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Charles Dickens on the BBC

2011-11-27T12:01:00+00:00

Charles Dickens by Mathew Brady, US National Archives

In the run-up to the bicentenary of Dickens's birth in February 2012, BBC Radio and BBC TV will be doing the master-storyteller proud, with new productions of four of the novels, and a whole host of other programming, starting with Penelope Wilton reading five extracts from Claire Tomalin's extraordinary new biography - Charles Dickens - A Life.

There are few bits of central and east London that Dickens didn't walk through on his epic walks, observing all of London life and working through the plots of his books.

But the route south from Camden Town, where his family lived when he was a child, to the Strand, and the Navy Pay Office in Somerset House where his father worked, is one that two centuries later is still full of Dickens reminders.

I work at Bush House, and often walk by the Old Curiosity Shop - the slightly dilapidated cottage in Portsmouth Street which inspired one of his earliest novels. And just the other side of Kingsway is Covent Garden, where the young Dickens got lost and found himself walking right out to Whitechapel in the east end. An episode that inspired a terrifying sequence in Dombey and Son, and which also features in the first episode of Michael Eaton's new Radio 4 series Dickens in London.

Dickens was a broadcaster before broadcasting.

Not only did he master the technique of serialisation, with audiences desperate to catch up with the latest episode in each succeeding novel, but he licensed stage performances of his books to coincide with publication, and finally took to halls and theatres across Britain and the United States to perform his own abridged readings.

So when the 20th Century eventually caught up, and the BBC started broadcasting plays and readings, it is hardly surprising that Dickens took to the airwaves.

Jeremy Mortimer is a producer in BBC Radio Drama. Together with Jessica Dromgoole he has produced a new dramatisation of A Tale of Two Cities, starring Robert Lindsay and Alison Steadman, which will be broadcast across the Afternoon Play slots on Radio 4 the week after Christmas. He is also producing Dickens in London for the Woman's Hour drama, for broadcast in February 2012.

The Dickens Season on the BBC

Book of the Week - Charles Dickens: A Life
Monday 28 November - Friday 2 December 2011, 9.45am
BBC Radio 4
Claire Tomalin's acclaimed new biography of Britain's great novelist paints a portrait of an extraordinarily complex man. Abridged by Richard Hamilton and read by Penelope Wilton.

The Verb
Friday 9 December, 10pm
BBC Radio 3
Ian McMillan hosts a special edition of his weekly cabaret of the word before an audience at the BBC's Radio Theatre to celebrate the art of reading Dickens aloud.

Night Waves
Wednesday 14 December, 10pm
BBC Radio 3
Philip Dodd presents a landmark edition of Radio 3's art and ideas programme, devoted to Charles Dickens as the bicentenary of his birth approaches.

A Tale of Two Cities
Monday 26 - Friday 30 December 2011, 2.15pm
BBC Radio 4
Robert Lindsay and Alison Steadman star in a new dramatisation of Charles Dickens's classic, A Tale of Two Cities, dramatised by Mike Walker to be broadcast on Radio 4 as a sequence of five Afternoon Plays in the week after Christmas. Dickens's novel of the French revolution tells a story of the redemptive powers of love in the face of cruelty, violence and neglect. With Jonathan Coy, Andrew Scott, Paul Ready and Karl Johnson, with original music by Lennert Busch.

The Essay - The Writers' Dickens
Monday 19 - Friday 23 December, 10.45pm
BBC Radio 3
In a special series of The Essay, five contemporary novelists - Tessa Hadley, A L Kennedy, Alexander McAll Smith, Romesh Gunesekera and Justin Cartwright - examine the craft of Dickens' prose, and reflect on how the giant of British nineteenth century fiction is both a role model and a shadow looming over their own writing.

The Tale of A Tale of Two Cities
Thursday 29 December 2011, 11.30am
BBC Radio 4
When Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities in 1859 it was, for him at least, both 'the best of times' and 'the worst of times'. He had separated from his wife, started a new weekly journal and was becoming increasingly recognised as a performer of his own works. For this programme, crime writer Frances Fyfield has been given access to those original manuscript pages, held by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and along with the scholar Robert Patten and actor David Timson, she explores the frantic hand-writing, the ferocious self-editing and the sheer energy of Dickens' writing.

The Mumbai Chuzzlewits
Sunday 1, 8, and 15 January 2012, 3.00pm
BBC Radio 4
Award-winning writer Ayeesha Menon's reworking of Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit is set amongst the Catholic community in modern day Mumbai, India. Convinced his relatives are after his money, Martin Chuzzlewit, a wealthy old landlord, has adopted orphan girl Mary as his carer with the understanding she will be housed and fed as long as he lives - but that upon his death, she will inherit nothing. Told from the point of view of orphan Thomas, an observer into the world of the Chuzzlewits, this is a fast-paced drama full of intrigue, romance, suspense and murder. Recorded on location in India, the cast stars Roshan Seth, Karan Pandit, Zafar Karachiwala and Nimrat Kaur.

The Mystery of the Mystery of Edwin Drood
Thursday 19 January 2012, 11.30am
BBC Radio 4
Crime writer Frances Fyfield uses the hand written manuscript of Charles Dickens' last, unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, to try and answer some of the many questions about the last days of Dickens' life and, more particularly, the loose ends of this tantalising novel. This programme complements the broadcast of Gwyneth Hughes' new BBC TWO drama, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Dickens in London
Monday 6 - Friday 10 February 2012, 10.45am
BBC Radio 4
Dickens in London presents five short plays based on Charles Dickens' journalism about walking in London to tell the story of the writer's life. Adapted by Michael Eaton, the cast stars Samuel Barnett, Alex Jennings and Antony Sher each taking their turn to play Dickens.
Following Dickens' changing relationship with the city that fired his imagination, each stand-alone play takes its title from one of Dickens's own appellations: A Not Over-Particularly-Taken-Care-Of-Boy; Boz; the Sparkler of Albion; the Uncommercial Traveller; and The Inimitable.
Dickens in London is part of an innovative collaboration between Film London Artists' Moving Image Network (FLAMIN), BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Drama. A commission for film artist Chris Newby, writer Michael Eaton, and composer Neil Brand to produce a set of cross-platform works for radio, interactive television (Red Button) and the Radio 4 website. The project is supported with a Grants for the Arts Award from Arts Council England.

Life and Fate: Download, keep and listen later

2011-09-27T15:50:00+00:00

Life and Fate: How long have I got to download all the episodes?

All the episodes of Radio 4 adaptation of the epic Life and Fate are available to download until this Sunday when the first episode expires (NB: The expiry dates on the podcast page page are wrong - you need to deduct 14 days from the stated availability. There's a longer explanation of why the dates appearing are wrong here*).

Stalingrad, used under license from the Deutsches Bundesarchiv

Life and Fate: Some of the reviews

In The Telegraph Pete Naughton was effusive in his praise:

"Life and Fate is fabulous, mind-expanding drama, brilliantly adapted from Grossman's book by Mike Walker and Jonathan Myerson and delivered with great subtlety by a big-name cast. I'd be staggered if it's not an enduring hit..."

The Observer's Miranda Sawyer found it harder to get into:

"But by episode 5, where we joined Sofya, a Jewish doctor captured and put, with other Jews, on to a cattle truck to Poland, I was utterly gripped."

And she concludes:

"I yearn for a long, lonely car drive and to listen to the whole drama all in one go."

Life and Fate is dark, challenging and at times difficult to follow. And I suspect some may have been daunted by the subject matter. But as The Guardian's Elisabeth Mahoney says:

"This is a tough book, shaped by Grossman's own experience - his mother was among 20,000 Jews murdered in Berdichev in 1941 - and his time as a war correspondent, during which he wrote one of the first eyewitness accounts of a Nazi extermination camp. It can make grim listening in places, but this is countered by beautiful writing, exquisite acting and the sheer class of the adaptation."

Paul Murphy is the editor of the Radio 4 blog

You can download all the episodes of Life and Fate to keep and listen later from the Radio 4 podcast page but do it before 2pm this Sunday, 2 October.
There's more information about Life and Fate including a family tree of Life and Fate's characters to print out on the Life and Fate programme page.
Life and Fate on the Radio 4 blog
*BBC podcasts are normally available for 7 days, 30 days or indefinitely. To ensure that all the episodes of Life and Fate would be available for seven days after the transmission of the last programme an exception was made (with the permission of the rights' holders) and the availability would be 14 days. As the current system doesn't allow 14 days to be set as a duration we had to set it to 30 days initially and manually remove episodes as they reach 14 days. Apologies for any inconvenience (and the lengthy explanation).

To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal: BBC Radio 4 Extra's Book at Beachtime

2011-07-13T16:03:00+00:00

Editor's note: Radio 4 Extra have been running a season of readings for the summer, Book at Beachtime. Each of the books in the series has been adapted in five parts and is broadcast on 4 Extra Monday to Friday at 2.30pm and is then available to listen online for seven days afterwards. This week's book is To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal who introduces it on the blog - PM.

First of all, I'm thrilled to have To Be Sung Underwater on Radio 4 and just wish my publisher would fly me over and put me up in the Lake District cottage where my wife and I spent our honeymoon so I could listen to the reading at my leisure. Joking, of course. Mostly, anyhow. Well, not completely.

To Be Sung Underwater began with Willy, who is loosely based on a childhood pal who never quite got over the woman that dropped him cold. My friend never forgot, and his girlfriend never looked back.

The great thing about writing fiction is that you get to change things, so I gave Willy what my friend deserved: a more interesting and less self-absorbed girlfriend who, years later, would remember Willy.

Enter Judith.

Northwest Nebraska is where my mother was born and raised and where I spent my childhood summers even though I was raised in Southern California. I've lived in Nebraska as an adult, and it has the same effect on me that it has on Judith: she breathes more easily there, her senses dilate, sounds and sights seem slightly amplified.

She, like me, is drawn to the place, and yet it isn't her home. It thus seemed to me like the right place for Willy and Judith to meet, fall in love, separate, and come together again one last time, and also the right place to examine what makes a good marriage and a happy life.

Tom McNeal is the author of To Be Sung Underwater

Listen to Tom McNeal's To Be Sung Underwater online and at 2.30pm on Radio 4 Extra Thursday and Friday this week. Each episode is available for seven days after broadcast.
Find out more about Book at Beachtime.
Listen to or subscribe to the Radio 4 Books and Authors podcast.
View the Radio 4 Extra schedule online
Follow Radio 4 Extra on Twitter: @BBCRadio4Extra

The History of Titus Groan: Radio 4 Classic Serial

2011-07-07T09:00:00+00:00

Brian Sibley is a bit of a legend in radio. Presenter (Radio 4 arts programme Kaleidoscope and the World Service arts magazine Meridian), contributor and playwright, he paired up with writer Michael Bakewell on the classic dramatisation of Lord of the Rings, he did the complete Narnia series, and back in 1985 he did a classy, award-winning adaptation of Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan and Gormenghast for Radio 4.

So when he got in touch in January 2010 to suggest that we extend the Titus franchise with Peake's third book, Titus Alone, and with the as yet to be published conclusion to the series - Titus Awakes (written by Peake's widow, Maeve Gilmore) - I just had to see if I could get Radio 4 to sit up and take interest.

And did they. Jeremy Howe, Radio 4 drama commissioner, suggested that we present all four books, in an epic 6-hours of the classic serial. The decision came in June last year, and, with the full backing of the Peake estate, Brian started work.

We had lots of tricky decisions to take - how to keep Peake's extraordinary prose, how to split the episodes, how to manage the tricky transition when Titus leaves Gothic Gormenghast and enters the stream-punk sci-fi world of Titus Alone. Brian decided that he wasn't even going to look at his 1980s scripts. He was going to start again from scratch. We devised a punishing script delivery schedule, and booked a twelve-day recording stint for late May.

On the 25th May there was a cast of twenty actors gathered in a room in Broadcasting House for the first read-through. And what a cast: Miranda Richardson confessed to being a die-hard Peake fan, Paul Rhys rehearsed a few owl noises, James Fleet and Tamsin Greig tried out a few Prunesquallor laughs, and Fenella Woolgar and Claudie Blakley started talking (and thinking) in unison as the identical Groan twins.

The recording schedule was like something out of Gormenghast's ritual box, literally hundreds of scenes, featuring dozens of deaths, a number of falls from great height, fires, floods and mayhem in a menagerie. But at 6.00pm on Saturday 11th June, David Warner and Luke Treadaway staggered out of the studio and posed for a final picture on the steps of All Souls. The recording was done.

Roger Goula is an amazing composer. His music paints Titus's world in a fantastic array of aural colours. And Peter Ringrose has matched the music with a brilliant sound design. I hope that you all enjoy listening to the fruit of their labours, and that you enjoy entering for a while into Mervyn Peake's extraordinary world.

Jeremy Mortimer is Executive Producer Audio Drama

Dramatiser Brian Sibley on Mervyn Peake's classic series:
The History of Titus Groan starts on Sunday 10th July at 3pm and is available to listen to on the Radio 4 website. The full serial will Series Stacked and be available until the 21st August
The pictures show (from top): Titus Groan (Luke Treadaway) with the Artist (David Warner); Irma Prunesquallor (Tamsin Greig) with Professor Bellgrove (William Gaunt); Steerpike (Carl Prekopp) fighting with Barquentine (Gerard McDermott).
Visit Brian Sibley's blog and the official Mervyn Peake site.

Book at Beachtime

2011-06-19T11:00:00+00:00

Editor's introduction: For the next four weeks Radio 4 Extra's running a season of "gripping, escapist summer reading... twisted family drama, sweeping romance and, above all, great story-telling by best-selling authors old, new and to come..." I asked the producers, Lucy Collingwood (LC) and Gemma Jenkins (GJ), to tell us a bit more about the project on the blog - PM.

LC: It's been great to have the opportunity to produce some different kinds of books for this new season. We searched for popular page turners that are real holiday reads. We spent a couple of months reading dozens of novels on our journeys to work and were really impressed by the ones we ended up choosing.

As we plan our productions quite far in advance, we were reading a lot of these through November and December. It was a good test of the books to see if they could really transport us to a different place and help us escape from a delayed tube journey on a snowy morning in December.

GJ: I decided to undertake a surreptitious straw poll during my train journey up to work to get an idea of what seemed to be the most popular books. I got a few odd looks as I tried to peer at book covers and decipher titles from across the aisle. There were a few surprises - someone was reading teach yourself Mandarin and someone else was engrossed in a book about pure mathematics - but, on the whole, the desire to escape into another world seemed a firm favourite.

During my reading, I discovered I had a taste for the more lurid end of the market - glamorous worlds with genuine moustache twirling villains and revenge plots to rival a Jacobean Tragedy but due to their epic scale it would have been too tricky to abridge them down into 5x30 minute episodes. Shame!

LC: I had really strong emotional reactions to both of the books I ended up producing for the season, Before I Go to Sleep by SJ Watson and To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal - which I thought was a pretty good sign! When I started reading Before I Go to Sleep, it reminded me of the films Memento and 50 First Dates as it is about a woman having no short term memory. However, a few pages in I was totally hooked by this truly gripping, original story and literally couldn't put it down (or go to sleep myself) before I knew what happened to her. I know Alison Joseph, the abridger, felt the same.

To Be Sung Underwater floored me. I was immediately swept up in the writing, in Judith's inspiring teenage summers in Nebraska and her long lost love story. It made me want to go and stay in a cabin and eat muffins with chokecherry jam myself. And in the end (without giving anything away) I found myself sobbing whilst heading home one evening, squashed in between commuters trying to hold on to my book, the pole and find a tissue without revealing anything to my fellow travellers.

GJ: Coming from a close-knit family myself I really warmed to the characters in Joanna Trollope's Daughters-in-Law, although their behaviour drove me mad at times too. While recording the romantic comedy, To The Moon and Back by Jill Mansell, I got the perfect response from the studio manager when we'd finished the first day's recording. As he wasn't scheduled to cover the next day, he pulled me to one side and said, "So, does he get the girl in the end?" Well, you'll just have to wait and see!

It's been a total pleasure working on the series and we hope listeners will enjoy the season as much as we did making it.

Book at Beachtime is produced by Lucy Collingwood and Gemma Jenkins

Book at Beachtime starts on Radio 4 Extra on June 20th at 2.30pm and runs from Monday to Friday for the next 4 weeks. You can also listen online on the Radio 4 Extra website.
The picture shows Maracas beach in Trinidad
Read more entries tagged "book" on the Radio 4 and 4 Extra blog

Bringing Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate with Kenneth Branagh to Radio 4

2011-05-27T13:57:00+00:00

Editor's note: It's been known for a while that Radio 4 were adapting Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate, a great passion of Radio 4's former controller, to run over one week. It's been announced today that Kenneth Branagh will be playing the central role of Viktor.

Producing the Radio 4 dramatisation of Life and Fate has been something of a revelation to me. The brainchild of Mark Damazer, former Controller of Radio 4, for whom it is the greatest novel of the twentieth century, it was for me entirely unknown.

Most listeners are in the same boat as me although, as a Russian speaker, I was surprised I didn't even know the title. So I read it. And felt fairly convinced it was an impossible challenge. Fabulous prose, complex characters, beautifully translated but too long, too many characters to follow, what slot could possibly accommodate it?

But with the help of two experienced radio dramatisers, Jonathan Myerson (who had actually read the book) and Mike Walker (who hadn't, but read it fast) we have found a way round some of those obstacles.

The novel is a sprawling epic, telling the loosely interconnected stories of members of one Russian family and their different experiences during the Battle of Stalingrad, the battle which clinched the defeat of the Germans in WWII. It works almost like a series of longish short stories: the number of characters named in the novel runs to over a thousand though the timespan is only a few months (Sept 1942 - April 1943). And the locations range from the frontline in Stalingrad to the Lubyanka in Moscow, from a Russian labour camp to a Nazi gas chamber, from Kuibyshev to Kazan, from the northern forests to the river Volga and more.

But the storylines of each group of characters largely stand alone so it is possible, for example, to read only the chapters about Viktor (the character most closely based on the author himself, Vasily Grossman) and get a complete story. And that structural device turned out to be the key to unlock a dramatic structure.

We decided to take over every drama slot in a single week and, rather than a straightforward linear retelling of the book, try and make each play stand alone by focussing on one set of characters. So we hope listeners can dip in and out without feeling they have lost the thread if they miss an episode or two (though we are also offering chances to catch up via series stacking and downloads for those who want the full experience).

I've recorded the first three hours since last June, an unusually long-drawn-out experience for radio drama which tends to work closer to the wire than that. But we wanted to benefit from several different groupings of the Radio Drama Company, our actors' repertory, and the dramatisers needed time to write the different scripts. Jonquil Panting will direct another three hours or so in June and then I will do the final parts in July - in which, I am thrilled to say, Kenneth Branagh will take the key role of Viktor.

I have now read the book three times though still not in Russian. It's not hard or obscure though I will admit there aren't many jokes. There are such compelling characters, such sharp, tiny detail, such profound but clear comments on life - and indeed fate - that it lives up to re-reading. I hope our dramatisation can distil some of the essence of what has become my Desert Island book and raise the profile of this little-known treasure.

Alison Hindell is Head of Audio Drama

The eight-hour dramatisation of Life And Fate by Vasily Grossman will take over every drama slot (apart from The Archers) across a week in September.

The Silver Sword comes to Radio 4 Extra

2011-04-29T21:10:00+00:00

[L to R] Barry Letts as Joseph and Frazer Hines as Jan in the 1957 BBC serialisation of The Silver Sword

The first time I saw my father's book The Silver Sword being transferred to another medium was in 1957. I was 7, and Dad took me and my older sister Helen up to Shepherd's Bush, where a black-and-white television version was being filmed. We watched the young actors scrabbling through the studio rubble, and I remember being completely astonished that the producer called everybody "Darling".

Over 50 years later, a question was sent to the Daily Mail's 'Answers to Correspondents' page: "Does anyone remember a TV programme from the Fifties about children looking for their parents in war-torn Europe? I think it was called The Silver Sword". One of the excellent replies came from Frazer Hines, who wrote, "I played Jan, a ten-year-old Polish tearaway. This was in the days when families sat down together for Sunday lunch then watched the afternoon serial. The Silver Sword was a popular show, and even today people will come up to me and say, 'Aren't you off the TV?' When I say, 'What, Emmerdale?', they say, 'No, that thing about the sword.'"

So I was excited when I and my brother Andrew were invited to Manchester to watch the recording of a new radio adaptation by Chris Wallis. "You probably know the book better than anyone else," said Charlotte Riches, the producer. "We want you to tell us if anything doesn't ring true."

I watched fascinated as the group worked fast to get the three episodes recorded in three days. Stage Managers hunted for - or created - sounds of houses being blown up, dogs barking, dustbin lids banging, a silver sword falling to the ground. In any scene involving the youngest child 'Bronia', Charlotte ran quickly between the actors by their microphone and her chair in the darkened studio (the number of minutes children can work without a break are strictly timed). Accuracy was a priority: the Polish children called their father "Tatush", and Jimpy the cockerel was "Yimpy".

In the small actors' room I met the cast and discovered that when not acting, 'Edek' is a carpenter and 'Ruth' a writer; 'Jan', who had starred in West is West, had just got off a plane from America, and 'Bronia' (always accompanied by one parent) much preferred a day at the studio to a day in school. I even got to act one line where a 'woman' was needed! - while my brother became a lorry driver and then provided his beautiful warm voice as the announcer at the beginning and end of each episode.

But all was not straightforward. I felt that one scene in Chris's script clashed badly with the spirit of the book. Chris had inserted a very explicit scene where Ivan takes the children, who need shoes for the next stage of their journey, to a huge dark warehouse, containing 'a mountain of shoes' next to a 'mountain of teeth' and 'a mountain of spectacles.' I felt that this graphic concentration camp image had no place in a play that was otherwise very faithful to the gentle spirit of the original. I wonder what you will think of the compromise we reached in Episode 2.

There seems to be much interest in The Silver Sword at the moment - a year before the centenary of Dad's birth. Perhaps this story about refugees, and the courage of children in perilous circumstances they cannot control, is as relevant as ever. Options are out for a stage version and a TV film, and it is currently featured as one of five classic war stories for children in Once Upon a Wartime, an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum.

It could be that this new radio version will bring the story to new young listeners, and will remind their parents of a book they may remember as having been important to them in their own childhood. Oh - and during the making of this version, nobody called anybody "Darling"!

Jane Serraillier is the daughter of Ian Serraillier, author of The Silver Sword

The Silver Sword starts on Radio 4 Extra on Sunday 1 May.

Adapting Balzac for the Friday Play

2011-01-21T10:07:18+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00xj18k

Editor's note: Adrian Penketh is an actor and playwright. He's adapted a novel by Honoré de Balzac for The Friday Play - SB.

In the introductory note to my first copy of The Wild Ass's Skin (La Peau de Chagrin), the word 'allegorical' was used in the first paragraph. It's a welcome word for a writer searching for an adaptation, because, crudely speaking, it suggests that the physical setting, while providing a prism, is not the be-all-and-end-all. In this case, 1830s Paris was the prism through which a young, uncompromising Honoré de Balzac was able to produce one of the greatest antidotes to human self-adoration that exists in literature.

The Wild Ass's Skin took me back to playing those old adventure books, plotting my map, encountering strange characters, unreal settings. It has passages in Sanskrit, strange wiggly lines mid sentence. What is this thing? Is he laughing at us? Then it sideswipes you with its astonishing detail, slays you with its arid humour. It drips with the hot political debates of the era, and contains unashamed new-fangled scientific ideas that even Balzac himself renounced later in his career. It was precisely this experimental spirit which captured my imagination. It seemed a shame to allow our lack of knowledge on the subject of Charles the Tenth of France get in the way of this. After all, there's that word: 'allegorical'.

And then there's the sublimely simple hook: The Skin. A concept which, in varying forms, has been well used since, from Dorian Gray to Aladdin. A concept that touches something in every person who's ever asked a friend what they would do if time stood still, or if they found a million pounds in a suitcase... The Skin would therefore be the anchor. If I didn't deviate from that, and didn't take my eye off the clear modern parallels, I could depart from the book while still staying faithful to its ideology.

And the parallels to today are potent: we have the fall of a massive institution; a political shift accompanied by the inevitable apathy and cynicism; and a philosophical choice: serve yourself, for spectacular but short term gain, or everyone else, for the good of the world. For the similarities between the 19th century's aristocracy and our own, the investment bankers, you only have to look at the splendour in which they both lived and for which they were once admired, and the subsequent disdain and revulsion to which they were subjected, more, probably, to deflect our own corruption than theirs.

The first idea was kind of crude: In the book, Raphael spins his last Napoleon on the roulette wheel before leaving to throw himself in the Seine. In the play, Rupert throws his 'last' fifty quid at a stripper before heading off to the Thames. It helped to see these two men almost as brothers. The key difference was that in the book Raphael is broke, in the play Rupert decides to give his money away. Raphael believes he is faceless because he has no money; Rupert believes that his money has made him faceless, and passes on his whole being, contained inside a wallet, to a perfect stranger, heightening Balzac's notion that if you're looking for happiness, your bank account is not an ideal place to start.

The biggest decision I made early was to use no narration, thus making it impossible to get too ponderous. My personal tastes, being more anchored in the economy of 20th century dialogue, allowed me to make pretty sweeping, unapologetic changes relatively free from literary guilt, the most dramatic of which being the whole of Part Two, in which Raphael details his love for and betrayal by "The woman without a heart" - Foedora. In the book, Foedora represents High Society turning its back on Raphael. In the play, she is the world of Finance itself, seducing and rejecting Rupert in equal measure. And in any case, I decided one love story was enough for a 57-minute play.

Balzac's book was opulent and full of colour; my play is claustrophobic and dark; his book targeted the wealthy classes, mine attempts to reflect today's scattergun approach to moral responsibility. I also have a sneaking suspicion I've been more generous in my helpings of hope than Balzac would have approved of, particularly perhaps with regard to the end. The most famous line of the book reads something like: "All the happiness of the world can be contained in one hour of love". But where Balzac turns this idea on its head by bringing the book to a literal climax in a rushed and passionate sex scene, I chose the other kind of love. Besides, I could only think of one way Balzac's ending could be done, and who needs to hear that coming out the radio?

Adrian Penketh adapted The Wild Ass's Skin for BBC Radio 4

Listen to The Wild Ass's Skin Reloaded on BBC Radio 4 tonight at 2100 and on the Radio 4 web site for seven days after that.
The illustration is from the title page of an 1897 edition of Balzac's 'The Wild Ass's Skin' (or 'The Magic Skin'). It's from the Wikimedia Commons.
Download the text of Balzac's allegory (which is out of copyright), in various digital formats, from Project Gutenberg.

Robin Brooks on dramatising Robert Graves for radio

2010-12-12T14:08:04+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wfqps

Robin Brooks dramatised 'I, Claudius' for BBC Radio 4. Here, he writes about the pleasures of adapting Graves for radio. His post begins with a clip from the current episode - SB

As material for dramatisation, one of the best things about 'I, Claudius' is that it starts very well and then gets better as it goes on. As the dynasty unravels - Graves produces more and more splendid villains for our delectation: grandma-serial killer Livia, her son the morose and sexually perverted Tiberius, ghastly Gnaeus Piso (to whom the telly version devotes virtually an entire episode), Tiberius's slimy sidekick Sejanus, nephew Caligula, who can now be heard waiting about on the fringes of the action, ready to reveal himself as the most glorious psychopath of all, even Claudius's monstrous, murderous wife Urgulanilla, will now get her moment in the spotlight. Livia herself is still hanging grimly on, and in episode 3 she has a long scene with Claudius, in which she finally reveals to him the extent of her villainy. These characters are a gift to the writer, and to the actors, who, as I hope you've noticed by now, attack them with delightful relish.

One of the more unusual aspects about this production has been the golden memory of the television version. I have heard some people claim that this is definitive, and that no further version need be made. I think that's nonsense; I, Claudius is a classic, and deserves re-interpretation as much as any other. But there's no denying that the 70's series is remembered vividly by everyone who saw it, and that it is a very, very hard act to follow.

One of things that makes it possible to attempt our own version is the difference between the two media. Take the scene in episode 1 in which soothsayer Thrasyllus announces Tiberius's recall to Rome because of the drowning of his rival. In the book, Thrasyllus talks to a little wren which perches close by to deliver the good news. (One of the things I like most about Graves is that he takes magic and ancient superstition very seriously). In the TV version a trained wren is not a practical possibility. Jack Pullman has a centurion come in and deliver the news, and then turns this to his advantage by showing the centurion's appalled reaction to Tiberius's delighted laughter at the drowning.

With the magic of radio, the original presents no problem - the wren arrives, chirrups, flutters off - and the same might be said of many more such scenes: gladiatorial combat and mutinying legions are all rather easier to do on radio than elsewhere, unless you have Ridley Scott or Charlton Heston on board, of course. I suppose what I'm saying in a nutshell is that radio adaptation - certainly as far as 'I, Claudius' is concerned - allows one to be more faithful, really extremely faithful, to the book, and this is very satisfying to me personally, because I have always loved the novel. What it comes down to in the end, is that Robert Graves wrote a truly wonderful book.

Robin Brooks

Listen to 'Sejanus', the third episode of 'I, Claudius' on Sunday at 1500 and listen again on the Radio 4 web site.
The picture shows Tim McInnerny as Tiberius.
There's a very handy 'I, Claudius' family tree on the Radio 4 web site (PDF).

Producing and directing Our Mutual Friend

2009-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

Editor's note: the second instalment of our series about this year's big Christmas adaptation, Our Mutual Friend, is by producer/director Jessica Dromgoole:

5 May 2009. Behold London! Behold Oxford Circus tube station! Behold Broadcasting House! Behold 60a! The studio is primed for nine days of wonder. Ordinarily, four weeks of Woman's Hour Dramas would take twelve days to record, but we're ambitious for the economy of scale; creating complex equations of cast size, cast calibre and time spent on the episodes. Jeremy and I have been poring over the recording schedule for longer than is healthy, with an eye to clustered threads of story, locations, the actors' availability, and the Studio Managers' and our own sanity. Matilda and James - the broadcast assistants - have been negotiating with contracts, agents, the actors themselves, the actors' childminders, and the radio rep coordinator, keeping up with our ambitions, and often exceeding them. They're extraordinary.

The first day is daunting. Jeremy is directing. I'm sitting in, absorbing as much as I can. Everything the actors do today will hold fast for the series. Their vocal choices, the level of their articulacy, the breadth of the comedy, the dynamic of each of their relationships. The strongest boldest performances are already working really well. The actors are loving the script. Outside of the leads, the world of Our Mutual Friend is such a melting pot of front-footed characters, ambitious, driven, delighted with themselves, it calls for size and clarity, and the cast are delivering beautifully.

6 May. My scenes today are new territory, on the whole. The Boffins with Rokesmith. Jason asks whether Mr Boffin knows who John is yet. None of us know. He demonstrates the difference it makes to his performance, which is huge, but not revealing. We decide that yes, he does know, or he's 95% certain, and he's testing Rokesmith by showing him round the old house. Colin (Guthrie) and Anne (Bunting) - the Studio Managers - are working beautifully together, creating a London that is very true and simple, and doesn't feel clichéd Victoriana at all. Lee Ross gives us a variety of Weggs. He's not happy with the voice yet. He'd painted him huge and primary in the readthrough, setting a fantastic bar for everyone else there, but wants to find something else. We record the first encounter with Boffin over and over, trying to hit the dynamic which will persuade us that these men belong to the same story, and when it happens, it's a delight.

The actors at the Jolly Fellowship Porters get the giggles every time the Inspector sucks on his pipe. I don't get it. It's been a long day. How Colin and Anne look so fresh is beyond me.

7 May. Jeremy today. Episodes 6-10 already! Some great work with Daisy (Bella) and Carl (John) this morning. Making the series at this pace, it feels too early for John to declare his feelings for Bella, but of course, listening at only fifteen minutes a day, it'll be about time. Lizzie and Jenny Wren are a lovely partnership. Both voices are light and clear, but the actors are heading in different directions - Lizzie's is clouded by difficulty, Jenny's luminous with confidence. As Jeremy prepares for the Eugene/Bradley confrontation over the billiard table, I say 'Oh, my favourite scene of the whole series'. A look of panic crosses Jeremy's face, and I wish I hadn't put him under the additional pressure. It's a difficult scene to pull off, because our enjoyment of it depends so strongly on the sightlines and eyeballing of the two men. This is achievable, and Patrick and Neil are really in harmony, but it's not easy.

8 May. Great day. Episode 9 is a break away from the feel of the series so far, and Jamie (Rogue) and Carl (John) are relishing the prospect of a substantial scene. Carl admits afterwards that he was nervous about playing the hard man, out-Jamie-ing Jamie, but they work well together, feeding each other and timing beautifully. It's almost disappointing that they get it so right so quickly. Favourite exchange of the day: 'That's a good table' ... 'It's a dead table now'. We record the drowning. I love drownings on radio. Love them. Topless actors with their heads in washing up bowls of water, surfacing for each line. The method is crude but the effect is fantastic. The washing up bowl comes out. Jonathan (Radfoot) blanches. He's got a cold and didn't know he'd be asked to put his head in the water. We warm the water for him. He's very game. Each element sounds great, but we'll have to wait for the edit to see how they fit together.

11 May. I can't be in studio today. Too much else to do. I've got a studio (for In Mates, an Afternoon Play) at the end of the month and need to turn the script around in time to cast it. I live so resolutely in Our Mutual Friend, I'm aware that I'm trying to cast In Mates like an Our Mutual Friend reunion*. Jeremy is recording Rogue's drowning, Wegg's first turning of the Boffin screw, and the Wilfers' anniversary dinner, cooked by Bella. I email-pester Matilda and James asking for progress reports. I send two texts to Jeremy by lunchtime. I'm an Our Mutual Friend stalker. Absence is focusing my mind exquisitely. I'm done by four, and hot foot it to Broadcasting House, and back to the oxygen of filthy old London. I'm sent straight into studio to be an extra in the Jolly Fellowship Porters. I'm rubbish. People wish I'd stayed away. *I do, and Pauline Quirke (Mrs Boffin) plays Michelle, Lizzy Watts (Lizzie) plays Kirsty, Malcolm Tierney (Old Harmon) plays the father-in-law, and Ben Askew (Sloppy) plays Pavel.

12 May. Busy studio today. A lot of short scenes. A lot of movement. Something strikes me about the third week of the series. The third quarter of the book, too. The characters are set, and there is little time to delight in their foibles and quirks. Their journeys are at their most complex, and they are - for the most part - facing the worst of their troubles. Individually the scenes are exciting, witty, beautifully turned. Together the day is enormous. We fail to record all the scenes on the schedule. We've been breaking our backs to keep to the schedule, and plug at each scene until we're perfectly happy, and it's a horrible feeling to be responsible for the one lapse. It's a sad day, too, because characters are beginning to leave the series. Saying goodbye to Nicola (Jenny) is unnecessarily hurried because of my schedule guilt. We'll see her on Thursday at the aftershow drinks, but the studio will be smaller without her.

13 May. Jeremy's day, full of exquisite two handed scenes - Rogue and Bradley, John and Bella, Bradley and Charlie, Eugene and Lizzie. The actors are so sure of who they are by now, and so compelled by the paths of their own stories, Jeremy is directing them so simply, and Colin and Anne are approaching them with so little clutter, sitting in the cubicle is a privilege. It's fascinating how Dickens has moved his characters - his leads - from uncertainty, questing, fecklessness, superficiality, towards something more driven, more sure, more in line with the bigger, bolder characters who have peopled the world they move in.

14 May. The last day of full cast recording. I mustn't give away the story, but there are scenes and moments, and performances I will treasure. A double drowning. Two brimming washing up bowls. Two discarded tops. My favourite thing, twice. Bradley's justification, which Neil and I worked on until it had barely an inflection at all; Rokesmith's wild moment of clarity on the street with Mortimer, where Carl manages to suggest that he is working with only the top 5% of his brain; Wegg's counterattack at the moment of his comeuppance, which Lee gives with utter conviction, silencing the room and possibly delivering the message of the book; these come once in a blue moon ordinarily. To get to work on them all in one day is utopian. We end on Lizzie's song, which feels lovely and obscure, carrying a lot of the tone, but none of the narrative of the series, and then repair to the pub for drinks with as many of the cast as possible. Carl and Neil are both appearing in theatre, so don't make it, and are missed, but the atmosphere is very positive and celebratory. I leave as Nicola is offering Jamie a wheelchair lift to his home in South East London on her lap.

15 May. Alex Jennings. So completely at ease with Dickens, Mike's writing, the microphone. He's a joy. He's disappointed to have been such an outsider to the process, having called in to studio the day before and 'felt the love', but we can tell how crucial his voice and his interest will be to the pieces as a whole.

Jessica Dromgoole is a producer at BBC Radio Drama

Radio 4's 20-part adaptation of Our Mutual Friend begins on Monday at 1945
Jeremy Mortimer, Executive Producer, wrote about adapting Our Mutual Friend here on the blog last week.
Look out for further blog reports on the recording process, with contributions from composer Roger Goula, studio manager Colin Guthrie and members of the cast.
We'd love to hear your thoughts about Dickens dramatisations you have heard and enjoyed on the radio. And which of the novels do you think Radio 4 should tackle next?
There are production photos of the whole cast, taken for Radio 4 by Phil Fisk, here.

Adapting Our Mutual Friend for radio

2009-10-27T12:00:00+00:00

Of course making a Hollywood film, or directing at the National Theatre may be all very well (I wouldn't know as I haven't done either) but there are times when there is simply nothing more rewarding than being in the radio studio working on a really meaty drama serial. Over the last few months I've had the chance to work on the twenty episode dramatisation of Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, and the Radio 4 Blog people thought it might be an idea for us to share some of the behind the scenes stuff about the making of a big radio drama. So here is my diary of the work that went into the first, crucial part of the process - the scripts.

And you can listen to a short conversation between me and writer Mike Walker here:

October 2007. The last day of recording Dombey and Son. We are doing the Dickens narrations with Alex Jennings, and he asks which Dickens we're going to do next. Mike Walker (writer) Jessica Dromgoole and I (producers) have been having snatched conversations about this, but haven't reached a conclusion. Mike and I have worked on four Dickens dramatisations for the R4 Woman's Hour drama slot - Nicholas Nickleby (2001), The Old Curiosity Shop (2003), and David Copperfield (2005). Dickens' novels seem to fall so naturally into short episodes - possibly because he wrote them in serial form. The characters seem to be perfectly formed for radio, and the audience has responded well to the brilliant Dickens mix of comedy and high drama. So what next?

May 2008. The decision has been taken, and we have sent the proposal to Radio 4 Drama commissioner Jeremy Howe. We have gone for Our Mutual Friend. We're a bit nervous about this because it is Radio 4 Controller Mark Damazer's favourite Dickens. But we're excited by the challenges posed by Dickens' sprawling novel (his last complete work) in which corpses, identities and reputations rise and fall in the tidal reaches of London's great river.

July 2008. We get the green light. Our Mutual Friend will be broadcast in twenty episodes starting in November 2009. We have already done a breakdown of the story into the four weekly parts, but now we have to break it down into its fifteen minute episodes, making sure that no episode uses more than seven characters. It is quite a challenge. We book the drama studio in Broadcasting House for nine days recording in May 2009.

September 2008. Over the summer we have all been re-reading the book. Mike submits a revised episode breakdown and we have a long meeting in which we sort some key questions about the plot, and try to get to the bottom of the character of John Rokesmith - the Mutual Friend himself.

November 2008. The first ten scripts come in. Always an exciting moment. How will the characters behave - do we care about them. It is clear immediately that Bella Wilfer is going to be a star. Feisty, funny and impetuous. We're still not so sure about Rokesmith. Who is he?

December 2008. With recording just a few months away the pressure is on. We now have 15 of the scripts, but we know they will need to go through a couple more drafts. We're confident that Mike can do it. He seems to be able to live and breathe Dickens. He doesn't so much adapt the books as re-make them for radio. Every episode needs a cliff-hanger, and every character needs their own moment in the sun.

January 2009. 2 January 2009. My email to Mike Walker:

I think you have done a grand job in pulling it all together - and there are some truly excellent scenes. But I reckon that for draft 2 we need to do quite a bit of honing and polishing just to keep the listeners on track, and we need to underline the two key romances of the story so that they know whose lives they are following. I found that the Riderhoods, and to a degree the Wegg/Venus stories slightly got in the way at times, and I found my attention wandering. Also lost track of Bradley and Eugene. Really hard to underline without being too obvious, but we can use Dickens more, and I think that it is about getting the nuances right in the story.

We now have first drafts of all twenty scripts. We need a long script meeting to sort out the key moments in the climax of the story - a business of multiple revelations.

February 2009. Second draft scripts come in thick and fast. We still need to make more of the Dickens narration. We are strict with ourselves in the use of this. It is not to be used to tell the story - that's the role of the drama. But we want the listener to be able to see how the characters affect their creator. Dickens has written that his characters tend to write themselves. He watches their antics and is often surprised by what they do.

March 2009. Third draft scripts come in. All the stories now interweave in a way that we think the listeners will be able to follow, and the various denouements seem to work. There are some exciting action sequences which will be tricky to pull off in the studio, but we're up for the challenge. Jessica and I have started a scene breakdown, which will become a vital tool as a recording schedule.

April 2009. The Radio Drama Company - a small team of actors contracted to the Radio Drama Department - is a crucial resource for us, and we have now cast quite a few key roles from the company. Music is also crucial to the production. I have just been to a showcase of graduates from the National Film and Television school and was very struck by the work of a young composer, Roger Goula. Jessica and I listen to his work and invite him in. Roger appears undaunted by the challenge of writing music for twenty episodes of a radio serial, or by the fact that we want him to present us with key themes before we start recording.

1st April. We get the good news that Alex Jennings is free to take the role of Dickens. Of course his availability might change, but it feels like a good start.

On the day that we receive the final scripts (9th April) we start casting in earnest. Our wish list is a mix of old friends and new actors we have never worked with before. We start sending out scripts.

20th April. Our first choice for the part of Jenny Wren is Nicola Miles-Wildin, who Jessica auditioned over the phone. Nicola uses a wheelchair and some of the production team need to complete wheelchair evacuation training in Broadcasting House. We spend a few hours lowering each other downstairs in a chair with caterpillar tracks.

22nd April. The recording schedule has been completed. Over eight recording days we will be recording a new scene every twenty minutes. Jessica and I will direct on alternate days.

1st May 2009. 10.00 am. Twenty-two actors assemble, together with Mike and Roger, in a windowless room in Bush House for the readthrough, which will take most of the day. Everyone is nervous, but excited. Alex Jennings starts:

Behold! London. And the river - silver and black under the moon - silver and silent... A big man, hunched at the prow - grizzled hair - wind blown face... peering up-river at the coming tide.

Jeremy Mortimer is Executive Producer, BBC Radio Drama

Look out for further blog reports on the recording process, with contributions from Jeremy's fellow-producer Jessica Dromgoole, composer Roger Goula, studio manager Colin Guthrie and members of the cast.
Radio 4's 2007 production of Dombey and Son
A fascinating account of the serialisation of Our Mutual Friend in 1864 and 65 by Robert L. Patten at Rice University and of the great dust-heap from R.H. Horne.
We'd love to hear your thoughts about Dickens dramatisations you have heard and enjoyed on the radio. And which of the novels do you think Radio 4 should tackle next?
There are production photos of the whole cast, taken for Radio 4 by Phil Fisk, here.

Dramatising the Lockerbie trial

2009-08-28T10:06:37+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00760w8

Steve (editor of the Radio 4 blog) asked me if we had any interesting material about the genesis of the Lockerbie on Trial programme that I co-produced with Margaret Renn back in 2001: court transcripts, etc. that he could use on this blog. I thought my offer of sending him the nearly 10,000 pages I have on file was a bit cheeky, but it did prompt me to recall the crazy days we spent in producing the programme.

It was an extraordinary trial and it seemed to me that one way of getting to the bottom of the story was to do a dramatised reconstruction of the trial itself, to get the feel of the court and the barristers, the judges and the gallery of witnesses, some of whom appeared to be characters straight out of a spy novel by John le Carré, and all in their own words. We wanted to tell the whole arc of the story. Slightly insanely I also persuaded Radio 4 that we should try and broadcast the programme while it was still in the news. Of course the problem with that was that no one knew when the trial would end: the transmission date, and therefore the production date, was a completely moving target.

Margaret, Peter Goodchild (the writer) and I had been tracking the story for months: the court sat for 84 days, commencing proceedings in May 2000 with long breaks for adjournments. Peter digested the daily transcripts, but by Christmas there was no end in sight. Then in January things changed, and events moved pretty rapidly when the defence teams announced that they would be offering no further evidence. Instead of having several months to gear up we had several days. What had been an ambitious programme idea looked alarmingly like it might become very real very fast. Which made me feel physically sick.

I remember sitting in a café in Bristol on the Wednesday the verdict was announced. The three of us calmly discussed the release of Fhimah and the conviction of Megrahi, and working out how we would put the programme together. All the time I was thinking how on earth do we write and make a drama which had been given a 90 minute transmission slot in just under three weeks time? Had I gone completely mad? Small matters like Peter needing to make informed decisions on which 9900 pages of transcript to junk and which 90 to keep in, decisions which needed to be made by the weekend.

It didn't help Peter that the verdict was not exactly what we had been expecting - in short we tore up all our homework and started almost from scratch. It was a long lunch. Apart from booking a studio for a three day record and a three day edit the week after next, and starting to think about casting a dozen or so actors with a variety of accents ranging from Scottish to American via Maltese, Libyan and Eastern European, there was precious little I could do until I had a draft script. I left early as I had to write the programme billing for the Radio Times to meet their deadline that afternoon: as a drama producer I do find it helps to write these things once the programme has been finished, not before I had started.

Now I had long preached how drama on radio could be reactive to news stories in a way that television could not, because of the very short production process radio drama has, but I had never actually made anything this fast. It felt like I had put my head on a block and had invited someone to chop it off. In public. I kind of think you need a fear factor to make an outstanding programme. But this was fear factor 10.

If I am an honest, making the programme was like making any other: the budgetting, the casting, the scripting, the scheduling, getting the logistics right - except none of us got any sleep, we all traveled at the speed of light and there was never an opportunity to deliberate over decisions. All this was tempered by the fact that the three of us felt an enormous duty of care to the victims of Pan Am 103, to their relatives and to the huge number of people who had given up their lives to bring this case to justice. We had to get it right.

Peter delivered several drafts of the script, with Margaret (a journalist) giving him notes on accuracy and nuance and me (a drama producer) giving him entirely contrary notes about the dramatic thrust of the storyline. Amazingly he never shouted at us. Miraculously we kind of had a cast by the time we started recording less than a fortnight after our Bristol lunch date, and the completed programme was biked over to Radio 4 with two days to spare before broadcast.

And listening to it again I am still very proud of it - not because I think it is a good programme or that we did it so fast - but because I believe we had done the story justice.

BBC News Online's special feature on Lockerbie from after the appeal in 2003.
Lockerbie on Trial airs in the Saturday Play slot at 1430 tomorrow. You'll be able to listen to the programme here for seven days after transmission.
The picture, captioned 'Libyans, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah (left) and Abdel Basset Ali Al Megrahi (right), both wanted in connection with the Lockerbie bombing of Boeing 747 Pan Am flight 103' is from the BBC's picture library.

The Complete Smiley

2009-05-23T10:00:00+00:00

About 3 years ago, and very new to the job of Commissioning Editor for Drama for Radio 4, I was walking back from the bank to my office when my mobile rang. It was Patrick Rayner, the Head of Drama in Scotland.

"Jeremy, I know it stretches the definition of classic a bit and it is not Scottish, but what would you think of us doing one of the George Smiley trilogy as a Classic Serial?"

"It's a great idea, and it's classic enough for me." Pause "But why not do all three?" I said.

"Well we could, if you think the Network could stand that much Smiley."

"Yes I do. How many other Smiley novels are there?"

There was a comical interlude where from our collective memories we tried to remember all the other novels in which one of the smartest and most intriguing characters in twentieth century British fiction featured. It was like one of those games you played at drunken parties at university - we both knew there were a lot, we couldn't quite get all the titles in a sequence, but we reckoned we were talking about eight titles, which is about twenty hours of air time. Most Classic Serials run for between two and three hours; twenty hours is kind of uncharted territory.

Now commissioning programmes is quite a complicated process - given that I commission 400 hours of drama a year and am bombarded with programme ideas from every which way it takes a lot of administration, which involves systems and form filling-in, and box ticking and all the other gubbins associated with bureaucracy. But in the end you know it is a good idea or not almost instantly. And this was very definitely a Good Idea.

"Ok lets do the lot," I said.

Patrick, who has delivered over forty brilliant Sherlock Holmes, and was about to direct Paul Temple all for Radio 4, was absolutely the right person to do them, the television versions were ancient, the radio versions equally so (all with different actors playing Smiley), and it was exactly the kind of ambition we were looking for the drama output on the Network. I also thought it would be something of a treat for the audience, a Classic Serial to relish.

I needed to convince my boss (Mark Damazer, the Controller of Radio 4). I casually floated it past him one morning -

"Mark, what would you say to us doing the complete Smiley?"

He paused. His eyes lit up and he launched into a one sentence eulogy about Smiley - albeit a very long sentence, kind of ten minutes long. Well maybe fifteen. We had a deal.

So why has it taken nearly three years to get to air? After all one episode of a Classic Serial takes about five days to record, edit and dub.

I asked Patrick to make tentative soundings about the rights.

In principle they were available.

In practice they were not.

Months - where nothing much happened - passed.

Now I had never met John le Carré, but nothing ventured nothing gained I sent him a letter asking for his help in persuading his secretive American agent to grant us the radio rights. It is the kind of letter you send, and never expect to get an answer to, so when a few days later my assistant told me that John le Carré's wife was on the phone I was astonished. She told me her husband thought the Radio 4 plan was an excellent idea and they would look into securing the rights.

What the combined heft of the BBC Copyright Department, Controllers and commissioners had failed to unlock over months the author himself opened within days.

But that is only the start.

Believe me, turning 2000 odd pages of brilliant prose into twenty hours of compelling dramatisation is not a simple matter. We hired the best writers (Robert Forrest whose version of Resurrection by Tolstoy was peerless and whose Pillow Book rendered a book of ancient Japanese courtly lists into a superb murder mystery) and Shaun McKenna (his To Serve Them All My Days was compelling), had lengthy discussions about whether or not to use a narrator, on who should play George Smiley (well Simon Russell Beale of course, to the part born I say), spent ages working out how to play out the series (in one twenty hour block or threaded across the schedule for a year), on setting up a co-production between BBC Scotland and the London Radio Drama department, etc., etc.

All I had to do was encourage the team - Patrick and Marc Beeby (his co-producer), the two writers, the Broadcast Assistants, the sound engineers and the illustrious and brilliant cast who have done the real graft.

But I think you are in for a real treat.

The Complete Smiley starts this afternoon with Call for the Dead and continues until April 2010.
Mark Lawson interviewed John le Carré at length on last night's Front Row: fascinating.
Radio 4 Controller Mark Damazer welcomes the Smiley season, calling it 'treat radio'.
All programmes tagged 'le Carré'
More pictures of Simon Russell Beale as George Smiley.