BBC Radio Drama- a powerful force for story telling, audio literature and sound performance

Dickens in London sound and digital film, animation and photography

The BBC’s weekly output in radio drama is a magnificent creative and cultural achievement unrivalled by any other country in the world. Its significance and contribution to the arts are priceless. The challenge any week is to listen to all of the riches and gifts being broadcast online and  on Radios 4, 3 and 4 Extra.

In the field of scale and innovation BBC Radio has offered four important  production, broadcasting and online podcasting projects in recent months that have engaged with multi-media and deserve discussion.

A Lost Generation of Young Italians and Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day via Harold Pinter’s screenplay

Cover of the novel 'The Young Italians' by Amanda Prantera

Why do Italy’s hard working idealistic and well educated young people have to flee abroad to pursue their hopes and dreams, and the chance to catch an audio screenplay dramatisation of Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day.

A half hour R4 documentary convincingly argued that ‘Italy is losing its young, talented professionals, driven out by a stagnant domestic economy and an entrenched employment market riddled with patronage and nepotism. As the Prime Minister advocates marrying someone wealthy as a means to get ahead, more and more young Italians are choosing to find work, recognition and respect abroad.’

Voices from the Old Bailey, The Other Simenon and Positive by Tina Pepler, Afternoon Play- Radio and Audio Review 3rd August 2011

Drama, social history and politics from Old Bailey court transcripts

Riots and sexual subcultures in Voices From The Old Bailey, Maître lawyer falling in love with his client in The Other Simenon, and who would want to be a doctor dealing with the ethics of under-age teenagers getting pregnant and being tested positive for HIV and that’s not all Tina Pepler managed to electrify into an Afternoon Play.

The Purple Land, Mervyn Peake and Gormenghast, and The Day We Caught The Train. Audio and Radio Review 20th July 2011

Uruguay- the Purple Land

Hunting, riding, herding, loving and killing through the Purple blaze, crumbling stone and ancient ritual, horses with lion tales, people called Sepulchrave, Prunesquallor and Steerpike and the shocking confrontation of your mother’s secret past.

A snapshot of BBC audio drama output at any time offers depth in dramatic literary output, entertainment and sophisticated production aesthetics.

The Hireling- Classic Serial, An Interior Life, A Living Death- File On Four, Cause Célèbre, Afternoon Plays- A Terrible Beauty, The People Next Door, and Crimes of Mancunia: Radio and Audio Review 27th June 2011

New Radio Four dramatisation of L.P. Hartley's "The Hireling"

BBC Radio Four’s Classic serial has been fizzing with a magnificent two part dramatisation of L.P.Hartley’s The Hireling  (Sunday 19th June, Saturday 25th June, Sunday 26th June and Saturday 4th July). Hartley seemed to specialise in catastrophic and intriguing class crossing relationships in the manner of D.H.Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”

In “The Go-Between” passion vis-a-vis an already betrothed aristocrat’s daughter and the gamekeeper leads to broken hearts and suicide as well as rights of passage intensity for a young teenage boy deployed to run between the Manor and Lodge as an unwitting cupid.

Serious Money and the Art of Austerity, The Browning Version and Rattigan’s Versions, The Apple Tree and But If You Try Sometimes from the Afternoon Play, Richard the Second, Plantagenet, and the Day of the Jackal, Shalom Berlin and a Blind Date with Bloomsday. Radio and Audio Review 19th June 2011

BBC Radio Three's "Money Talks" season started with Caryl Churchill's "Serious Money"

BBC Radio Three has been providing poignant and sharply relevant drama and documentary programmes on the collapse of the domestic and global economy. This is public service broadcasting at its most anxious and perplexing.

As savings and assets evaporate in banking and property collapses, unemployment and inflation soars, and economic confidence implodes most people are helpless and powerless.

Plantagenets, Rattigan’s Flare Path and Letter to My Body: Radio and audio review 10th June 2011

Edward the First, known as "Longshanks" because of his tall stature.

The Second Series of Mike Walker’s Plantagenets in the Sunday Classic Serial (BBC Radio Four) starts with the sound of England pissing on Scotland followed by William Wallace replacing it with the sound of dripping blood.

Lenny Henry’s radio play, Bullitt audio-noir and an ASBO for Rumpole: Radio and Audio Review 6th June 2011

Culture in Jamaica. Image: Jamaica Tourism

The dramaturg Lenny Henry has had a terrific scriptwriting debut with the production and broadcast of his first radio play, Corrinne Come Back and Gone, the afternoon play (Monday 30th May 2011) and the Radio Play Download of the week (Friday 3rd June 2011).

Fact and Fiction in BBC Radio Drama- Radio and Audio Review 30th May 2011

The newly refurbished Broadcasting House in Portland Place, London in 2006. Photo: Tim Crook

In the riches offered up in BBC audio drama over the last week there are powerful and poignant dramatisations of factual history and reality.

They include Mike Walker’s Sunk, David Baddiel’s Superinjunctions and Julia Hollander’s The Kingsnorth Six.

RSC at Fifty: Radio and Audio Review 23rd April 2011

Early Radio Drama Performance

The Royal Shakespeare Company has gutted its main theatre at Stratford Upon Avon and replaced the Odeon style cinema interior opened by the Prince of Wales in 1932 with a new ‘thrust stage.’

Opera glasses will no longer be needed. Apparently it is the same scale as Shakespeare’s original Rose theatre.