikely 
friendship. The Good Doctor is a gripping novelistic high-wire act. 




Migrant Mother by Michael Symmons Roberts
*******A lyrical drama inspired by the events which led to Dorothea Lange's iconic photograph 
of Florence Owens Thompson.

California 1936. Florence Owens Thompson and her family have joined the thousands of 
migrant workers flocking across America in search of work. Homeless, desperately hungry 
and faced with the threat of mob violence, her hopeful resolution is quickly fading.

Photographer Dorothea is following the migrants to their make-shift refugee camps, 
desperate to find the image which will capture the extent of their hardship, to bring about 
a change in American policy and hearts. A chance meeting with Florence could bring about
 the image she is looking for.




Clean Break by Val McDermid
******Manchester-based, kick-boxing PI Kate Brannigan takes on the hard men of European 
organised crime as she battles to recover a Monet in a case that stretches love and loyalty 
to the limits. Manchester-based private eye Kate Brannigan is not amused when thieves have 
the audacity to steal a Monet from a stately home where she's arranged security. She's even 
less thrilled when the hunt for the thieves drags her on a treacherous foray across Europe 
as she goes head to head with organized crime. And as if that isn't enough, a routine industrial 
case starts leaving a trail of bodies across the Northwest, giving Kate more problems than she 
can deal with. Cleaning up the mess in Clean Break forces Kate to confront harsh truths in her 
own life as she battles with a testing array of villains in a case that stretches love and loyalty 
to the limits. 


Boxer and Doberman 1.4 Headless in Glasgow
Boxer and Doberman 2.4 The Killings in Kirkibrae
Boxer and Doberman 3.4 The Big Cheese
Boxer and Doberman 4.4 The Seat of Evil
******A gloriously gritty Scottish police series featuring the duo of the grizzled Detective Inspector 
Bob Boxer and his slightly less grizzled sidekick Detective Constable Shona Doberman. Join them 
in these four episodes as they probe an academic killing spree, investigate a link between the deaths 
in Glasgow and murders in an idyllic village, have their deepest childhood fears exploited by a sadistic 
adversary and scrutinise a series of celebrity deaths. Taggart eat your heart out.

Starring Finlay Welsh as DI Bob Boxer and Anita Vettesse as DC Shona Doberman. 
Also with James Bryce, Ralph Riach and Ann Scott-Jones.




A Warden for All Saints - 
******When the warden of All Saints College dies unexpectedly, the race is on to appoint his successor.
But some candidates are prepared to go to any lengths to win the coveted post….

A story of supernatural powers amongst the groves of academe, starring Benjamin Whitrow.


Wives and Daughters 01.10  by Andrew Davies
Wives and Daughters 02.10
Wives and Daughters 03.10
Wives and Daughters 04.10
Wives and Daughters 05.10
Wives and Daughters 06.10
Wives and Daughters 07.10
Wives and Daughters 08.10
Wives and Daughters 09.10
Wives and Daughters 10.10
******It's an exciting day for young Molly Gibson as she prepares for her first visit to the 
Hollingford gala. But her experience there gives her widowed father Dr Gibson a new idea. 
Elizabeth' Gaskell's classic novel of everyday provincial life in the 1820s is dramatised by 
Theresa Heskins.
Wives and Daughters was written in the 1860s and serialised in the Cornhill Magazine. 
It is set in the 1820s and deals to a large extent with the position of women in Society. 
Elizabeth Gaskell left it unfinished, so any dramatiser of the novel is faced with guessing 
the intended outcome of the story.
This novel tells the story of Molly Gibson as she moves from childhood to womanhood in a complex 
series of interwoven plots. The sphere of action is small, but the implications are wide and carry 
truths of universal significance. 




The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky (2010)
******A comic drama based on Dostoevsky's experiences as a young man, is a portrayal 
of the power of love and money. Glyn Maxwell's new version takes us deep into the mind 
of Alexei Ivanovich, a young tutor, just as he realises he's falling in love with the strikingly 
beautiful but unobtainable Polina.



Perpetual Light by Melissa Murray
******When William Hellier dies, his wife creates an avatar of him and has it uploaded onto a 
cyberspace memorial site. But is he software? Or is his soul trapped in the machine?

It is the very near future.
A new way to remember the dead has been developed. The Maken Corporation can construct 
an interactive avatar - a perfectly realistic representation of the deceased - in cyberspace, 
using all the data available on an individual. At first, this appears to be a huge comfort for 
the bereaved. They can see and speak to their dead. The pain of mourning is eased. But it's 
a controversial issue. One that divides society and divides families.
When William Hellier dies suddenly his wife Barbara and daughter Rachel, not for the first 
time in their lives, come into conflict. Barbara goes to Maken and has an avatar of her dead 
husband created. But as she begins to spend more time with William - and more money at 
Maken - Rachel begins to believe that the corporation is preying on the grief of the vulnerable. 
Her cousin Jas, also has reasons to distrust Maken. He believes they have imprisoned 
William Hellier's soul. Can Jas persuade Rachel to destroy her father's avatar? And if he can, 
will Rachel go through with it once she comes face to face with the man she loved?




Boxer and Doberman - Murder is Child's Play
******Rival Glasgow gangsters compete for a coveted children's book award. 
Can the police duo halt gang warfare?
Boxer and Doberman - The Black Widow
******When Bob Boxer falls for a seductive TV presenter, his detective partner 
Shona Doberman grows suspicious.



A Charles Paris Mystery Murder in the Title 1.4 by Simon Brett (wBill Nighy)
A Charles Paris Mystery Murder in the Title 2.4
A Charles Paris Mystery Murder in the Title 3.4
A Charles Paris Mystery Murder in the Title 4.4
******Simon Brett again takes us behind the scenes in a back-stage drama of crime 
and detection in Murder In The Title. This time it's the world of provincial rep, with 
an historic theatre threatened with closure by unscrupulous property developers. 
And the theatre management seems to be digging its own grave: a deplorable choice 
of current productions; a painfully incompetent director; bizarre accidents happening 
on stage.

Charles is an amateur detective and a professional actor. As an actor his career is on 
the way down, with not much further to go. But as a detective he goes from strength 
to strength. He soon establishes that someone is deliberately sabotaging the company. 
All this culminates in a spectacular suicide. Or is it murder, as Charles Paris suspects?




Death of an Old Girl by Elizabeth Lemarchand 
******In this inaugural Pollard and Toye story, the detective pair are called in to investigate 
when an "old girl" (alumna) of the Meldon School for Girls is found murdered in a puppet 
theater at the end of the annual Old Girls' Reunion weekend. The old girl in question, 
Beatrice Baynes, had criticized the new administration, the new teaching staff and the 
new curriculum, but that hardly appears motive for murder. But soon the suspects begin 
piling up, headed by the victim's lazy nephew George and timid god-daughter Madge who 
both stand to inherit a tidy sum of money, as well as the school's cast of characters, 
including the headmistress, art teacher and groundskeeper. As Pollard meticulously 
pieces together every second of the victim's last moments alive, he begins to learn he's 
going to have to identify the killer first in order to uncover the motive, with a little help 
from Pollard's perceptive wife, Jane.




God's President Mugabe of Zimbabwe by Kwame Kwei-Armah
******Kwame Kwei-Armah's play tells the story of the tense negotiations around the 
Lancaster House Conference, and the road to Zimbabwe's Independence.

On 4th March 1980 the Shona majority in Rhodesia was decisive in electing Robert 
Mugabe to head the first post-independence government as Prime Minister. 
Six weeks later, on April 18th, Zimbabwe celebrated its first Independence Day.

On the 21st December 1979, following three months of talks, the Lancaster House 
Agreement finally brought independence to Rhodesia following Ian Smith's 
Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965.

Margaret Thatcher's government had invited Bishop Muzorewa and Ian Smith, 
and the leaders of the Patriotic Front, led by Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe 
to participate in a Constitutional Conference at Lancaster House in London, to be 
chaired by the foreign secretary, Lord Carrington.

The purpose of the Conference was to discuss and reach agreement on the terms of 
an Independence Constitution, and to ensure that elections should be supervised under 
British authority to enable Rhodesia to proceed to legal independence and the parties to 
settle their differences by political means.




On the Ceiling by  Nigel Planer
******High up on the wooden scaffolding tower of the Sistine Chapel, two fresco plasterers 
get on with the day's work preparing the ceiling for their boss Michelangelo who has not 
bothered to turn up for work again. As they do so, they bemoan the uselessness of the great master.

Pope Julius and Cardinal Alidosi visit the chapel to inspect the progress of their commission. 
They are never very impressed, and the Pope is more concerned about getting Michelangelo to 
do his funeral monument at a knock-down price.

On the Ceiling is not about great artists; it is about those people whose names don't go down in history: 
the ones who do the essential drudge work, their frustration at their lack of genius and their pride in their 
own technical expertise. In this version of events, low elements combine to make high art.



Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
******* Awards
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction (nominee)
Orange Prize for Fiction (nominee)
In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, 
an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the 
grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in 
chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He "preached men into the Civil War,
" then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle. 
Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father--an ardent pacifist--
and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be 
relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas 
into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, 
which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, 
his best friend's wayward son.

This is also the tale of another remarkable vision--not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life 
as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, 
and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten.

Gilead is the long-hoped-for second novel by one of our finest writers, a hymn of praise and lamentation 
to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part.




Down Payment on Death 01.10 by Jim Eldridge  A Shot in the Night 
Down Payment on Death 02.10 by Jim Eldridge  A Shot in the Night 
Down Payment on Death 03.10* The Double Target 
Down Payment on Death 04.10* The Double Target 
Down Payment on Death 05.10* A Life for a Life 
Down Payment on Death 06.10* A Life for a Life 
Down Payment on Death 07.10* The Professionals 
Down Payment on Death 08.10* The Professionals 
Down Payment on Death 09.10* The Moment of Truth
Down Payment on Death 10.10* The Moment of Truth
******Jim Eldridge's thriller stars Dinsdale Landen as retired hitman Art Gordo who is tempted back to work.



Love Divine 1.3 by Martyn Wade
Love Divine 2.3
Love Divine 3.3
 ******three-part radio play about the life of the founding father of Methodism, John Wesley. 
John Wesley was a fearless and charismatic man who led a truly extraordinary life. He was 
regularly beaten, thrown in gaol, insulted, abused and plotted against.

He thought nothing of riding his horse through freezing cold and driving rain for days on end 
to preach in the open air to crowds of twenty thousand and more.

Yet in spite of his toughness, he had a deep mystical streak that distinguishes him from many 
of the loud but shallow "muscular Christians" who fulminated from the pulpits of his day.



Uncle Gwyn's Posthumous Curse 1.5 by Lynne Truss
******The characters in Lynne Truss's new comedy drama live under the shadow of The Rock, 
an impressively large geological feature at a remote Golf Club in Wales, where it has been 
raining for twenty years. There's the severely repressed Angharad, 'Mad' Auntie Susan, 
who is clearly a man, Riddle, the disgusting old greenkeeper, and poor long suffering 
Charles who has devoted his life to saving each and every one of the club's members 
from an untimely death, only to fail. At this Club it's easy to make a fatal mistake, all you 
have to do is break one of the rules. Inadvertently enter the wrong score on your partner's 
scorecard, or let your wife order her own drink at the bar and you'll probably be spikes up 
by tea-time. And when Jaci Hughes the young cartographer from distant Cardiff turns up, 
all manner of skeletons come rattling out of the closet.