Showing results by publisher "BBC Audio" in Genre Fiction

Hidden in the midst of a remote Surrey village (at the top of the hill, opposite Budgens) is top-secret scientific research institute Clayton Grange. There, a team of bumbling boffins, led by the keen but hopeless Professor Linden Saunders, try to fulfil their government brief to solve the global fuel crisis, cheer people up and make war just a bit more gentle. Sadly, they're as rubbish at science as they are at life—but they're not going to let mere incompetence stop them from pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.

An all-star cast attend a mysterious private club in this hilarious parody of classic horror tales. Membership of the exclusive Mausoleum Club isn't for the faint of heart. The Honorable Clarence Green wants in, but to join he must first hear the spine-chilling stories of the existing members, before enthralling them with one of his own. But are their stories fact or fiction? And will Green still want to join after hearing the horrors they have to tell?

For years they thought it was just them. Irritated and tormented by everything around them from call centres to nose studs, from speed bumps to ring tones. Then along came the BBC2 series Grumpy Old Men, and the subsequent best-selling book, and they knew they were not alone.

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.

Nicholas Briggs reads the brand-new novelisation of the spectacular 50th anniversary TV episode. When the entire universe is at stake, three different Doctors will unite to save it. The Tenth Doctor is hunting shape-shifting Zygons in Elizabethan England. The Eleventh is investigating a rift in space-time in the present day. And one other - the man they used to be but never speak of - is fighting the Daleks in the darkest days of the Time War.

Lady Tresselian invites several guests to stay at her seaside house at Gull’s Point. Against her better judgment she has allowed her late husband’s ward, handsome tennis ace Neville Strange, and his wife Kay to come at the same time as Neville’s ex-wife Audrey. Other guests include Mary, Lady Tresselian’s companion; Ted, Kay’s ever-present friend; Thomas, a family friend who has just returned from spending the war in Africa and Lady Tresselian’s old friend Lord Justice Treves.

Caroline, Fiona and Ruth are lifelong friends, who've grown up together, laughed and cried together, and stood by each other through thick and thin. They may not always see eye to eye, and they might drive each other crazy, but they can't do without each other. But life's got a lot more complicated since they were 22, when the only things they carried around were handbags. Now, in midlife, they've got more baggage than the average airport carousel.

The complete BBC radio adaptations of Alexander McCall's bestselling series. Inspired by Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, 44 Scotland Street started life as a serial in The Scotsman. It was a huge hit, and was soon novelised, adapted on stage and dramatised for BBC Radio 4. Collected here are all five radio series, in which we follow the interconnected lives of the residents of adjoining flats in a tenement in Edinburgh's Georgian New Town.

First broadcast in 1990, this monumental adaptation of John Galsworthy's Nobel Prize-winning novel series was a radio event. It was the most expensive drama serial ever produced, featured one of the biggest, most star-studded casts and dominated the Radio 4 schedules for more than five months, attracting more than a million listeners each week. Comprising all nine books in Galsworthy's Forsyte Chronicles, it spans 50 years - from 1886 to 1936 - and tells the irresistible story of an upper-class dynasty torn apart by a terrible feud.

With Roger approaching a big birthday, the couple reflect on growing older and all that it entails, from the increasing need to keep active to the ultimate question—to downsize, or not to downsize? However, their progress is hindered by still feeling the same as ever...even if their friends have replaced technicolour for tweed and have never heard of Stormzy! Along the way, there's also jealousy, talk of affairs, Roger's sleep-talking and the discovery of his 'baby whisperer' abilities—but underlying it all is this couple's long-lasting love for each other.

Sisters Anna, Victoria and Charlotte are back for four more series, in which relationships are forged, hearts are broken and family ties are strained - but not severed. Older sister Anna continues to live her life on her own terms, despite her sisters' insistence on being there for her. But when she suffers a couple of knocks to her confidence and needs a shoulder to cry on, they are too self-absorbed to be any use. Fortunately, niece Emily provides moral support and Anna reciprocates with some down-to-earth advice about Emily's love life.

In these globally unprecedented times, Ed is also experiencing new and unusual circumstances. For the first time in 20 years, he's financially independent thanks to the timely arrival of his state pension, and living in a stylish, newly affordable 'capsule urban living unit' (a former office space converted into a flat). He has the luxury of three (organic) meals a day, all the premier catfood Edgar can eat, and even a new car - as well as free time to devote himself to his own long-cherished projects.

The gruesome death of Mrs McGinty provokes Superintendent Spence to seek the help of his old ally Hercule Poirot. The victim’s young lodger has been found guilty and is due to hang. But Spence is not convinced by the circumstantial evidence which influenced the verdict. So, at considerable personal discomfort, Poirot goes down to the sleepy village where the old lady lived and where, by chance, his good friend Ariadne Oliver is also staying.

Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s deceptively mild spinster sleuth, is being treated to a few days’ holiday by her niece, staying at Bertram’s Hotel, a dignified, unostentatious establishment tucked away in a back street of busy Mayfair. Here is a place where sedate upper class ladies, retired military gentlemen and the higher echelons of the clergy can indulge in the comforts of a bygone age. But Miss Marple begins to feel uneasy. Something sinister lurks beneath the polished veneer.

With World War II at an end, Charles Hayward is finally free to marry the woman he loves, Sophia Leonides. However, she refuses - the unexplained death of her grandfather, wealthy businessman Aristide Leonides, draws her back to the suffocating environment of her family home. Charles follows, but his arrival coincides with the discovery that Aristide’s death was murder. The ensuing investigation drags Charles into the dark heart of the family, and its deadly secrets and dangers.

A Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation starring June Whitfield as the deceptively mild Miss Marple with Ian Lavender, Joan Sims and Susannah Harker. Elspeth McGillicuddy is down from Scotland for a holiday and boards the 4:50 train from Paddington station to visit her friend, Miss Marple. During the journey, another train pulls alongside, and through the window Mrs McGillicuddy witnesses a tall, dark man strangling a blonde woman. She reports what she has seen, yet no one takes any notice.

Author, pipe-smoker, fare-dodger and master of the complaining letter and abusive email, Ed Reardon returns for another four series. Despite many thwarted attempts at literary succes, he's still living a precarious existence with his trusty companion Elgar, reliant on any small morsels of work Ping can offer him to keep body, mind and cat together. He also continues to have regular run-ins with his nemesis, Jaz Milvane—who somehow manages to make money out of mad schemes, while Ed makes nothing—and his love life remains more than a little erratic.

Barbara Pym is one of the 20th-century's wittiest, and most underrated, novelists. Her perceptive comedies of manners, centred around the domestic lives and loves of unassuming middle-class Englishwomen, won her many devoted readers and saw her hailed as a modern-day Jane Austen. Yet she spent 15 years out of print in the 1960s and '70s, until Philip Larkin championed her work in the Times Literary Supplement. Her seventh novel was subsequently shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and writers from Jilly Cooper to Alexander McCall Smith continue to laud her talent today.

Meet Alice (Rebecca Front) - a former child prodigy who won a place at Oxford aged nine, but because Daddy went too she never needed to have any friends. She's scared of everything - everything that is, except libraries and Snoo (Morwenna Banks), a slightly confused individual, with a have-a-go attitude to life, marriage, haircuts and reality. Snoo loves books and fully intends to read one someday. And forever popping into the library is Dr Cadogan (Michael Fenton Stevens), celebrity doctor to the stars and a man with his finger in every pie.

The complete 21st series of the award-winning BBC Radio 4 impressions show - plus three Christmas specials. The award-winning topical satire show returns with an online audience to serve up more mimicry, mockery and mordant wit. Series 21 brings us exclusive footage from Boris and Carrie's secret wedding, the truth behind the historic summit between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin and the real secret of Andy Murray's success.