Episodes
| Title | First Broadcast | Repeated | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| AG Macdonell - England, Their England | 20111225 | Martin Jarvis directs a galaxy of stars in a Classic Serial one-off episode. The cast is led by outstanding Scots actor Tony Curran as Donald.
In this classic 1930s comic novel, a young Scot, Donald Cameron, invalided from the Western Front in 1918, finds himself commissioned to write a book about the eccentricities of the English - through 'a foreigner's eyes'. An enthusiastic innocent abroad, Donald encounters an array of richly comic characters. He attends an absurd country house weekend, enjoys drinks with Fleet Street hacks, attempts some book-reviewing, visits The League of Nations as an MP's private secretary and, memorably, plays village cricket - the most famous fictional cricket match in literature.
The novel is dramatised by Archie Scottney ('Something Fresh', 'Summer Lightning', 'Goldfinger', 'The Mysterious Mr Quin') and who once took 5 wickets for 36 runs.
Martin Jarvis says: 'A joy to direct. The preposterous game of cricket at its heart leaps happily onto the air waves. With Ian Hislop to skipper our all-stars, I felt we had hit some kind of pitch-perfection. The absurdity and blessedness of England and the English remains reassuringly, recognisable.'
Cast:
Sound design: Mark Holden
Producer: Rosalind Ayres
A Scot, invalided in 1918, writes a book about the eccentricities of the English. Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status | |
| AG Macdonell - England, Their England | 20111225 | 20111231 (R4) | Martin Jarvis directs a galaxy of stars in a Classic Serial one-off episode. The cast is led by outstanding Scots actor Tony Curran as Donald.
In this classic 1930s comic novel, a young Scot, Donald Cameron, invalided from the Western Front in 1918, finds himself commissioned to write a book about the eccentricities of the English - through 'a foreigner's eyes'. An enthusiastic innocent abroad, Donald encounters an array of richly comic characters. He attends an absurd country house weekend, enjoys drinks with Fleet Street hacks, attempts some book-reviewing, visits The League of Nations as an MP's private secretary and, memorably, plays village cricket - the most famous fictional cricket match in literature.
The novel is dramatised by Archie Scottney ('Something Fresh', 'Summer Lightning', 'Goldfinger', 'The Mysterious Mr Quin') and who once took 5 wickets for 36 runs.
Martin Jarvis says: 'A joy to direct. The preposterous game of cricket at its heart leaps happily onto the air waves. With Ian Hislop to skipper our all-stars, I felt we had hit some kind of pitch-perfection. The absurdity and blessedness of England and the English remains reassuringly, recognisable.'
Cast:
Sound design: Mark Holden
Producer: Rosalind Ayres
A Scot, invalided in 1918, writes a book about the eccentricities of the English. Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status |
| By a Young Officer: Churchill on the North West Frontier | 20140720 | Douglas Booth stars as the young Winston Churchill. The year is 1897 and news is just reaching London that Islamic insurgents are causing havoc in the mountainous border between British India and Afghanistan.
Written by Michael Eaton
Producer: David Morley
Churchill's 1897 adventure as a war correspondent in the hostile Afghan-Pakistani border. Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status | |
| By a Young Officer: Churchill on the North West Frontier | 20140720 | 20140726 (R4) | Douglas Booth stars as the young Winston Churchill. The year is 1897 and news is just reaching London that Islamic insurgents are causing havoc in the mountainous border between British India and Afghanistan.
Written by Michael Eaton
Producer: David Morley
Churchill's 1897 adventure as a war correspondent in the hostile Afghan-Pakistani border. Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status |
| Confessions of an English Opium-Eater | 20090628 | By Lavinia Murray.
Dramatisation of Thomas De Quincey's 1821 autobiographical account of his consumption of the liquid opiate laudanum, a legal painkiller of the time, and his painful and surreal descent into addiction.
Older Thomas ...... Oliver Cotton
Directed by Gary Brown.
Dramatisation of Thomas De Quincey's 1821 account of his addiction to laudanum. Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status | |
| Confessions of an English Opium-Eater | 20090628 | 20090704 (R4) | By Lavinia Murray.
Dramatisation of Thomas De Quincey's 1821 autobiographical account of his consumption of the liquid opiate laudanum, a legal painkiller of the time, and his painful and surreal descent into addiction.
Older Thomas ...... Oliver Cotton
Directed by Gary Brown.
Dramatisation of Thomas De Quincey's 1821 account of his addiction to laudanum. Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status |
| Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea | 20131229 | The Old Man And The Sea
Produced and Directed by Pauline Harris
Further Information
Cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to Hemingway's Nobel Prize in Literature, the novel is a seemingly simple tale, full of emotion and drama.
It's the story of the struggle of life - a meditation on life and death, and old age. It's about the challenge of survival and the pitting of one man's ageing body and ageing mind against nature. It's about an ancient culture about to come to an end, and a practice as old as time itself. It's a final act, and the boy is there to remind us that life moves on, and a new generation steps forward.
The dramatist is SIMON ARMITAGE CBE, poet, playwright and novelist.
Set in Cuba, the thrilling epic battle between an old man and a large marlin. Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status | |
| Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea | 20131229 | 20140104 (R4) | The Old Man And The Sea
Produced and Directed by Pauline Harris
Further Information
Cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to Hemingway's Nobel Prize in Literature, the novel is a seemingly simple tale, full of emotion and drama.
It's the story of the struggle of life - a meditation on life and death, and old age. It's about the challenge of survival and the pitting of one man's ageing body and ageing mind against nature. It's about an ancient culture about to come to an end, and a practice as old as time itself. It's a final act, and the boy is there to remind us that life moves on, and a new generation steps forward.
The dramatist is SIMON ARMITAGE CBE, poet, playwright and novelist.
Set in Cuba, the thrilling epic battle between an old man and a large marlin. Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status |
| Jessie Kesson, Another Time, Another Place | 20110911 | 20110917 (R4) | by Jessie Kesson. Dramatised by Sue Glover. 1944. To a tiny farming community in the far north-east of Scotland come three Italian POWs. Until now, the war has scarcely touched this isolated world and the Italians are regarded by the locals as dangerous. However, to Janie, the young wife of the cattleman, the Italians are thrilling and exotic. Their experience of imprisonment and yearning mirror her own feelings and she is gradually drawn to the vibrant Neapolitan, Luigi. Janie ... Claire Knight Robert - Robert Jack Luigi - Cesare Taurasi Kirsty - Vicki Liddelle Elspeth - Meg Fraser Umberto - Tony Kearney Finlay - Paul Young Produced by Gaynor Macfarlane Jessie Kesson is one of Scotland's best loved authors. She was born in 1916 and died in 1994, living most of her life in northern Scotland. Born into poverty, raised in orphanages and trained as farmhand and domestic servant, she wrote about her experiences in The White Bird Passes and Another Time, Another Place. Both of these novels were made into feature films. Sue Glover is one of Scotland's leading playwrights. Her work has been performed worldwide. Italian PoWs get a hostile welcome in a Scottish village in 1944, but one wife is beguiled Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status |
| John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men | 20100307 | Dramatisation by Donna Franceschild of John Steinbeck's seminal 1937 novel about migrant workers in 1930s California whose dream of one day owning a place of their own is tragically destroyed.
George ...... David Tennant
Directed by Kirsty Williams.
Two migrant workers' dream of owning a place of their own is tragically destroyed. Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status | |
| John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men | 20100307 | 20100313 (R4) | Dramatisation by Donna Franceschild of John Steinbeck's seminal 1937 novel about migrant workers in 1930s California whose dream of one day owning a place of their own is tragically destroyed.
George ...... David Tennant
Directed by Kirsty Williams.
Two migrant workers' dream of owning a place of their own is tragically destroyed. Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status |
| Now, Voyager | 20100516 | A dowdy, frustrated spinster from a wealthy New England family, living with her overpowering mother in the stiflingly repressive Boston of the inter-war years, suffers a nervous breakdown after an unhappy love affair. Partially restored under the wise guidance of a psychiatrist, she is urged by her fashionably elegant sister-in-law to have a beauty makeover and to undertake a Mediterranean cruise. Physically transformed, she meets on board an architect, Jerry Durrance, with whom slowly, as she gains confidence in her new image, she falls in love. But he is married with children he loves, and the affair cannot have a happy ending. Circumstances lead her to form a special bond with his vulnerable 12-year-old daughter, and finally she settles for a loving relationship with him and the child. The famous last line, of both the film and the book, is: 'Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars! Cast Charlotte - Sarah Lancashire Jerry - Anthony Head Mother - Joan Plowright Lisa - Lysette Anthony Jaquith - John Rowe Dora - Debora Weston Mack - Sam Douglas Giuseppe - Nunzio Caponio Tina - Elisha Mansuroglu Miss Trask - Joanna McCallum Lloyd - Jon Glover Hilda - Alice Hart Based on the novel by Olive Higgins Prouty. Dramatised by Neville Teller. Directed by Andy Jordan. By Olive Higgins Prouty. A dowdy, frustrated spinster embarks on a doomed love affair. Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status | |
| Tennyson's Maud | 20090726 | 20090801 (R4) | Joseph Millson reads Alfred, Lord Tennyson's 1855 dark and lyrical poem Maud to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the poet's birth. A disturbed young man roams the windswept hills, haunted by his father's suicide and his mother's early death. He blames his father's old friend, the lord of the Hall, for his ruin. The young man was betrothed to Maud, the lord's daughter, when they were children, but she and her family left the area after the suicide. But now there are workmen up at the Hall - Maud has come home. With Kathryn Nutbeem. Sound design by Christopher Shutt. Directed by Abigail le Fleming. Joseph Millson reads Alfred, Lord Tennyson's 1855 dark and lyrical poem Maud. Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status Joseph Millson reads Alfred, Lord Tennyson's 1855 dark and lyrical poem Maud to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the poet's birth. A disturbed young man roams the windswept hills, haunted by his father's suicide and his mother's early death. He blames his father's old friend, the lord of the Hall, for his ruin. The young man was betrothed to Maud, the lord's daughter, when they were children, but she and her family left the area after the suicide. But now there are workmen up at the Hall - Maud has come home. With Kathryn Nutbeem. Sound design by Christopher Shutt. Directed by Abigail le Fleming. Joseph Millson reads Alfred, Lord Tennyson's 1855 dark and lyrical poem Maud. Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status |
| The Water Babies: A Modern Fairy Tale | 20130324 | Paul Farley's playful updating of Charles Kingsley's 150 year old children's novel.
Young Tomi is part of the UK's illegal labour market, having been trafficked into the country from Nigeria as a child labourer, but his life is changed forever when he meets a girl from the other side of the tracks, runs away and falls into a river.
When he wakes up, he's been transformed - he's amphibious! And so begins a series of strange and exciting underwater adventures in which he meets caddis flies, trout, otters and eels. But Tomi learns that with his new freedom comes choice and responsibility.
Directed by Emma Harding.
Paul Farley updates Charles Kingsley's tale of a child labourer's underwater adventures. Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status | |
| The Water Babies: A Modern Fairy Tale | 20130324 | 20130330 (R4) | Paul Farley's playful updating of Charles Kingsley's 150 year old children's novel.
Young Tomi is part of the UK's illegal labour market, having been trafficked into the country from Nigeria as a child labourer, but his life is changed forever when he meets a girl from the other side of the tracks, runs away and falls into a river.
When he wakes up, he's been transformed - he's amphibious! And so begins a series of strange and exciting underwater adventures in which he meets caddis flies, trout, otters and eels. But Tomi learns that with his new freedom comes choice and responsibility.
Directed by Emma Harding.
Paul Farley updates Charles Kingsley's tale of a child labourer's underwater adventures. Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status |