Showing results by publisher "BBC Audio" in Literature & Fiction

When his marriage breaks up and he loses his job, Dave Preston has no choice but to move all his possessions – and himself – into The Storage Garden. But he’s not alone in his predicament – his fellow storage dweller, the mysterious and slightly psychotic Geoff, is in the same situation, and both are under the watchful eye of cultured security guard Ron. As he hunkers down among the boxes of pebbles, unidentifiable bits of metal and cups without saucers, Dave picks over his failed relationship with ex-wife Sarah, and prepares to face the future. 

Young astrophysicist Zoe wishes to join Jamie and the Doctor on their travels. To give her fair warning of the dangers she may face, the Doctor uses a mind projector to share one of their most harrowing adventures. And so, Jamie is forced to relive his struggle against the evil Daleks at their most powerful and calculating. In a complex plot that drags him from modern-day London to Victorian times and finally to the Dalek world of Skaro, he endures ordeals that test his courage, strength - and his friendship with the Doctor - to the limit.

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 operator and his secret crush, and panic over what will become of him if the firm closes. Add in a crucial darts match, a 'Brief Encounter' themed date night, some former school bullies and a rather difficult omelette, and Dave is beginning to feel like even his pick ups are bringing him down...

In series 1 and 2, as his mum and wife, Mary, sit round his bedside and wonder how to wake him up, Ben’s mind is busy elsewhere. In his imagination, he lives with his two-year-old daughter, Blitz (now miraculously grown up), encounters celebrities such as Sue Lawley, Elvis Presley and Tom Paulin, relives memories from his past and gets into a compromising situation with a fellow inmate at a strangely familiar Torquay hotel. Meanwhile, an imaginary sitcom written by him, about coma patients in a hospital, plays in the background.

Joanna Lumley and Roger Allam play a married couple who met in the Summer of Love and have stayed together ever since. Children of the '60s, they are still free spirits, drawn together by their love for music and one another. We follow their conversations from the café to the kitchen table, taking in everyday chores, dealing with problems with long-held friendships and tackling their frustrations with each other. With warmth, wit and honesty, they talk about the indignities of ageing, their desire to still be seen as attractive and their fears and vulnerabilities around growing older.

Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers star in seven early episodes of The Goon Show, plus a plethora of bonus features. Immensely popular and hugely influential, the groundbreaking series The Goon Show changed the face of British comedy.

Jules Verne's two novels featuring Captain Nemo (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island), condensed down to two thrilling hours. In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, marine scientist Professor Aronnax and his stowaway daughter, Connie, join whaler Ned Land aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln to hunt an aggressive sea monster, believed to be a giant narwhale. When they engage the monster, they find to their astonish­ment it's an electrically powered submarine, the Nautilus, techno­logically far superior to any vessel known.

A treasury of Doctors invite you to join them in twelve exciting and original audio adventures. The Tenth Doctor must take a dangerous test when he seeks an audience with the mysterious Minds of Magnox. The Twelfth Doctor and Nardole think they're in 1950s suburbia until an attack takes them into The Nightmare Realm. The Ashes of Eternity threaten the Ninth Doctor and Rose in 1980s England, before the duo encounter The Beast of Scar Hill on a snowy Yorkshire moor.

The time, now - the place, outside your window. Three surveillance operatives are on an unspecified job, working for an unspecified employer. Together, they are Beagle Team. Good surveillance operatives have patience, alertness and discretion - this is a series about the other type of surveillance operative. 

1991. Britain and the US are waging war in Iraq, the Soviet Union is breaking up - and Brian Oldman is banged up in Parkhurst, his 30-year sentence restarted. Set on proving his innocence, he studies law from his cell in a bid to win justice at last. But will he ever be released from prison? Joseph Olinska, meanwhile, seems unstoppable. Now ennobled and on the board of Lehman Brothers, he plans to extend his business interests into Russia - with a little help from Boris Yeltsin and his cronies. 

Anthony Trollope's series of witty, gently satirical stories of provincial life are set in the fictional town of Barchester and the surrounding county of Barsetshire. With a focus on the lives, loves and tribulations of the local clergy and rural gentry, the canvas is broad and colourful, with a set of iconic characters in whose lives we become intimately involved as they grow up, grow old, and fall in or out of love and friendship across the years.

The Museum of Curiosity is BBC Radio 4's monumental comedy edifice, and the only one with gargoyles in the foyer. It allows nothing inside unless it makes you scratch your head, stroke your chin or, at the very least, go 'Hmm'. Secondly, it is almost completely empty. Fortunately, helping to fill its vacant plinths is a gathering of the world's most original minds.

From one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, The Neapolitan Novels is an exploration of the friendship between Lila and Lena, two bright young girls who grew up in the tough, rough streets of postwar Naples. This is no normal friendship; it's a friendship that loves, hurts, supports and destroys - and yet it is one that lasts a lifetime. These four full-cast BBC adaptations bring the streets of Naples vividly to life.

Richard Briers stars in this sparkling sixties comedy about a newly qualified young doctor and his two best friends, Taffy Evans and Tony Benskin. When Simon Sparrow (Richard Briers) lands his first job as a ship's doctor, he soon realises life on the seas is far from plain sailing. First of all, he falls in love with the chairman's daughter, Wendy, but is distracted from his affections by the discovery that he suffers from seasickness, and is expected to perform surgery with only cutlery and a hefty dose of brandy...

From the top-security confines of Stormcage to the barbarism of first-century Egypt, River battles to find the Eye of Horus before its powers are used to transform the universe. To succeed, she must team up with a most unlikely ally - her own fictional alter ego, Melody. And together they must solve another mystery: Is fiction changing into fact - or is fact changing into fiction?  

For the first time ever all three much-loved series featuring the legendary creations Uncle Mort and Carter Brandon are brought together in one collection. As the pair tour Britain, Uncle Mort's recollections make for some hilarious moments. Uncle Mort and his Yorkshire based family first appeared in Tinniswood's novel A Touch of Daniel which earned them a run of four series of I Didn't Know You Cared on BBC TV from 1975-1979.

Eleven BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramas telling the stories of Mary Queen of Scots and the Stuart royals. Under the Stuarts, Britain entered the modern world. But with great change came turmoil, and for 111 years, the Stuart monarchs faced dynastic struggles, religious conflict, the rise of parliamentary democracy - and civil war. These dramas chart that turbulent epoch through its royal family, from Mary, Queen of Scots to the ‘last Stuart’, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s daughter Charlotte.

Suzie’s never been to Cornwall before, but one day she finds herself on the Cornish Riviera Express, hurtling from Paddington to Penzance. She sits next to David and over the course of an eventful five-hour journey an intense relationship develops. But both she and David are married, so they don’t expect to see each other again.

In The Dalek Generation, by Nicholas Briggs, the Doctor is determined to find out the truth about Sunlight 349, one of the apparently benevolent Dalek Foundation worlds. In Shroud of Sorrow, by Tommy Donbavand, it’s the day after John F Kennedy’s assassination, and the Doctor and Clara discover that the faces of the dead are everywhere.

Bristow is a middle-aged, ineffectual buying clerk for the Chester-Perry Organisation. He is merely a small cog in a gigantic wheel...and he knows it. But he has his own small ways of rebelling, and together with sparring partner, Jones, and tea lady, Mrs Purdy, he weaves hopeless tangles of red tape to confound the system and liven up everyone’s day.