Four satirical spoof shows from the multi-award-winning Patrick BarlowThe National Theatre of Brent is a two-man company founded in 1980 and led by Patrick Barlow as his comic alter ego, Artistic Director and Chief Executive Desmond Olivier Dingle. Helping him to realise his enormously ambitious artistic visions is his helpful but hapless assistant, a role that has been performed by a succession of actors including Jim Broadbent (a...

Awful Auntie, from Children's author David Walliams.Stella Saxby is the sole heir to Saxby Hall. But awful Aunt Alberta and her giant owl will stop at nothing to get it from her. Luckily Stella has a secret – and slightly spooky – weapon up her sleeve…

Dawn French, number one bestelling author of A Tiny Bit Marvellous and one of Britain's best loved comic writers, returns with Oh Dear Silvia, a darkly comic pageturner that will have you hanging on her every word.Who is in Coma Suite Number 5?A matchless lover? A supreme egotist? A selfless martyr? A bad mother? A cherished sister? A selfish wife?All of these. For this is Silvia Shute who has always done e...

A BBC Radio 4 tragic-comedy drama depicting the principal events of Shirley Porter's time as leader of Westminster city council in the 1980s. Originally broadcast as the 'Friday Play' on 27 November 2009, and starring Tracy-Ann Oberman as Shirley Porter. Also featured amongst the cast are Maggie Steed, Joseph Cohen-Cole, Piers Wehner, Stephen Hogan, Sagar Arya, Bruce Alexander, Ewan Hooper, Philip Fox, John Biggins and Tessa Nicholson. Directed by Marc Beeby.

In 2006, Bret Easton Ellis declared the novel "one of the three great books of my generation."This dramatisation of Jonathan Franzen's acclaimed, epic, award-winning novel revolves around the troubles of an elderly Midwestern couple and their three adult children, tracing their lives from the mid-20th century to "one last Christmas" together near the turn of the millennium.A family saga, that sits against the backdrop of this century's changing face of America. The novel wa...

Series 6-10 of the epic BBC Radio 4 drama charting life on the home front during the First World War – plus special episode Home Front: A LighteningFirst heard on radio between 4 August 2014 and 9 November 2018, each episode of Home Front is set exactly one hundred years before the broadcast date, and each follows one character’s day. Together they create a mosaic of experience from a wide cross-section of society, mixing historic...

A chilling collection of classic gothic horror and ghost stories adapted or written by womenIn this breathtaking collection of gothic horror and eerie tales, draw the curtains and pull the blankets close for two classic Victorian horror tales in new adaptations, ***Dracula***starring Nicky Henson, Charles Edwards, Don Gilet and Ellie Kendrick and Frankenstein, with Jamie Parker (Harry Potter) as Frankenstein and Shaun Dooley (...

The complete Series 1 and 2 of the historical comic sitcom about an embattled Victorian publishing companyLondon, 1853, and the sedate religious publishing house of Spavin and Spavin is about to experience a radical shake-up. Vivacious actress Cordelia is on the hunt for a husband and has her eye on Gerald, one of the firm's partners, while her son Primus has ambitions to take over the firm. And when he does, it'll be out with the Bibles and in with the bestsellers...

Twelve jurors. One verdict. Can the jury decide?When high-profile company director Virginia Hart fights a libel case against journalist Pat Carver, twelve ordinary people find themselves navigating the complex and unfamiliar world of the civil court. A woman’s reputation is on the line, and they alone must decide whether the allegations made against her in the satirical magazine Shady Tales count as freedom of speech, or scurrilous defamation.But i...

Six lavish BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations of Anthony Trollope's much-loved novels, plus a bonus documentary about Trollope himself.Anthony Trollope's series of witty, gently satirical stories of provincial life are set in the fictional town of Barchester and the surrounding county of Barsetshire. With a focus on the lives, loves and tribulations of the local clergy and rural gentry, the canvas is broad and colourful, with a set of iconic characters in whose l...

An epic six-part comedy saga with a star cast, from master storyteller and satirist Nick RevellWhen Tony Hardstaff breaks the bank playing ‘Snap!’ at the St Petersburg Casino, he is swept up in a maelstrom of romance and adventure. Seduced by the sultry Natassia Fillipovna Karamazov – a woman with curves so perfect they could make a geometry professor spontaneously combust – Tony is caught in flagrante by the Russian mafia, and flees for his life.T...

An eight-part comedy serial set in a provincial university with a most unusual English departmentAgainst his better judgement, Andrew Patterson accepts a job as a lecturer in English literature at a remote Northern redbrick university. His departmental colleagues are an eccentric bunch: doddery Head of English Professor Misty, who looks like he went to school with Little Dorrit; Amy Spade, who's suffering from an identity crisis and given to sending anonymous lette...