The Judge's House (audio drama)

Nigel Havers stars in this quick and effective BBC Radio adaptation of what is perhaps Bram Stoker's second most famous story.  Originally publised on December 5th 1891 in Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News it's the story of a student who takes on an old house, previously the home of a sadistic judge, to study for an exam.  Unfortunately the "absurd prejudices" the locals hold regarding the house soon prove themselves true.

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The State of the Art (audio drama)

Adapted by Paul Cornell from the Iain M Banks novella of the same name (reprinted in the collection of the same name) this BBC Radio 4 radio play finds agents of 'The Culture' - an interstellar post-scarcity civilisation comprising of a variety of sentient lifeforms, although primarily humanoid and machine - visiting present day Earth in order to assess it's suitability for membership.

To my knowledge this is the only adaptation of any Culture stories and fortunately it's a very good one with a rock solid cast featuring Antony Sher, Nina Sosanya, Paterson Joseph, Graeme Hawley, Brigit Forsyth and Conrad Nelson and with it's contemporary setting stripping it of most of it's space opera trappings it makes for a perfect introduction to Banks' defining creation.

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Secret Worship (audio drama)

On the advice of his friend, Dr. John Silence (Malcolm Hayes), Stephen Hubbard (Fraser Kerr) heads off to Germany on a convalescent holiday to the monastery where he studied as a child only to discover things are very different from how he remembers.

One of the more pulpy of the Silence stories this breathless adaptation of Algernon Blackwood's 'Secret Worship', one of his John Silence stories, was one of several made for BBC Radio in 1975 by Sheila Hodgson.

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The Day of the Triffids (audio drama)

Originally aired on BBC Radio 4 in 1968 and essentially reusing the Giles Cooper script from the corporations 1957 adaptation this version of John Wyndham's post-apocalyptic classic features Hammer legend Barbara Shelley (Quatermass and the Pit) as Josella Playton, Gary Watson as Bill Massen and British TV icon Peter Sallis as Coker.

For those familiar with the novel there'll be no surprises but it's an enjoyably well mannered adaptation that's very much of the time it was written, respectful of the source material and well played with the added bonus of music from David Cain of The BBC Radiophonic Workshop.  

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The Department of Midnight (audio drama)

"Dark matter makes up 85% of the universe. Recent scientific theory suggests dark matter is information—a fifth form of matter—and that we can wake it up. But waking it up can let dark things out.

James Callis is Dr. John Carnack. Five years ago, his dark matter experiments led to tragedy. His redemption is working for the Department of Midnight, investigating dangerous dark matter experiments, trying to prevent further disasters. But there’s a pattern.

And it all leads back to him."

'Department of Midnight' is a new series of one act, two hander audio dramas from writer Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Crooked Little Vein, Castlevania) and newly formed production company The Bellport Theater on the Air.  

I adore audio plays and so one written by one of my favourite authors revolving around the types of themes and settings we champion here on Wyrd Britain is a very good thing indeed.  Warren has never been shy of celebrating his influences and the shadows of 'Doomwatch', 'Quatermass' - Nigel Kneale himself the author of numerous wonderful radio plays - and William Hope Hodgson's occult detective Thomas Carnacki loom large here and those with a familiarity with Warren's work will feel the immediate kinship here with the 'Injection' comic series he does - note the present tense, I'm ever the optimist - with Declan Shalvey and Jordie Bellaire that plays with classic British heroic archetypes and folkloric themes.

The cast are perfectly suited, James Callis (Battlestar Galactica) has that perfectly detached post traumatic British persona that mixes duty and weariness with a barely suppressed mania and Alicia Witt (Dune) - obviously I'm only talking about episode one here - is deliciously bonkers entirely inhabiting the role of being entirely inhabitated.

It's a really strong and intriguing introduction to this world, and I'm very excited to see where they take this. 

Episode One: The Cold Spot
Dr. John Carnack is an investigator for the Department Of Experimental Oversight.  Responding to a whistleblower call, he arrives at a lab to discover Dr. Sylvie Bestler’s personal experiment: to see what’s on the other side of the universe. Starring James Callis and Alicia Witt.

Episode Two: Jack in the Box
John Carnack’s old friend is being kept in a plastic cell.  There’s a contamination issue.   He tripped over something when he discovered his employer’s body.  But Carnack is concerned that something darker is going on…Starring James Callis and Gildart Jackson.

Episode Three: Song to the Siren
On the death of Carnack’s mentor, her daughter asks him to examine the death scene.  They find out too late that she died of very unnatural causes. Starring James Callis and Adrianne Palicki.

Episode Four: The Red House
The university bought a derelict house out in the middle of nowhere for this experiment.  When Carnack arrives to shut them down, everyone thinks he’s crazy, but he knows what the Red House really is. Starring James Callis and Nolan North.

Episode Five: The Devil Runs Out
A routine examination of a dark matter lab turns into a race against time, as Carnack is forced to pursue a face from his past intent on human sacrifice. Starring James Callis and Brett Dalton.

Episode Six: Judgement
In the season one finale, John Carnack faces the board of the Department of Experimental Oversight, interrogated by a prosecutor.  Now he must be held accountable for his actions.  And for the sins of his own past. Starring James Callis and Carla Gugino.

All six episodes are included in the playlist below.

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The Time Machine (audio drama)

Starring Robert Glenister ('Hustle') as the Time Traveller with William Gaunt ('The Champions') as H. G. Wells this adaptation of Wellls' post-apocalypse novella was first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in February 2009.

The play makes some slight framing differences to the orignal, having an elderly Wells tell the story as true, as well as including the story's excised ending but it's generally a faithful and well construced adaptation that offers a welcome return to a classic.

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Lud-in-the-Mist (audio drama)

The prosperous town of Lud-in-the-Mist is situated at the confluence of the rivers Dapple and Dawl on the edge of Faerie.  The staid little town, proud of it's rational, traditional and mercantile nature and fearful of the influence of it's neighbour, is beset by an influx of 'Faerie Fruit' and it's up the the mayor, Nathaniel Chanticleer, to investigate, an investiation that is to profoundly change the town.

This BBC Radio version of Hope Mirrlees' fabulous novel was adapted by Joy Wilkinson (who, for television, has provided scripts for 'Doctor Who', 'The Watch' & 'Lockwood & Co') and is narrated by Olivia Poulet with an appearence by Mirrlees superfan Neil Gaiman whose own 'Stardust' owes an obvious debt to Mirrlees' creation.  It's a bold attempt at adapting the novel but not an entirely successful one.  It's too short and much has been omitted that both colours the world and drives the plot so it's missing some of the magic of the novel but it's an interesting attempt.  I love the original novel so this would have needed to have been perfect to convince me but it's an enjoyable enough attempt.

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The Dark is Rising (audio drama)

Published 8 years after it's predecessor, 'The Dark is Rising', returned Susan Cooper to her Arthurian world but relocated the action from Cornwall to the Thames Valley.  

The story of Will Stanton, last of 'The Old Ones', is another episodic quest as the newly minted magician comes into his power by locating lost artifacts.  What elevates this beyond that first book however is Cooper's commitment to developing a coherent, mythic storyworld that is interwoven with icons of folkloric Britain, something she would continue to elaborate on across the rest of the series.  

This excellent adaptation was made for Radio 4 in 1997 and unfortunately was the last one they made which was a real shame as it's from the next book, 'Greenwitch', that entwines the characters from the first two books that the series truly shines but don't let that stop you listening as this is fabulous.  

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Over Sea and Under Stone (audio drama)

Susan Cooper published 'Over Sea and Under Stone', the first in what would become known as 'The Dark is Rising Sequence' through Jonathan Cape in 1965.  It's the story of the Drew children, Simon, Jane and Barney, visiting with their great uncle Merriman Lyon in the (fictional) Conish town of Trewissick where, following their discovery of an old map, they become involved in a hunt for the Holy Grail. 

I first read Cooper's series as an adult and shorn of the wonder of a child I've long been of the opinion that this first book is definitely the weakest of the five, far too firmly entrenched in the Enid Blyton tradition of children's books whereas the others increasingly embrace a more complex Alan Garner-esque mythic storyworld and are all the better for it.  This adaptation made for Radio 4 and broadcast in 1995 is the first time I've revisited it since and I enjoyed it far more in this format.  An entirely sympathetic dramatisation with a strong cast it works well in this format with the tension kept at a peak as the three kids race around the village.

Unfortunately only the first two books of the sequence were dramatised (the second one is here) which is a real shame as the others - particularly books 3, 4 & 5 -  really are quite wonderful and I'd have loved to hear what they would have done with them.

The Birds (audio drama)

Although published in 1952 it was the Hitchcock movie adaptation eleven years later that thrust Daphne du Maurier's short story of a world held hostage by angry avians, 'The Birds', firmly into the wider public consciousness and gave every sighting of a flock a degree of menace.  

Unlike the movie du Maurier's original story revolves around the family of a disabled farm labourer, recently returned from the war, and struggling to find work in Cornwall and this adaptation by Melissa Murray for Radio 4 , featuring Neil Dudgeon ('Midsomer Murders') and Nicola Walker ('The Last Train'), keeps that premise whilst making some judicious changes to the narrative, both narrowing it's focus and widening it's scope, but retaining the essential character of the original in a bleakly claustrophobic story.

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The Kraken Wakes (audio drama)

Newly weds Michael (Jonathan Cake) and Phyllis Watson (Saira Todd) have, via his job for the English Broadcasting Company (EBC), intermittent front row seats at the beginning, middle and end of the end of human civilisation as they know it as they pursue the apocalyptic theories of the vilified scientist Dr. Alistair Bocker (Russell Dixon) with regard to the arrival and intent of the extraterrestrial visitors who have taken up residence at the bottom of the ocean.

This BBC Radio 4 adaptation of John Wyndham's alien invasion / monsters from the deep / ecological disaster classic was made in 1998 but sounds far, far older which is testament to the care of the creators but does give it quite a dated feel.  It is though a solid performance of what I personally think to be a prescient but fairly stodgy book as Wyndham weaves a slowly unfolding story of goverment misinformation and misdirection and the general public's inability to react appropriately in the face of an obvious threat.  Some narrative corners are cut, not entirely successfully, particularly in the middle when Michael 'goes on holiday', but they tell the story concisely, conclusively and enjoyably if perhaps just a touch too reverentially.

 

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The Chrysalids (radio play)

'The Chrysalids' was the third of the 'John Wyndham' novels published in the 1950s after 'The Day of the Triffids' and 'The Kraken Wakes'. It's the story of a group of telepathic children living in a post-nuclear Canada in a fundamentalist Christian society that practices an extreme doctrine of genetic purity following the 'Tribulation', a nuclear war that has left much of the world devastated and the remnants subjected to the vicissitudes of the fallout. Eventually forced to flee their home the telepathic teens are introduced to a wider world potentially every bit as extreme as the one they are running from.

This version was adapted for BBC Radio 4 in 1981 by Barbara Clegg - later to become the first woman to write a 'Doctor Who' serial, 'Enlightenment' - and stars, amongst others, Stephen Garlick ('The Dark Crystal'), Spencer Banks ('Timeslip' & 'Penda's Fen') and Michael Spice ('The Brain of Morbius' & 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang').  It's an obvious labour of love that has been assembled with a real care for the source material.  There is an argument to be had over the use of adults voicing the children's parts but that's a quibble with what is otherwise an excellent adaptation. 

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All Hallows

Written by Walter De La Mare and first published in 1926 in 'The Connoisseur and Other Stories', 'All Hallows' tells the story of a traveller's visit to a remote cathedral and his meeting with the verger who tells him of the strange goings on within building.

De La Mare's tale is a masterclass of atmosphere and suggestion.  Any and all sense of the uncanny is literally in the telling, both De La Mare's and the Verger's (and indeed in Richard E Grant's sympathetic reading), and in our and the traveller's imaginations as, potentially, nothing actually uncanny happens beyond a tour of the cathedral at dusk in the company of a companion spinning a yarn of disappearance, death and devilry.  The story ends on a positive note for the future, but we are left guessing as to the veracity of the Verger's tale of diabolic renovations but captivated by the story he's spun.

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Who Goes Here? (audio drama)

In the 24th century guilty men join the Space Legion to, quite literally, forget as the offending memory is electronically erased upon induction but when new recruit Warren Peace awakens from the procedure with his entire memory is gone he absolutely needs to find out just how much of a monster he must have been?

From the novel written by Bob Shaw, dramatised for BBC Radio 4 in September 1991 and starring Douglas Hodge as Warren Peace, it's a quick and light-footed adaptation of Shaw's equally quick novel. With it's feet firmly planted in the same territory as 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' this is a fabulously daft story that takes Warren across the galaxy and back again in his quest to find out what it was exactly that he did and who exactly he is.

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Markheim

Originally appearing alongside - amongst others - F. Marion Crawford's '‘The Upper Berth’ in 1885 in the pages of 'The Broken Shaft: Tales of Mid-Ocean' that year's Unwin's Christmas Annual, Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Markheim' is the story of a murder and of the consequences of such as the titular character comes face to face with, in his reckoning, The Devil who confronts him with his dissolute and degenerating nature and presents him with the opportunity to continue, successfully, along his current path.

The version presented below was made for and aired on BBC Radio 4 in 1971 with Tom Watson as Markheim, Malcolm Hayes as The Stranger and Martin Heller as The Dealer.  Adapted from the original by Tom Wright (who returned to the story three years later for a TV adaptation starring Derek Jacobi and Julian Glover and who would later contribute a script to the 'The Omega Factor') it's a rather fine and sensitively performed interpretation although it does omit one telling moment near the end that hints strongly at the true nature and intent of the Stranger.

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The Death of Grass (Radio Drama)

This BBC Radio 4 adaptation of John Christopher's 1956 novel 'The Death of Grass' was broadcast in 2009 in five fifteen minute episodes that tells the story of John Custance, his family and their friends as they race across country to reach his brother's remote farm hoping to find refuge from the deadly global blight that has killed all forms of grasses and plunged the world into famine and genocidal chaos.

Narrated by David Mitchell and with a cast including Darrell Brockis as John, Bruce Alexander as the terrifyingly pragmatic Pirrie and Rebecca Egan as Ann Custance, it's a remarkably faithful adaptation keeping to the same time period so the post war callousness and the 1950s sexual politics of the original have not been updated to align with modern sensibilities.  The unrelenting bleakness of Christopher's story means this is not necessarily a fun way to spend an hour but it's certainly an engaging one as this tale of selfishness and survival remains a powerful experience that still raises as many questions now as it did almost 70 years ago.

 

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Never the Bride (radio play)

To date Paul Magrs has written nine novels featuring the dynamic duo of Brenda, a Whitby B&B owner with a past as unconventional as her present, and Effie, her junk shop owning, witch neighbour, six of which have been featured and praised here on Wyrd Britain.

This three part radio play version, starring Joanna Tope as Brenda and Monica Gibb as Effie, was aired on BBC Radio in 2009 and features the stories of, 'The Night Owl', 'The Vintage Costume Hero Ball' and 'Our Frank', which will be mostly familiar to readers of the novels but, for those who aren't, what you'll get is - if you'll excuse the horribly reductive analogy - Alan Bennett does Hammer Horror.  Magrs has an often gloriously silly imagination that is steeped in the classics of British sci fi and horror and his stories are joyous, celebratory, and occasionally vicious, mash-ups of said classics interlaced with that very British, bawdy 'Carry On...' sensibility - "I know what I'm talking about when it comes to people putting the willies up ya!" - and they are fantastic fun.

 

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The Road

The Road is one of the lost television plays of Nigel Kneale. Originally filmed in 1963 for the BBC's First Night series no copies are known to exist, thanks to the corporations trigger-happy delete and reuse policies, with only the script to remind us of what was, The Road has long been a Holy Grail for Kneale fandom.  Whilst 'lost' recordings do still appear occasionally from the dim, dark recesses of production and distribution company vaults the chances of ever getting to see these missing shows are slim to say the least so it was with excited trepidation when, in 2018, news was received that a new version was in production with writer and comedian Toby Hadoke given the go-ahead by both the BBC and the Kneale estate to take a run at remodelling the script as a radio drama.  

Making only minor adjustments and assembling a small, strong cast Hadoke and director Charlotte Riches make a solid go of telling the story of a night in the woods in 1768 as amateur scientist Sir Timothy Hassall (Adrian Scarborough) and renowned philosopher Gideon Cobb (Mark Gatiss) along with Hassall's wife Lady Lavinia (Hattie Morahan - the daughter of the original lost play's director, Christopher Morahan), Cobb's educated slave Jethro (Colin McFarlane) and others investigate strange noises amongst the trees.

It's a convincing adaptation of a solid and fairly typical Kneale story that exists in that hinterland between horror and science fiction that he made his own and has similarities with his more famous works, The Stone Tape and Quatermass and the Pit.  As ever Kneale makes good use of his opportunities to comment on the vicissitudes of our times and his pessimistic outlook on the future.  The ending, whilst generally easy to anticipate, hits suitably hard and the whole thing is helped along by some uncovered, archive recordings from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop that had been used in the original play.

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Nebulous

It's 2099 where, following various environmental disasters which have reduced human knowledge, changed the Earth's orbit, split much of the UK into islands and vastly reduced the human population, we find Professor Nebulous (Mark Gatiss), destroyer of the Isle of Wight and head of KENT (Key Non-judgmental Environmental Taskforce), investigating environmental dangers as he attempts to restore the world while also taking in laundry to supplement their funding.

Nebulous ran for 3 series on BBC Radio 4 between January 2005 and June 2008 with the first episode being remade in 2019 as the animated pilot you can see below.

The show is an affectionate spoof on the cornerstones of Wyrd Britain such as Quatermass, Doctor Who and Doomwatch and indeed the finale of the pilot episode revolves around a notable reference to The Day of the Triffids movie.  It features a strong cast including the likes of the series' writer and producer Graham Duff as Rory Lawson and the great David Warner as Nebulous' nemesis Doctor Klench alongside guest stars such as David Tennant, Peter Davison and Kate O'Mara. Not every joke lands cleanly and episodes are often a little too crammed for their own good but such is the curse of the radio play with it's need to avoid dead air but the series as a whole is a thoroughly enjoyable pastiche of the type of shows we champion here which deserves it's place alongside them.

You can watch the animated pilot below with the rest of the series available to own on disc or download from your retailer of choice or you can listen to them here -  https://archive.org/details/nebulous5

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When The Wind Blows - radio play

In memory of Raymond Briggs who died earlier this week - 9th August 2022 - I thought we could take some time to listen to a radio adaptation of one of his seminal works, 'When the Wind Blows'.

I know for many people he'll be most fondly remembered for 'Fungus the Bogeyman' and for his contributions to Christmas with the books and films of 'The Snowman' and 'Father Christmas' but for me it's the delicately desolate beauty of 'When the Wind Blows' for which I'll remember him.

Published in 1982 'When the Wind Blows' tells the story of a nuclear war between the UK and the Soviet Union from the perspective of an elderly couple named Jim and Hilda Bloggs.  The story follows their futile attempts to survive the nuclear exchange through their home made shelter - doors leaning against a wall - and the advice given in the government's useless 'Protect and Survive' leaflet.  It's both warmly amusing as the pair reminisce about their experiences in WWII and devastatingly sad as the effects of the blast takes it's toll.

This radio adaptation, originally broadcast on 6th February 1983, stars Peter Sallis and Brenda Bruce and received the Broadcasting Press Guild award for the most outstanding radio programme of 1983.

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