Opening Lines

The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke explores the themes at the heart of Leo Tolstoy’s great nineteenth century novel, Anna Karenina.

In the second of three episodes, John looks at the secondary great love story in the novel, that of Kitty and Levin, and how it is built into and reflects the structure of the story. As Anna and Vronksy’s affair plays out under the disapproving gaze of St Petersburg society, Levin and Kitty take a different path to happiness, seeking meaning and fulfilment within the boundaries of convention.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday/Saturday Drama series.

From EastEnders to the Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods.

As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy, John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors:

Credits:

Produced by Lore Windemuth

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke examines what lies at the heart of Tolstoy’s great novel Anna Karenina.

‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ It’s one of the most famous opening lines in world literature, and the book has been called the greatest novel ever written. First published in 1878, and translated into English in 1901, it’s been credited with perfecting the art of 19th century realism while foreshadowing the modernist novel.

In this first of three episodes, John Yorke examines the central tragic love story at the heart of the novel. Anna Karenina is an unhappily married aristocrat who falls in love with dashing young army officer Count Vronsky. But under the eyes of the hypocritical St Petersburg elite, their love is strained to breaking point.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday/Saturday Drama series.

From EastEnders to the Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods.

As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy, John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors:

Credits:

Produced by Lore Windemuth

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke explores one of Shakespeare's best loved comedies, Twelfth Night. In the second of two episodes, he explores the setting of the play and how the whole plot turns on the ambiguities thrown up by a woman dressed as a man.

We’re introduced to characters who fall in love with each other in a confusion of misplaced desire. Viola is shipwrecked in a strange land and has lost her twin brother Sebastian. She disguises herself as a man before she meets the Duke of Illyria, who is himself in love with the Countess Olivia. It's the beginnings of a love triangle rich in comedic moments. Twelfth Night is a play in which desire and disguise lead to confusion and chaos, only to be resolved in a happy ever after love story. Well, almost.

John shares a lifetime of experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the secrets behind the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. He has been working in television and radio for nearly 30 years.

From East Enders to the Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book ‘Into the Woods’. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Credits:

Researcher: Nina Semple

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke explores one of Shakespeare's best loved comedies, Twelfth Night. In the first of two episodes, he untangles a complex plot and shows how we can still find it funny. But is it really a comedy?

John finds sadness behind the laughter in a play that ends with a melancholic song as the rain begins to fall. We're introduced to characters who fall in love with each other in a confusion of misplaced desire. Viola is shipwrecked in a strange land and has lost her twin brother Sebastian. She disguises herself as a man before she meets the Duke of Illyria, who is himself in love with the Countess Olivia. It's the beginnings of a love triangle rich in comedic moments. Twelfth Night is a play in which desire and disguise lead to confusion and chaos, only to be resolved in a happy ever after love story. Well, almost.

John shares a lifetime of experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the secrets behind the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. He has been working in television and radio for nearly 30 years.

From East Enders to the Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book ‘Into the Woods’. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Credits:

Researcher: Nina Semple

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Somewhere between autobiography, memoir and novel, the Irish writer and poet Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy was published in 1958. It’s the story of the teenaged Behan’s three years in an English Borstal – the youth detention centres of their day.

As an Irish Republican, Behan’s views of the English are challenged, relationships are formed, and his journey to becoming one of the most celebrated writers of his generation begins.

Hearing from the bestselling Irish novelist Colm Tóibín, John Yorke explains the delight of this tender, funny, sometimes sad, sometimes violent book, and unpicks Behan’s ability to capture detail and dialogue in rich, yet somehow sparse descriptions of life in Borstal.

John shares a lifetime of experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the secrets behind the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. He has been working in television and radio for nearly 30 years.

From East Enders to the Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book ‘Into the Woods’. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Contributors:

Credits:

Excerpts from a 1971 BBC Television adaption of Borstal Boy, featuring Donal Neligan as Brendan Behan, Sheila Fay as the landlady, Wilfred Carter as the sergeant, Gavin Morrrison as Vereker. Omnibus, 1971.

Brendan Behan interviewed by Derek Hart, Tonight, BBC Television, 1959.

CA Joyce, governor of the Borstal, interviewed for BBC Television in 1971.

Researcher: Nina Semple

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke takes a look at Ian McEwan’s 1997 complex thriller Enduring Love. It's a bold novel, set in the aftermath of a tragic accident, but the substance of the story is formed from a beautifully simple yet complex premise – everyone sees that accident in a totally different way.

The central character, Joe Rose, is stalked by a stranger, Jed Parry, whom he meets purely by chance at the scene of the accident. As Joe continues to reject Jed, their confrontation spirals from fear into violence. We hear the events described by different characters throughout the book which makes it very hard to understand the world they are describing. Whose version is right? Who should we believe? This is a novel about the perception of reality itself.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised on BBC Radio 4.

From EastEnders to the Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors:

Credits:

Producer: Laura Grimshaw

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke examines Victor Nekrasov’s novel Kira Georgievna, a bestseller in 1960s Russia.

Set in Moscow, Kyiv and rural Ukraine, the eponymous Kira Georgievna is a successful middle-aged sculptor, originally from Kyiv, who must choose between three different lovers. She’s married to a much older painter while also enjoying a casual affair with a young man who’s working for her as a model. But Kira’s comfortable life is about to be turned upside down when her first love - Vadim - returns from two decades as a political prisoner in the Siberian gulags.

As John digs deeper into the novel, he discovers that it is a powerful critique of the Soviet regime, and the choices made by the people who played the Soviet system, and those who stood up to it.

Viktor Nekrasov was born into a middle-class Russian family in Kyiv, and the tensions between Russian and Ukraine in Kira Georgievna foreshadow the terrible situation today. He was seriously injured twice fighting for the Soviet army against the Nazis, and his first novel was a vivid description of the misery of the life he had experienced first-hand in the trenches at Stalingrad. His early books were approved of and promoted by the Soviets but Kira Georgievna, published in 1961, marked the turning point when Nekrasov started to break away from the regime.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for thirty years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday/Saturday Drama series.

Kira Georgievna by Victor Nekrasov, Pantheon Books, New York 1962, translated from the Russian by Walter N. Vickery

Produced by Jane Greenwood

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds

John Yorke takes a look at Aldous Huxley’s 1923 satirical novel, Antic Hay.

It's a comic novel, set in post-war London and a wicked satire on the glittering hedonism of the 1920s. It tells the story of a collection of upper middle-class characters desperately trying to find meaning in their lives after the catastrophe of the First World War.

Aldous Huxley is most famous for his classic dystopian story Brave New World. To some he’s the inspiration for the cult of hallucinogenics, through his book The Doors Of Perception. But a million miles from both, among the 40-odd other books he wrote, sits Antic Hay – a sardonic snapshot of 1920s English society.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he shares his experience as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that have made a mark.  

From EastEnders to the Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors:

Credits:

Produced by Laura Grimshaw

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke delves into James Hogg’s masterpiece of Gothic horror, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Presented as a ‘found document’, the confessions give a chilling insight into the mind of a murderer. This novel is a horror story, a mystery thriller, a psychological study of religious extremism, and at its heart lurks a serial killer. Despite being first published in 1824 it still has all the contemporary resonance, in the view of renowned crime writer Ian Rankin, to make a 21st century blockbuster movie.

John shares a lifetime of experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the secrets behind the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. He has been working in television and radio for nearly 30 years.

From East Enders to the Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book ‘Into the Woods’. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Contributors

Reader: David Rankine

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke examines Porgy by Edwin DuBose Heyward.

Porgy was published in 1925 and concerns the love affair between Porgy and Bess. Set within the poor black community of Charleston, South Carolina, the book was later adapted into the blockbuster musical Porgy and Bess. The writer Du Bose Heyward was white and, ever since it was published, the book has raised questions about authenticity and cultural appropriation.

In this second of two episodes about the book, John Yorke looks at the controversy that has surrounded the book , how it divided the critics and how the success of Porgy and Bess, the musical, complicated matters still further.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series.

From EastEnders to the Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors:

Produced by Alison Vernon-Smith

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4