Rosamund Pike and Hiran Abeysekera are amongst the winners of the 13th BBC Audio Drama Awards, presented on Sunday 24 at Broadcasting House’s Radio Theatre by host Meera Syal.

Rosamund Pike was honoured with the award for Best Actress for her role alongside Hugh Laurie in People Who Knew Me on BBC Sounds, commissioned by BBC Radio 5 Live, which tells the story of a woman who uses 9/11 to fake her own death and run away to start a new life in California. Hiran Abeysekera won Best Actor for his performance in Dear Harry Kane on BBC Radio 4, starring as Nisal, a Tottenham Hotspur fan who travels to Qatar to build the stadium in which his hero Harry Kane will one day play, but soon discovers he has been trafficked into exploitation.

Dear Harry Kane, which is written by James Fritz, also won Best Original Single Drama, having previously won Best Drama in the ARIAs and the Prix Europa in 2023.

Graeme Garden has won the Lifetime Achievement award, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to radio comedy, including his position as creator and permanent panellist on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue for almost fifty years. He was presented with the award by the BBC’s Chief Content Officer, Charlotte Moore.

Bess Loves Porgy, Roy Williams’ adaptation of Edwin DuBose Heyward’s classic novel, won best adaptation. The awards also honour contributions to radio comedy, with Sarah Keyworth: Are You a Boy or Girl? winning Best Stand Up Comedy, and Where to, Mate?, a sitcom following taxi drivers Ben and Bernie as they ferry their passengers around the North West of the UK, winning Best Sitcom or Comedy Drama.

Rosamund Pike, winner, Best Actress, says: “I am honoured to have won Best Actress at this year’s BBC Audio Drama Awards. I love the medium because it allows so much freedom to performers and listeners’ imaginations. Our writer and director Daniella Isaacs said she wanted our show to have the “intimacy of eavesdropping”, which is why I think People Who Knew Me struck such a powerful chord with listeners! It’s a fantastic story and the way it was engineered allowed us actors to freely roam a fluid performance space and interact with one another naturally… the sound teams were amazing, and so was our talented cast who I loved having the chance to work with. Thank you to Merman for allowing us to tell the story and to Daniella for her clever and moving writing.”

Hiran Abeysekera, winner, Best Actor, says: ‘Radio drama is extraordinary and I’m very proud to be a part of it. To say that three out of the four radio opportunities that have come my way through the BBC have been stories linked to my home country, Sri Lanka, is really special. Thank you for this wonderful honour.’

The BBC’s Chief Content Officer Charlotte Moore says: “Many congratulations to all tonight’s winners and nominees. The BBC has championed audio drama since the very beginning and I’m proud that we continue to be the biggest commissioner of audio drama globally. Alongside the many who listen live, audio drama regularly appears in the top ten most popular on-demand programmes on BBC Sounds. It’s much-loved by our listeners who tune in for the brilliant writing, acting and storytelling, which provide opportunities for escapism, as well as to learn more about the world around them through drama.”

Full list of winners:

Best Original Single Drama

• WINNER Dear Harry Kane by James Fritz, producer Sally Avens, BBC Audio Drama London
• Benny and Hitch by Andrew McCaldon, producers Neil Varley and Tracey Neale, BBC Audio Drama London
• Eat and Run by Paolo Chianta, producer Lorna Newman, BBC Audio Drama North

Best Adaptation

• WINNER Bess Loves Porgy by Edwin DuBose Heyward, adapted by Roy Williams, producer Gill Parry, feral inc
• COMMENDATION If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino, adapted by Tim Crouch and Toby Jones, producer Nadia Molinari, BBC Audio Drama North
• COMMENDATION Beowulf Retold based on the version by Seamus Heaney, producer Pauline Harris, BBC Audio Drama London

Best Original Series or Serial

• WINNER Trust by Jonathan Hall, producer Gary Brown, BBC Audio Drama North
• COMMENDATION There’s Something I Need to Tell You by John Scott Dryden and Misha Kawnel, producer Emma Hearn, Goldhawk Productions
• Flirties, written and produced by Jess Hamilton, Audiocraft

Best Actor

• WINNER Hiran Abeysekera, Dear Harry Kane, director Sally Avens, BBC Audio Drama London
• COMMENDATION Lorn Macdonald, Confessions of a Justified Sinner, director Kirsty Williams, BBC Scotland
• Tim McInerny, Benny & Hitch, director Tracey Neale, BBC Audio Drama London

Best Actress

• WINNER Rosamund Pike, People Who Knew Me, director Daniella Isaacs, Merman
• Gabrielle Brooks, Bess Loves Porgy, director Michael Buffong, feral inc
• Maxine Peake, The Women of Troy, director Nadia Molinari, BBC Audio Drama North

Best Supporting Performance

• WINNER Mark Heap, Kafka’s Dick, directors Polly Thomas and Dermot Daly, Naked Productions
• Sacha Dhawan, Anna Karenina, director Nadia Molinari, BBC Audio Drama North

The Marc Beeby Award for Best Debut Performance

• WINNER Rosalind Eleazar, Hindsight, director Gaynor Macfarlane, BBC Scotland
• COMMENDATION Jadie Rose Hobson, Exposure, director Anne Isger, BBC Audio Drama London
• COMMENDATION Dan Parr, The Test Batter Can’t Breathe, director Tracey Neale, BBC Audio Drama London

Best Sit Com or Comedy Drama

• WINNER Where to, Mate? devised by Jo Enright, Peter Slater, Abdullah Afzal, Nina Gilligan, Andy Salthouse, Keith Carter, Jason Wingard, producer Carl Cooper, BBC Studios Audio
• Call Jonathan Pie by Tom Walker, producer Alison Vernon-Smith, Yada-Yada Audio
• She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith, adapted by Barunka O’Shaughnessy, producer Emma Harding, BBC Cymru Wales

Best Stand Up Comedy

• WINNER Sarah Keyworth: Are You a Boy or a Girl by by Sarah Keyworth, additional material Ruby Clyde, producer Georgia Keating, BBC Studios Audio
•COMMENDATION Janey Godley: the C Bomb by Janey Godley, producers Julia Sutherland and Richard Melvin, Dabster Productions
• Olga Koch: OK Computer by Olga Koch and Charlie Dinkin, producer Benjamin Sutton, BBC Studios Audio

Best Use of Sound

• WINNER Hamlet Noir, sound by David Chilton, Lucinda Mason Brown, Weronika Andersen, producers Charlotte Melén, Carl Prekopp and Saskia Black, Almost Tangible
• The Dark is Rising, sound by Gareth Fry, producers Catherine Bailey and Tim Bell, Catherine Bailey Productions and Complicité
• The Women of Troy, sound by Sharon Hughes, producer Nadia Molinari, BBC Audio Drama North

Best Podcast Audio Drama

• WINNER Badger and the Blitz by Richard Turley and Darren Francis, producer Richard Turley, ROXO
• The Salvation by Justin Lockey, Jeffrey Aidoo, and AK Benedict, producers John Hamm and Boz Temple-Morris, Holy Mountain and Free Turn
• Tagged by Brett Neichin and John Scott Dryden, producer Emma Hearn, Sony Music Entertainment and Goldhawk Productions

Best European Drama

• WINNER This Word by Marta Rebzda, producer Waldemar Modestowicz, Polish Radio Theatre
• Faust (I Never Read It) by Noam Brusilovsky, producer Andrea Oetzmann, SWR Südwestrundfunk with Deutschlandfunk
• The Supervisor by Nis-Momme Stockmann, producer Michael Becker, NDR Norddeutscher Rundfunk

IMISON AWARD 2024

• WINNER Benny and Hitch by Andrew McCaldon, producers Neil Varley and Tracey Neale, BBC Audio Drama London
• Happy Hour by Liv Fowler, producer Jelena Budimir, Naked Productions
• In Moderation by Katie Bonna, producer Sally Avens, BBC Audio Drama London

TINNISWOOD AWARD 2024

• WINNER Cracking by Shôn Dale-Jones, producer John Norton, BBC Cymru Wales
• About a Dog by Huw Brentnall, producer Fiona McAlpine, Allegra Productions
• Ghosted by Lindsay Sharman, directed by the author for Long Cat Media
• Scooters, Shooters and Shottas by John R Gordon, director Rikki Beadle-Blair, Urban Wolf for Team Angelica/The Art Machine

About the BBC Audio Drama Awards

The BBC Audio Drama Awards celebrate the passionate and dedicated work of professionals who bring this artform to listeners – from actors to writers, producers and sound designers. Across formats, themes, on air and online, the awards recognise an array of productions.

Previous winners include Miriam Margolyes, Juliet Aubrey, Bridget Christie, Edmund Davies, Phil Wang, Danny Sapani, Neil Gaiman, John Hurt and many more.

The BBC once again joined with the Society of Authors and Writers’ Guild of Great Britain to present the two annual writing awards run by these organisations, the Imison Award (for best script by a writer new to audio) and the Tinniswood Award (for the best audio script of the year).

The BBC has compiled a timeline of key audio drama moments from the past century, which can be found at www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc.