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...

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...

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...

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...

A collection of full-cast dramas from one of Ireland's foremost writers - plus Elizabeth Bowen's thoughts on the novelist's craftElizabeth Bowen was one of the 20th century's most distinctive writers. An associate of the Bloomsbury Set, she was a keen observer of upper-middle-class life and relationships. Best known for her novels of the Anglo-Irish gentry and wartime London, her fiction displays recurring themes of loss, rootlessness and displacement. This collect...

BBC Audio presents Lady Susan, Jane Austen's early novel not published until after her death. Widowed Lady Susan is an outrageous flirt and a dreadful mother, constantly controlling and embarrassing the people around her.When Lady Susan remarries, she attempts to push her daughter into a bleak marriage with a man she despises. Deceit slowly spreads through a series of letters exchanged between Lady Susan, her daughter, friends, family and arch enemies. Will the truth be un...

11 gripping thrillers from some of BBC Radio's best contemporary writers, including BAFTA- winner Neil McKayInventive, intriguing and atmospheric, this eclectic selection of crime, mystery and psychological dramas immerses us in a series of diverse worlds where nothing is what it appears to be, and nobody is quite what they seem.Wide in scope and disparate in style, the stories range from a police procedural and a dark, dystopian eco-thriller to a shocking ...