Drama of the Week

Set inside Britain's housing crisis, six stand-alone but interconnected dramas follow ambition, resilience and the search for belonging.

Tanika Gupta's drama tells the story of the tenants in the crumbling Riverbourne tower block in west London, where damp walls, broken lifts, mould, unsafe wiring and heating failures have been ignored for years while rents continue to climb. The Housing Association claims its mission is to provide homes for “vulnerable tenants” - those unable to sustain a tenancy without support due to age, disability, health conditions, or exceptional circumstances - But in reality the Association neglects repairs and intimidates the very people it's meant to protect.

There is fear and anger for the tenants but as they get to know one another their solidarity and defiance grows: housing is a human right, not a commodity. All of them have personal histories but these difficulties they have all faced individually give them strength to stand together and the number of voices calling for change is a powerful force. Is victory within their grasp.

Shazia ….. Avita Jay

Directed by Tracey Neale

Sound ..... Sharon Hughes, Keith Graham and Andy Garratt

A BBC Studios Audio production for BBC Radio 4

Tanika Gupta is an award winning writer. Her original theatre work includes Sugar Mummies,The Empress, Lions and Tigers and A Tupperware of Ashes. Her stage adaptations include Anita and Me, Hobson's Choice A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Doll's House and Hedda. Tanika has written numerous audio dramas and adapted classics like A Passage to India and Brick Lane. In 2008, Tanika was awarded an MBE for her services to drama and she has been awarded honorary doctorates from Chichester and University of West London. She was a writer in residence at the National Theatre and at Soho Theatre.

By Philip Catherwood.

After twenty years living in the same end terrace house in North Belfast, Maggie is now being pressured into having a divisive mural painted on her gable wall. Rather than give in to intimidation, she enlists the help of teenage street artist Kyle – a Dubliner trying to find his feet in the city – to create a different kind of mural. However, not everyone in the community is ready to embrace change.

Author

Cast:

All other parts were played by the company.

Production Co-ordinators: Sylvie Conway and Caoilfhinn McFadden.

Written by Philip Catherwood

A BBC Audio Northern Ireland Production for BBC Radio 4.

Tutor Charly arrives in luxury bunker Thornfield. But something's not right with this place. And what happened to her predecessor?

In a near-future world on the brink of societal collapse, the wealthiest 0.01% have retreated into luxury bunkers. These high-tech fortresses boast swimming pools, cinemas, and hydroponic farms, but their inhabitants live in a bubble of paranoia and control. Charly takes a job tutoring the children of reclusive billionaire Edward in his doomsday bunker. But when strange things start happening, it seems dark secrets are buried in this vast bunker too.

In the real world, the super-rich are already building bunkers ready to provide sanctuary from the apocalypse. In Chloë Myerson claustrophobic thriller, we ask: what happens next?

This is episode 1. You can find the whole series on BBC Sounds now.

CAST

Written by Chloë Myerson

Production Co-ordinator: Ben Hollands

A BBC Studios Production for BBC Radio 4.

Drive, Clive, drive!

Clive Coombs attempts to prove his credentials as a father by driving his daughter through the night to a plane that will take her to the other side of the world.

As he drives, the weight of all his worries start to hijack the airwaves of his radio - his faltering marriage, his disintegrating sense of self and whether the small battery in his electric car will ever get his daughter to the plane on time. A heart-achingly funny new comedy drama brought to life with a host of familiar Radio 4 voices.

CLIVE.....Toby Jones

Also featuring: Kate Adie, Ron Brown, Charles Carroll, James Coomarasamy, Amy Gladwell, Caroline Nicholls, Neil Nunes, Matthew Parris, Jay Rayner, Al Ryan and Jane Steel.

The song was composed by Joey Crouch and Owen Crouch and the singer was Ella Whitehead.

Written by Tim Crouch with Toby Jones

A BBC Studios Production for BBC Radio 4.

2008. Students Oliver, Hannah and Lizzy set off on holiday to a mountain cabin. Their lives will never be the same again.

2026. When Oliver unexpectedly reappears at Hannah’s door after eighteen years, they are forced to relive the night that bound them together forever. A tragic trip to a remote mountain under a lunar eclipse that ended in Lizzy's death. As memories collide, guilt and betrayal resurface. When the truth finally emerges, it may not be the version either of them remembers.

Part of 'Fork in the Road', a collection of dramas about significant choices and their consequences.

LIZZY.....Norah Lopez-Holden

Written by Matthew Broughton

A BBC Studios Production for BBC Radio 4

2026. A chance encounter on a London tube train reunites Leigh with Rick: the man she has never stopped wondering about. And he’s never stopped wondering about her either.

Over the course of the journey, Leigh and Rick unpack the decisions, and the three days in August, that led them here. Is now the time they choose each other?

In 1996, Rick meets Leigh outside a house party one hot August night. Leigh feels a spark with him – the boy always on the brink of laughter – but later that night, she connects with his best friend Charlie, and ends up going home with him instead. Soon after, Leigh is pregnant.

Leigh and Charlie build a life together. More children follow. Routine, responsibility, sleep-deprivation. Rick’s life, by contrast, seems carefree. And it’s not that Leigh regrets her life. And it’s not that she doesn’t love Charlie. But sometimes she can’t help but wonder what the story could have been, had she chosen Rick that night in 1996 instead.

We meet Leigh, Rick and Charlie across four Augusts, each 10 years apart. It never seems the right time for Rick and Leigh to choose each other. Until they meet in a tube carriage in 2026.

Original romantic drama by award-winning Katie Hims, starring Rebekah Station (Raised by Wolves, The Following Events Are Based On A Pack Of Lies), Samuel Anderson (Amandaland, The Walsh Sisters) and Sam Swann (One Day, Mr Selfridge).

CAST

Production Co-ordinators .... Sara Benaim and Emma Donald

Sound Design by Sam Dickinson, Andy Garratt and Kira Golightly

A BBC Studios Production for BBC Radio 4.

Katie Hims is one of the country’s most celebrated radio dramatists. Notable plays and series include Shirley's Party, Lost Property, Black Eyed Girls, Home Front, 24, Kildare Road, Middlemarch, Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Transcription. Her most recent original play for radio, Waterloo Station, written for Ralph Ineson and Christine Bottomley, won the Writer’s Guild Best Audio Drama Award 2023. Behind the Scenes at the Museum won silver and Shirley's Party won bronze for Best Drama at the 2026 ARIAS.

By Ben Lewis.

Witty, warm and soulful drama infused with storytelling and song.

Part of the Yeartides series inspired by the myths and rituals surrounding Pagan Celtic festivals.

Claire and her husband David are visiting David’s family farm to celebrate his mum’s 75th birthday.

Cast:

Music performed by Anna Massie

Production Co-ordinator: Rosalind Gibson

Directed by Kirsty Williams

With thanks for farming consultation to Roger Howison and Willie Young.

Los Angeles, 1935. With nowhere to go and nothing to lose, Robert and Gloria enter a marathon dance on the Santa Monica pier, one of hundreds of couples competing to stay on their feet for weeks at a time for a prize of a thousand dollars. As the days blur into nights and the competition grows merciless, their unlikely bond deepens into something neither of them can name, and a reckoning neither can avoid.

George MacKay (1917, Rose of Nevada) stars as Robert alongside Leah Brotherhead (Hullraisers, RSC's Wolf Hall) as Gloria.

Horace McCoy's 1935 novel is one of the founding texts of American noir, previously adapted as Sydney Pollack's acclaimed 1969 film with Jane Fonda. This is its first ever audio adaptation, brought to radio by adaptor Kerry Shale.

Story of America is a major collection of dramatisations of milestone American titles marking 250 years since the Declaration of Independence and the foundation of the United States.

Robert . . . . . George MacKay

Adapted by Kerry Shale.

Production co-ordinators: Sara Benaim, Jonathan Powell

A BBC Studios production.

Anna Christie has spent fifteen years waiting for a father who never came. When she finally arrives on the New York waterfront to find him, she brings with her a past she has told nobody, and a fury at the world that has shaped her whole life. What she doesn't expect is the sea itself, and what it might do to her.

Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama is one of the towering works of American theatre: a searingly honest portrait of people trying to outrun their histories, until a shipwrecked Irish stoker arrives out of the fog and gives Anna a reason to stop running.

Adapted for radio by Lucy Catherine.

Story of America is a major collection of dramatisations of milestone American titles marking 250 years since the Declaration of Independence and the foundation of the United States.

Anna . . . . . Julianna Jennings

Director: Sasha Yevtushenko

A BBC Studios production.

David Almond reimagines The Little Mermaid.

Set on Holy Island in Northumberland, the story is written and read by the author.

When Joseph was a boy, fishermen on the island found a mermaid in their net. But no one believes those old stories, do they? Except his grandfather, who keeps a mysterious jar of jewels in a glass case on the wall.

This magical, evocative story encompasses the degradation of the seas; the small attention spans of modern lives; the pressure on young people to leave the place they call home; the beauty and history of the island. It is also a love story.

David Almond is 'A writer of visionary Blakean intensity.' The Times. He is also winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Award, The Carnegie Medal, the Michael L Printz Award, the Nonino International Prize.

This series of modern fairy tales reimagined by leading writers has been specially commissioned to celebrate a major new exhibition at The British Library dedicated to fairy tales, as well as the National Year of Reading.

Producer, Mary Ward-Lowery