Date Published: September 17, 2024 — BBC Radio 4 has announced details of its upcoming Dickensian season of audio dramas, which begins on Sunday 29 September. The season celebrates the work of one of history’s most inventive writers, Charles Dickens, known for his dazzling array of characters, socially astute commentary and enduring popularity.

Director of Speech and Radio 4 Controller Mohit Bakaya says: “As the world’s biggest commissioner of original audio drama, the BBC is delighted to breathe new life into these much-loved works for Radio 4 listeners. Alongside his fiction and journalism, Dickens was also a keen actor who regularly performed his works for fans on hugely popular public reading tours – his novels are written as much for the ear as for the eye. That may help explain why these stories are so well suited to the medium of audio drama, a format which we at the BBC know is immensely popular with our listeners, and which we are committed to continuing to invest in, so that everyone can enjoy brilliant works of classic literature like Dickens – as well as the very best new writing.”

The Dickensian dramas were launched tonight (17 September) at an event at Dickens’ former home, now the Dickens Museum. They are part of a raft of recent audio drama commissions for BBC Radio 4, including Central Intelligence, a ten-part series which tells the inside story of the CIA, starring Kim Cattrall and Ed Harris. Audio drama fans will also be able to enjoy more of Breaking the Rules season this autumn, a series of one-off original plays on the theme of rule breaking. Other recent drama announcements include a new adaptation of King Lear starring Richard Wilson.

Radio 4 Commissioning Editor for Drama and Fiction, Alison Hindell, says: “This brilliant season of Radio 4 audio dramas demonstrates why the genre remains so popular with our listeners. Through audio we can immerse ourselves in Dickens’ world – with its unforgettable characters, unputdownable plots, hilarious comedy and searing commentary on social injustice – and reflect on its resonance today.”

Programme information

Hard Times

Sunday 29 September, 3pm – 4pm

Episode 1/2

Dickens’ satire of a target-driven society that stifles art, wonder and imagination. Stars David Morrissey, Rachel Harper, Jan Ravens and Shaun Dooley.

“Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.” Charles Dickens’ novel – subtitled ‘For These Times’ – is a short, sharp satire of target-driven education, business, and the denial of the imagination. Headmaster Thomas Gradgrind has developed a rigid, facts-driven curriculum for his school. And at home, he raises his two children, Tom and Louisa, within a similar system of utilitarian metrics. But the human spirit has an inherent thirst for wonder and Louisa struggles within the constraints of her education.

Dramatised by Graham White. A BBC Audio Wales production for Radio 4.

• Thomas Gradgrind – David Morrissey
• Louisa Gradgrind – Rachel Harper
• Tom Gradgrind – Ike Bennett
• Josiah Bounderby – Shaun Dooley
• Sissy Jupe – Janey Orchard
• Mrs Sparsit – Jan Ravens
• James Harthouse – Will Close
• Stephen Blackpool – Arthur Hughes
• Rachael – Claire Cage
• Mrs Gradgrind/Margaret/Josephine – Julie Barclay
• Mr M’Choakumchild/Slackbridge/Collins – Richard Elfyn
• Bitzer – Aaron Anthony
• Sleary – Patrick Robinson

Production coordinators – Lindsay Rees and Eleri Sydney McAuliffe

Sound by Rhys Morris, Nigel Lewis and Catherine Robinson

Directed by Emma Harding, BBC Audio Wales

Little Dorrit

Sunday 13 October, 3pm – 4pm

Episode 1/3

Arthur Clennam returns to England after twenty years in China. He brings with him a watch, with ‘Do Not Forget’ worked in beads on the casing. Will his mother reveal the mystery behind the inscription? Does it hint at a wrong that must be righted? And does the implacable Mrs Clennam know that the young seamstress who works for her is the daughter of William Dorrit, inmate of the debtors’ prison, the Marshalsea, for over twenty years?

Dickens’s eleventh novel satirises the institutions of government and society, in particular the Circumlocution Office, a department run purely for the benefit of its incompetent officials, and the prisons where debtors were incarcerated, unable to work, until they had repaid their debts. Dickens writes from personal experience as his father spent time in the Marshalsea.

Dramatised by Mike Walker. A Reduced Listening Production for Radio 4.

• Charles Dickens/ Rigaud – Jason Watkins
• Arthur Clennam – Samuel Barnett
• Amy Dorrit – Kitty Archer
• William Dorrit – Paul Bradley
• Frederick Dorrit – David Tarkenter
• Mrs Clennam – Claire Price
• Merdle – Joseph Millson
• Mrs General – Nisha Nayar
• Pancks – Carl Prekopp
• Maggy – Lauren Cornelius
• Jerry Flintwich / Dan Doyce – Shaun Mason
• Affery – Sarah Thom
• Tite Barnacle Snr – Ewan Bailey
• Tite Barnacle Jr – Tayla Kovacevic-Ebong

Production Co-ordinator: Annie Keates-Thorpe

Sound design: Alisdair McGregor, Markus Andreas

Director: Jeremy Mortimer

Our Mutual Friend

Sunday 3 November, 3pm – 4pm

Episode 1/3

Dickens’ final and greatest social novel: a brilliantly funny, sharp depiction of Londoners aspiring to and managing without money, featuring multiple deaths, economic ruins, money and filth, fraud and deception, honesty and survival, and a happy ending. This new production marks the 160th year since it was written.

Dramatised by Dan Rebellato. A Thomas Carter Projects Ltd production for Radio 4.

• Gaffer/Butler/Driver – ep 1 – Michael Garner
• Wegg/Riderhood/Grompus (ep1) – Mat Fraser
• Lizzie – Bukky Bakray
• Lightwood – Sule Rimi
• Wrayburn – Issam Al Ghussan
• Mr P/Mr Boffin/Sergeant (ep 1) –Gordon Kennedy
• Mr V/Mr Riah/ R Wilfer/ Coroner (ep1) – Henry Goodman
• Mrs V/Mrs W – Liz Sutherland-Lim
• Betty – Lucy Speed
• Rokesmith/Headstone – Jeremy Ang Jones
• Mrs P/Mrs Boffin- Frances Grey
• Bella/Sophronia – Bettrys Jones
• Jenny Wren/Lavinia– Delilah Tahiri
• Georgiana – ep 2 and ep 3 – Clare Lawrence-Moody
• Fascination Fledgeby – Harrison Knights
• Alfred Lammle – Harley Viveash
• Director/producer – Polly Thomas

Assistant producer – Nicola Miles Wildin

Sound assistant – Louis Blatherwick

Sound designer – Jon Nicholls

Producer manager – Darren Spruce

Illustration – YanKi Darling

Executive producer – Eloise Whitmore

Opening Lines: Hard Times

Sunday 29 September and Sunday 6 October, 2.45pm – 3pm

John Yorke unpacks the themes behind each of the three Dickensian dramas, beginning with Hard Times. Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times is set in a northern factory town at the height of the industrial revolution, far away from the writer’s normal stamping ground of London – but it certainly doesn’t lack the overlapping plots, the wide array of characters and the incorporation of melodrama, humour and tragedy that we associate so closely with the author.

Dickens had travelled north himself as a journalist to cover a cotton strike in Preston and seen firsthand the various ways in which the factory system was oppressing the people living and working within it.

In the first of two episodes looking at the book, John Yorke considers how Dickens transformed that eye-witness experience into the fictional world of Coketown, with its soot-blackened bricks and serpents of smoke.

Opening Lines continues its exploration of the Dickensian dramas with Little Dorrit on Sunday 13 and Sunday 20 October, 2.45pm – 3pm, and Our Mutual Friend, Sunday 3 and Sunday 10 November, 2.45pm – 3pm.

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.

Contributors:
Frank Cottrell-Boyce, screenwriter and current Children’s Laureate
Dr Emily Bell, University of Leeds
Deborah McAndrew, writer, director and actor
Researcher/Broadcast Assistant: Nina Semple
Sound: Sean Kerwin
Producer: Geoff Bird
Executive Producer: Sara Davies