Showing results for "bbc" in Dark Humour

Between 1947 and 1957, Ealing Studios produced a series of immensely popular, darkly funny film comedies that made the West London borough famous throughout the world. Almost 50 years later, four of these timeless films were recreated for BBC Radio 4, and are now collected together for the first time.

Welcome to Hell—where nobody can ever quite catch the barman's eye. In this collection, which contains all seven series of Old Harry's Game, get ready for some wicked one-liners and scorching satire. Satan is fed up after a millennia in charge of Hell, especially given the prospect of an eternity still running the damned place. Although he does enjoy playing pranks on the world of the living and devising wry torments for the souls in his keeping, he often wistfully recalls his past as an archangel.

An anthology of full-cast Gothic dramas and readings from the author of the world’s most famous vampire tale Celebrated today as the creator of the legendary blood-sucking Transylvanian aristocrat Count Dracula, Bram Stoker was best known in his lifetime as stage manager to the actor Henry...

The complete television soundtracks of all 12 episodes of the legendary BBC sitcom Ground-breaking, satirical and anarchic, The Young Ones introduced alternative comedy to mainstream TV, and made household names of its writers and performers. It ran for two series on BBC Two between 1982 and...

A dramatisation of A. A. Milne’s only detective novel, plus two of his sparkling comedies A.A. Milne achieved lasting fame as the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, but he was much more than just a children’s writer. A prolific novelist, playwright and humorist, he penned numerous works for adults...

Sean Lock stars in a surreal comedy masterpiece set in a heavily-bugged London tower block 'Minor-key masterpiece' The Telegraph First broadcast on BBC Radio 4, these classic cult comedies sparked a critically-acclaimed BBC TV show that ran for two series between 2002 and 2003. Starring the...

Selected readings and full-cast dramatisations from across the literary and science fiction of Iain Banks Iain Banks, aka Iain M Banks, came to fame in 1984 with his transfixing debut The Wasp Factory, described as both ‘a work of unparalleled depravity’ and 'a masterpiece'. In 1993 he was...

All ten episodes of the dark, surreal comedy featuring Matt Berry's twisted regression therapist Unorthodox, unpredictable, and verging on the unprofessional, Dr Berry is a deeply disturbing hypnotherapist. His experimental regressive technique is both strange and terrifying, and involves taking...

One of the 21st century's most celebrated authors, Hilary Mantel won the Booker Prize twice: for 2009's Wolf Hall, the first in her phenomenally successful Thomas Cromwell trilogy, and its 2012 sequel Bring Up the Bodies. The third novel in the series, 2020's The Mirror and the Light, won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. This collection includes three of her best works of contemporary fiction, ranging from the Gothic to the blackly comic.

The darkly comic ups and downs of a Manchester taxi company Dave is one of Irwell Cars' best drivers, although his life doesn't always reflect that. A run-down office with an uncertain future, Irwell Cars isn't offering Dave much - except the chance to pine after Lind, the long-suffering radio...

In Jim the Great, Jimmy Edwards stars as the titular medieval chieftain who has more on his plate than whatever the huntsman's brought in. From using the Venerable Bede to research the King's (perhaps questionable) ancestry and attempting to build himself an empire as cheaply as possible, to settling a debt with a Viking by way of a duel and accidentally losing his Kingdom before becoming a grumpy galley slave rowing to Rome, King Jim's adventures are history as you've never heard it before.

Saffy Huntley-Oliver has a secret. A secret that she is deeply ashamed of. It's not the fact that she's a serial killer in her free time. In fact, she's quite proud of that. After all she's only killing the bad men. She is making the world a better place. No, her secret is far worse than that...

A penguin is all that stands between one man and murder by the mafia Sit back and enjoy this darkly comic full-cast adaptation of Andrey Kurkov’s bestselling novel set in mid-90s Ukraine, plus a bonus interview with the author. Viktor Alekseyevich Zolotaryov is an aspiring writer in Ukraine...

Terry Jones introduces ten dramatisations of choice Florentine Fancies, adapted from Giovanni Boccaccio's classic human comedy by the BBC Monty Python star and medieval historian Terry Jones presents ten BBC Radio dramatisations of tales from Giovanni Boccaccio's humane and comic masterpiece...

Not long after their mother's death, sisters Maureen and Lesley are packing up their family home. It's a painful duty, with Maureen trying to control the worst of Lesley's projectile lamenting. Then a strange man knocks at the door and introduces himself as David Johnson, a friend of Maureen's neighbour. He'd like to view the house if they are thinking of selling - which Maureen definitely is.

Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969) was an English novelist who was a bestseller in the mid-20th century. She published eighteen highly acclaimed works of fiction in her lifetime, inspired by her own tragic experiences of family life. Her works consist mainly of dialogue and focus on family life among the late Victorian or Edwardian upper middle class. They deal with money, power, status, incest, adultery, murder, homosexuality – about which she was years ahead of her time – and all the passions and stresses of family life, described with brilliant wit and perception.

Wally K. Daly's sparkling trilogy of comic crime capers featuring the prison inmates of B Block When Bullet Head, Fingers and the other B Block cons meet Prisoners' Aid society members Charles Forbes and George Evans, trouble ensues. Soon, they are embroiled in daring escapades involving an...

Ten full-cast dramas featuring some of the best known names in British comedy. In these ten witty, dark and disturbing episodes some of Britain’s best comedians come together to perform simultaneously hilarious and unsettling stories that will have you gripped. Sticky situations on ski slopes...

All six episodes of the gloriously gritty comedy crime drama. Taggart meets A Touch of Cloth in this parody police procedural featuring DI Bob Boxer and his sidekick DC Shona Doberman. They're an unlikely couple of cops - he's grizzled, old-school and wears a cardigan; she's young, instinctive and wields a Blackberry. But together they tackle cases so tough, they'd make Frost flinch and Rebus run away.... 

Sir Lenny Henry has had a long and successful career as a comedian, impressionist, actor and presenter. Having starred in several plays in the West End and on radio, he was inspired to complete an MA in screenwriting and in 2011 penned his first radio drama, Corrinne Come Back and Gone, which opens this collection. He continued his writing career with three more Radio 4 plays and nine episodes of his comic monologue series Lenny Henry’s Rogues Gallery. Collected here for the first time, listen to these poignant and humorous original dramas.