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Wally K. Daly’s eight-part comedy about a young couple who scoop the jackpot on the football pools

Bank clerk Sam Baker spends all day surrounded by other people’s money. For four years, he’s been hopefully filling out a pools coupon every week, and dreaming of a big win – but with no joy. Then one day, Lady Luck finally smiles on him. To his total amazement, he wins half a million pounds – enough to change his life, and that of his wife Annabel.

The duo are delighted with their good fortune, and head off to London to collect the cheque and celebrate. But when their family and friends find out the news, and the press get in on the act, Sam and Annabel discover that being a pools winner isn’t roses all the way. Their newfound wealth is going to take a bit of getting used to – and there are a few surprises in store for everyone…

Scripted by veteran writer Wally K. Daly, Give or Take stars David Roper (The Cuckoo Waltz, EastEnders) as Sam and Sharon Duce (Doctors, London’s Burning) as Annabel, alongside a host of well-known character actors including Patsy Rowlands, John Horsley, Gorden Kaye, Tenniel Evans and Hugh Paddick.

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BBC radio dramatisations of classic novels featuring some of literature’s most devious and compelling villains

Cunning. Corrupt. Charismatic. The degenerate characters in this collection shun conventional morality, and will stop at nothing to get what they want… These five sensational dramas, set in locations ranging from 16th century Venice to Victorian England, revolve around their unscrupulous actions – and the devastating consequences of the choices they make.

Othello – Lenny Henry stars in this acclaimed production of Shakespeare’s great tragedy of love turned sour by unfounded jealousy. Othello is a brave general and a noble man – but the evil manipulations of his lieutenant, Iago (Conrad Nelson) provoke his descent into deluded rage.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Introduced by David Tennant, this fast-moving dramatisation tells the disturbing tale of a scientist who experiments on himself to release his uncontrollable dark side, and of the lawyer’s daughter determined to bring him to book. Starring Stuart MacQuarrie, John Dougall and Madeleine Worrell.

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Vain, hedonistic aristocrat Dorian Gray makes a Faustian pact to preserve his youthful beauty. But after years of decadence and selfish pleasure, is retribution on the horizon? Jamie Glover and Ian McDiarmid star in this adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s famous novel.

Lady Audley’s Secret– Newly married to rich widower Lord Audley, former governess Lucy Graham glories in the delights of her new life. When her scandalous past is discovered, she will dare anything to preserve the security and wealth she has gained… Starring Hattie Morahan, Charlotte Emerson and Alex Wyndham, this thrilling serial retains all the mystery and suspense of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Gothic ‘sensation novel’.

Confessions of a Justified Sinner – Robert Colwan believes he is destined for salvation no matter what crimes he commits. If you can kill without paying the price, how murderous can you become? And what, if anything, does that do to your psyche? Lorn Macdonald stars in this tense, eerie reimagining of James Hogg’s seminal novel about a young man radicalised by religious fanaticism.

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A world famous conductor is found dead in his dressing room between acts in La Traviata. Venice is horrified. What damage will this do to the city’s reputation? And that of its great opera house, La Fenice?

The opening of Donna Leon’s first Commissario Brunetti crime novel was to set the pattern for her 30 year love affair with the thoughtful Venetian detective – a relationship shared with multiple millions of readers throughout the world in the series of prize-winning novels that followed.

Now a two-part drama based on that first Brunetti book, Death at La Fenice, has been commissioned by BBC Radio 4 with a top-line cast including Julian Rhind Tutt as Brunetti, Jeany Spark as Paola, his wife and co-conspirator, and Siobhan Redmond as the well-connected Contessa Falier.

Rather than the stereotypical troubled cop with a dark past and a bleak future, Guido Brunetti is a man full of love – for Paola, his teenage children, local food, the Greek classics and, at the root of it all Venice, La Serenissima. For Venice is as much a character in the Leon books as Brunetti himself. In this new adaptation, every scene evokes a location in the beautiful, sinking city.

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Fresh from his real-life appearance on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Stephen washes up on the island. When he discovers he’s not alone, he soon finds himself in the kind of trouble where the Bible, the Complete Works of Shakespeare, and his luxury item will be no help whatsoever.

Living among the palms and rocky outcrops and thousands of copies of the Bible lying in the sand is every former guest of the show – and it’s all gone a bit Lord Of The Flies.

Through Stephen’s audio diary, we learn that all TV chef Nadiya Hussain wants to do is hunt, that Richard Madeley’s gone feral, and that Sandi Toksvig has the Conch. But there’s something lurking in the forest, and when Stephen suspects foul play in the power struggle to be chief, he makes a dangerous enemy.

Can he win over his fellow islanders before it’s too late? What lengths will he go to to survive? And what the hell is he going to do with this useless coffee machine he chose as his luxury item?

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All four series of the murder mystery game played by people whose business is murder.

Written and chaired by Simon Brett (author of the hugely popular Charles Paris series), this intriguing, interactive panel show challenges professional crime novelists to put their experience and expertise to the test as they try to unravel various mind-bending murder mysteries.

Each episode contains a mini-drama featuring a death and a denouement – with various red herrings and misdirections along the way. As the murder scenario is described and the clues laid out, our writer-detectives take turns cross-examining the suspects. After receiving the latest police updates, it’s time to decide whodunit – but will the panellists correctly identify the perpetrator, or have they been cunningly led astray? We find out in the Foul Play ‘Foul Playlet’, in which the truth is revealed….

All the victims, suspects, witnesses and police officers are consummately played by actors Lee Simpson and Maria McErlane (who part-improvise their roles based on the information they’ve been given), while the guest investigators include Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Lindsey Davis, HRF Keating, PD James, Reginald Hill, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Frances Fyfield, John Harvey, Stella Duffy, Lady Antonia Fraser and Minette Walters. Among the baffling cases they tackle are a dead Dowager Duchess, a 1930s murder at sea, a pantomime crime, a monastery mystery and an Elizabethan court killing.

Devised, written and chaired by Simon Brett
Produced by Ann Jobson and Liz Anstee
Actors: Lee Simpson and Maria McErlane

Series 1 panellists: Liza Cody, Susan Moody, John Harvey, Margaret Yorke, Lindsey Davis, Val McDermid, PD James, HRF Keating, Lady Antonia Fraser, Reginald Hill, Ruth Dudley Edwards and Simon Shaw

Series 2 panellists: Tim Heald, Jessica Mann, Frances Fyfield, Minette Walters, Sarah Dunant, Keith Miles, Paula Gosling, Peter N Walker, Robert Barnard, Caroline Graham, Gavin Lyall and Anthony Price

Series 3 panellists: Lady Antonia Fraser, Anthony Price, PD James, HRF Keating, Susan Moody, Simon Shaw, Liza Cody, Reginald Hill, John Harvey, Val McDermid, Frances Fyfield and Peter N Walker

Series 4 panellists: Ruth Dudley Edwards, Robert Richardson, Jean McConnell, Keith Miles, Jessica Mann, James Melville, Tim Heald, Margaret Yorke, Robert Barnard, Lindsey Davis, Ian Rankin and Stella Duffy

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 7 November-12 December 1996 (Series 1), 27 February-3 April 1997 (Series 2), 18 December 1997-22 January 1998 (Series 3), 11 September -16 October 1998 (Series 4)

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A BBC Radio collection of works by and/or featuring Franz Kafka.

Franz Kafka is regarded as one of the major fiction writers of the 20th century. He was born to a middle-class German-speaking Jewish family in Prague. His unique body of writing – much of which is incomplete and published posthumously – is considered to be among the most influential in Western literature. Kafka’s work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic – and typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include the novella The Metamorphosis and novels The Trial and The Castle. The term Kafkaesque has entered English to describe absurd situations like those depicted in his writing.

Kafka studied at the University of Prague and during his first year of studies, met Max Brod, who would become his close life-long friend. While at university, they joined student club Leseund Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten, which organized literary events, readings and other activities; this piqued Kafka’s interest in literature. Kafka obtained his Law Degree in 1906 was employed full-time by an insurance company, forcing him to relegate writing to his spare time.

Kafka was a prolific writer, spending most of his free time writing, often late into the night. He burned an estimated 90 percent of his total work due to his persistent struggles with self-doubt. During his lifetime, his story collections Contemplation and A Country Doctor, and individual stories, such as his novella The Metamorphosis, were published in literary magazines but received little attention.

He died in obscurity in 1924 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis. In his will, Kafka wrote to friend and literary executor Max Brod: “Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me … in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters, sketches, and so on, is to be burned unread.” Brod overrode Kafka’s wishes, believing that Kafka had given these directions to him specifically because Kafka knew he would not honour them – Brod had told him as much. Brod, in fact, would go on to oversee the publication of most of Kafka’s work in his possession, which soon began to attract attention and receive high critical regard.

The Trial – On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Josef K is arrested. But his crime is not revealed. In attempting to establish his innocence, K steps into a nightmarish world of institutional absurdity he can’t escape.
The most quintessentially ‘Kafkaesque’ of Kafka’s work, The Trial is a sinister satire, charting one man’s descent into self-destruction in the face of a society that has become a machine.

Metamorphosis – Gregor Samsa’s life is dominated by routine – the monotony of his busy commute, mindless call centre job and crowded tower block home is steadily taking its toll. Then one morning Gregor awakes to find himself transformed into a giant insect. As he attempts to master life with six legs, his family must also learn to live with his new look.

The Castle – In Franz Kafka’s mind-warping tale, set in a bureaucratic wonderland, the hapless land-surveyor known only as K answers a summons to work at the mysterious Castle, only to find himself drawn into a labyrinth of terror and absurdity.

The Man Who Disappeared – After a mysterious family scandal, the young immigrant Karl Rossman is expelled from his Bohemian home and dispatched to America by his parents. Adrift in this strange new world, Karl is soon swept up in an America that is by turns a land of endless promise and monstrous brutality. The Man Who Disappeared (also known as Amerika) was Franz Kafka’s first attempt at a novel but remained unfinished at the time of his death and only published posthumously. Kafka had never visited America and the fantastical world of his novel is clearly inspired by the myths and fears wrapped up in the country’s great economic boom of the early 20th century, particularly the rapid rise of big business and industrialisation.

Short Stories – George Guidall reads a selection of Kafka’s short stories including The Penal Colony, Eleven Sons, A Country Doctor, A Report for an Academy, The Judgement and Conversation with the Worshiper.

Kafka’s Dick – Set in the 1980s in a Yorkshire suburban dwelling, Kafka aficionado Sydney, and his wife Linda are visited by the long-dead Kafka and his friend Max Brod. Kafka had left instructions to Brod for all his works to be burned – instructions which Brod chose to ignore. As we spend time with the unusual party, it becomes clear that Kafka’s wish was for anonymity but also that he had serious issues with his father. When his parent turns up, he is in possession of a very personal secret relating to his son – one which Kafka is terrified he will disclose…

Restless Dreams – Restless Dreams takes place during Max Brod’s urgent train journey in 1939 from Prague, fleeing the Nazis, as the world stood on the brink of WWII and everything that entailed for Jewish people, nations and borders. In his suitcase are manuscripts, the unpublished works by Franz Kafka – of no contemporary value but inestimable treasures for the future. In his will, Kafka had instructed Brod, his friend and executor, to burn thousands of pages after his death. Brod ignored the instructions. When guards challenge Brod’s identity, he decides to hide his treasures – but where? Every carriage he tries becomes more and more surreal. Where is this train actually taking him? Why is there a circus troupe in one carriage, a team of philosophers in the next? And who really are all these people who one minute claim to know him, the next deny ever meeting him? Including his own wife, Elsa.

Franz and Felice – An intimate and mischievously punk telling of Franz Kafka’s most significant romantic relationship. Franz and Felice follows the twists and turns of the writer’s relationship with Felice Bauer, how events in their relationship burst violently into Kafka’s stories and imagination, and how his stories responded. And how everything, real and invented, played out in the shadow of his father, the dark presence always ready to enter from the room next door.

Kafka the Musical – The magnetic performance that won David Tennant “Best Actor” at the inaugural BBC Audio Drama Awards for his part as Franz Kafka. Murray Gold’s play starts from the suitably Kafkaesque premise that Franz Kafka finds he has to play himself in a musical about his own life. The play – or is it a musical? – introduces Kafka and the audience to some of the key characters in his life, Milena Jesenska, Dora Diamant and Felice Bauer.

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Sean Lock stars in a surreal comedy masterpiece set in a heavily-bugged London tower block

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 much-missed Sean Lock, these tower block tales revolve around a sardonic misanthrope who, despite his best efforts, can’t seem to keep the world at bay. Holed up in his flat in Elderberry House, he’s constantly bothered by friends, neighbours and confused tourists – so he hides microphones all around the block to listen in to the other residents…

In 15 Minutes of Misery, people persist in seeking Sean out, but fortunately, his plumber Hot Bob has fixed him up with a listening device called the Bugger King (‘nothing to do with meat or sex’). Aided by tech, he happily eavesdrops on the folk around him – from Honest Alf, whose penchant for song lyrics keeps getting him into hot water with the PRS, to Nazi Cyril, Nigel the Hippie, and some Robin Hood-style bank robbers…

15 Storeys High – Crouched on his lonely perch like a smug hermit, Sean continues to sit tight in his tower block flat. With the help of his video entryphone, the Alienate 9000, he can hide in the comfort of his own home – until his mate Stuart comes round, armed with a lava lamp and wanting a place to stay. It’s time for Sean to get himself a flatmate…

Created by and starring Sean Lock, both series feature an outstanding cast, including Hattie Hayridge, Kevin Eldon, Felix Dexter, Jenny Eclair and Peter Serafinowicz.

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The funeral of Faith Lavender, spinster of the parish, is attended by her family and friends and by one stranger – a man named Hubert Gaily, who never met Faith in his life…

Friendship blossoms at the village laundrette, but will Ma Gaily approve?

The villagers of Haverstock look forward to the annual fete and the Gailys make an impression.

Storms break and accidents happen, but can the ladies of Haverstock cope with change?

Friendship and family ties are tested as the villagers of Haverstock hear the sound of wedding bells

Susan Hill’s novel of family ties, friendship and loneliness, set in the small Midland village of Haverstock.

Starring Patricia Hayes as Eleanor Thorne, Gwen Watford as Dorothea Shottery, Stephanie Cole as Alida Thorne and Sian Phillips as Isabel Lavender.

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After working with Charlie Chester on a number of series for BBC Radio, Arthur Haynes became a huge comedy star on ITV from the late 1950s. In 1962, he also returned to radio.

Famed for playing a tramp, Arthur always played men of the street who hit red tape and must fight their way out.

His long-running co-star Nicholas Parsons played Arthur’s long-suffering straight man – long before the arrival of Just A Minute. Their running comic battles proved hugely popular – but were sadly cut short when Arthur suffered a heart attack and died aged just 52 in 1966.

In the first of a fresh run of surviving episodes, Arthur’s tramp character latches on to a young, pliable vicar (Parsons) and is soon making himself far too at home in the vicarage – including abusing the larder.

The vicar tries his best to deal with his new visitor, but his suggestion of getting a job only make matters worse. And then it’s loan time – followed by the arrival of the all tramp’s friends…

Music by the Temperance Seven with vocalist Whispering Paul McDowall

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In this new series for Radio 4, comedian Alison Spittle explores some of her longest and deepest-held grudges. The kind of thing most people would be ashamed to still be thinking about 30 minutes later, let alone contemplating exacting retribution decades on.

Alison and her Wheel of Misfortune co-host Kerry Katona have one very important thing in common: they were both ejected from girl bands at crucial stages of their careers. In Alison’s case, aged 9, from primary school breaktime supergroup The Glitterbabes. It’s an injustice that’s never left her. Can Kerry help her find closure?

There are two things Alison Spittle really loves. EastEnders’ Barry Evans (actor Shaun Williamson) and revenge. And this episode threatens to join her two passions. Shaun runs a popular night called Barrioke – where fans can party and perform karaoke hits on stage with him. Alison has been many times, but she’s never been pulled out of the audience. What gives, Shaun? Alison needs to know.

15 years ago was meant to be the biggest, most romantic day of Alison’s (at that point very young) life. The long-anticipated debs ball (or as the English and Americans like to call it – prom). But her date didn’t show. And now Alison wants to find out why.

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