Showing results by publisher "BBC Audio" in Small Town & Rural

When Gareth finds his wife, Diane, in bed with another man, the couple attempt to save their marriage by uprooting from London to the West Wales village where Gareth grew up and buying the local pub. It's a bit of a dive - the wallpaper's peeling, there are squirrels in the saloon bar and something's growing out of the pool table. But it's got potential and they're determined to make a go of it. Soon, the locals are flocking to The Druid's Rest - and as Diane discovers, her husband's old friends are an eccentric bunch.

Welcome to Flamford, the town sanity forgot. Edgy, sharp-tongued City burn-out Andy Chambers has been advised, for the sake of his health, to take a break from his stressful London lifestyle and get some rest. So he goes to stay with his estranged uncle, Jeff Whitaker, at his seaside home in Flamford - but, as he soon discovers, living with his relative is far from relaxing.

Three charming comedy series starring the dear ladies of a musical bent, Dr Evadne Hinge and Dame Hilda Bracket Meet Hinge and Bracket, the delightful double act brought to sublime life by George Logan and Patrick Fyffe. Lifelong companions and musical collaborators, they enjoy nothing more than...

Set against the backdrop of America's Great Depression and Dust Bowl, a family of farmers from Oklahoma head west in search of work, only to discover thousands like them are also on the move. Following a violent altercation with some locals, they head back on the road with their dream of a promised land in tatters. And life is set to get much worse for the Joads....

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.

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.

Irene Bruce spends her days pulling pints in Millport, the only town on the Isle of Cumbrae, a few miles off the west coast of Scotland. Frustrated and going nowhere fast, she yearns to escape to the mainland for a better life - or at least a bit of fun. Just over the water, there are clubs, cinemas and discos, so why is she stuck at home with tea, Scrabble and her boring sister Moira?

**Winner of the Gold Award for Best Drama in the New York Festivals Radio Awards 2018*** A BBC radio adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Michael Cunningham, inspired by Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway Three separate women, living in different locations and eras, are linked by their...

Tyrannical millionaire Simeon Lee has been estranged from most of his family for years. But now, on Christmas Eve, the old man calls them all together once more. Unable to disobey, the children gather uneasily and wonder what their father's intentions are. Does he want to clear up past...

In this radical reinterpretation of six brilliant Arnold Bennett novels, it’s the 19th-century Midlands and over 10-and-a-half sweeping hours individuals rise and fall, they age, flourish, and try to keep up as the world around them changes into something unrecognisable, transformed by new technology. Fortunes are made and lost, hearts broken, empires built and deals made. These tales of aspiration and passion, damage and danger are told with Bennett's forensic, (journalist’s) eye for human psychology and a surprising degree of witty comedy.

Full-cast adaptations of three of Winifred Holtby’s best-known novels, plus short stories and bonus programmes about the author: Winifred Holtby was an acclaimed novelist, journalist, feminist and social reformer. Her work encompasses six novels, two short story collections, a play and the first critical study of Virginia Woolf, but she is best known for her posthumously published masterpiece South Riding, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Award. She died in 1935, aged just 37.

After being mugged by a pair of pensioners outside the Darby & Joan Club, the Reverend Timothy Carswell has had enough of his rough, tough inner-city parish. Convinced that someone so meek would be better suited somewhere quieter, the Bishop packs him off to a nice, sedate residential neighbourhood where nothing ever seems to happen. However, unbeknownst to the vicar, his apparently respectable new parish is a hotbed of passion, paranormal experimentation and geriatric prostitution.

Twenty six short stories about the eccentric inhabitants of Meridian Cliffs, a small wind-battered town on England's South Coast. Welcome to Meridian Cliffs. Located at exactly 0 degrees 0 minutes west, and 0 degrees 0 minutes east, it's where the Greenwich Meridian meets the Channel, and time stands poised at absolute zero. But due to ever-increasing coastal erosion, it's getting smaller every day.

Classic vintage highlights from the much-loved radio soap The world's longest-running drama, The Archers has delighted audiences ever since its launch on 1 January 1951. Today, over five million fans across generations and across the world tune in, hooked on the epic saga of everyday life in the...

Little Blighty is an idyllic part of the world, with a church, a market, a small school and a pub, The Cock and Bull. Village life is pretty uneventful, though the humdrum happenings include social turmoil, economic upheaval and vicious political squabbles - all presided over by the redoubtable head of the Parish Council and secretary of the Rotarians, Mrs Roberts.

Known as the 'Irish Chekhov', Brian Friel was one of the most renowned dramatists of his generation, producing over 30 plays in a career spanning six decades. Included here are some of his best-known works, as well as mesmerising radio documentaries featuring the author himself, in his own words.

This BBC Radio collection includes the Booker nominated A Month in the Country. Be transported to the Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where, in the aftermath of the First World War, survivor Tom Birkin spends a summer uncovering a medieval mural in the local church.

A full-cast environmental mystery set against the evocative backdrop of the Norfolk fens Mist rising over the fens. The haunting cry of the nesting bittern. But not everything is as pristine as it appears to be. The protection of nature and the pursuit of progress collide in this thrilling...

Three dramas by Barry Hines and an abridged reading of his classic Kes (A Kestrel for a Knave) Yorkshire-born author Barry Hines is renowned for his 1968 novel A Kestrel for a Knave (later turned into Ken Loach’s award-winning film Kes) and for scripting the BAFTA-winning BBC TV film Threads...

Wonderful comedy drama adapted from the beloved novels featuring an all-star cast Welcome to Thrush Green , a small and peaceful village in the Cotswolds, where everything and nothing happens. This wonderful, gentle comedy features an all-star cast including Adam Godley ( Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ), Anna Massey ( Rebecca ), Geoffrey Whitehead ( Poirot ) and Trevor Peacock ( The Vicar of Dibley ). Over two series we follow the highs and lows of village life in this 1960s village. In series one, a young doctor comes to Thrush Green on the day of the spring fair and causes a stir.