Showing results by narrator "Tom Hollander" in All Categories

When Barry Fairweather dies unexpectedly in his early 40s, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils.... Pagford is not what it at first seems. And the empty seat left by Barry on the town's council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen.

Twelve BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations of short stories by the Queen of Crime. First broadcast in the early 2000s, the stories were adapted and brought up-to-date for a contemporary audience. The stories are 'Philomel Cottage'; 'Swan Song'; 'Magnolia Blossom'; 'Witness for the Prosecution'; 'The Gates of Baghdad'; 'The Hounds of Death'; 'In a Glass Darkly'; 'The Dressmaker's Doll'; 'The Case of the Perfect Carer'; 'The £199 Adventure'; 'The Gypsy'; and 'The Last Seance'. Duration: 6 hours approx.

Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise known as the Circus, is living out his old age on the family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a letter from his old service summons him to London. The reason? His Cold War past has come back to claim him. Intelligence operations that were once the toast of secret London, and involved such characters as Alec Leamas, Jim Prideaux, George Smiley, and Peter Guillam himself, are to be scrutinized by a generation with no memory of the Cold War.

A vicious 15-year-old droog is the central character of this 1963 classic, a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. In Anthony Burgess' nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology.

Evelyn Waugh is one of the pre-eminent English novelists of the 20th century. This collection comprises six of his finest works, dramatised by award-winning writer Jeremy Front, including Decline and Fall, Brideshead Revisited, Scoop and Sword of Honour (The Waugh Trilogy).

Ambitious. Ruthless. Unprincipled. With their blurred morals and relatable imperfections, it’s no wonder we find anti-heroes so appealing and fascinating. Featuring a mixture of male and female anti-heroes across England, Scotland, France and New York, these fantastic adaptations of five of the best-known and best-loved classics of literature follow some of these flawed, nuanced characters as they steal the spotlight and make their presence known.

A visit to the urologist has never been more hilarious - or revealing - than in Men’s Health, a new comedy written by Daniel Goldfarb and directed by Scott Ellis. Adam (Tony® winner Santino Fontana) is a TV writer in search of a diagnosis for a very personal problem. He ends up half naked and fully freaked out in the exam room of Dr. Szabo (Tony and Emmy® winner Tony Shalhoub), a physician with a unique bedside manner offering some truly unorthodox treatment options.

Sitting down to write a book about his hero D. H. Lawrence, Geoff Dyer finds himself compelled to write about anything else. He is in fact compelled to do more or less anything else instead of write. In Sicily he is too preoccupied by his hatred of seafood to follow the great writer's footsteps; in Mexico he cannot get beyond a drug-induced erotic fantasy on a nudist beach...and yet, incredibly, this attempt to write a 'sober academic study' reveals the hold Lawrence and his work still exert on us today.

A BBC radio collection of full-cast dramatisations, bringing together Edith Wharton’s most popular and best-loved works.

Conrad is young, good at heart, and yet is apparently suffering from the effects of such bad karma that there is nothing in his future but terrible things. Unless he can alter his circumstances – well, quite frankly, he is DOOMED. Conrad is sent in disguise to Stallery Mansion, to infiltrate the magical fortress that has power over the whole town of Stallchester, and to discover the identity of the person who is affecting his Fate so badly. Then he has to kill that person. But can any plan really be that simple and straightforward?

1527. While the Papal city of Rome burns, brutally sacked by an invading army including Protestant heretics, two of her most interesting and wily citizens slip away, their stomachs churning on the jewels they have swallowed as the enemy breaks down their doors.

From Amsterdam to Cambodia, from Rome to Indonesia, from New Orleans to Libya, and from Detroit to Ko Pha-Ngan, Geoff Dyer finds himself both floundering about in a sea of grievances and finding moments of transcendental calm. This aberrant quest for peak experiences leads, ultimately, to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, where, to quote Tarkovsky's Stalker, 'your most cherished desire will come true'.

Newly rebranded Deer Park Academy is struggling to turn itself around after being placed in special measures. Hoping to inspire the students (and tick the 'creative learning' box for the next Ofsted inspection), the headmaster decides to put on a production of Romeo and Juliet. But inspiration can be dangerous, and when has-been ex-TV star Geoff Cathcart is brought in to direct, he opens a Pandora's box of problems.

When Alex and Terry set up their own e-commerce company in Philomel Cottage, everything looks rosy until money goes missing from Alex's account. Soon she is questioning her partner - and, indeed, the cottage itself….

In this series, Adam’s church gets a makeover, complete with plasma screens and a smoothie bar, Adam researches some poledancers and then succumbs to envy when he hears an old rival on ‘Thought for the Day’. Adam’s new ‘bromance’ with Leon comes to a crashing halt at an embarrassing vicarage dinner party. Adam also has a crisis of faith and then gets drunk at a Vicars and Tarts party.

A BBC Radio 4 fictional dramatisation of Léon Theremin’s espionage work in the lead up to the Cold War, written by Melissa Murray. Theremin was originally broadcast as the ‘Saturday Play’ on 3 January 2009 and repeated on 9 October 2010.Léon Theremin, gifted inventor and reluctant spy, is forced to find a way to bug the US Embassy in London. Now he has to save himself and his former lover from both the CIA and the KGB. Starring Tom Hollander as Theremin and Kate Ashfield as Alex.