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The History of Titus Groan: Radio 4 Classic Serial

2011-07-07T09:00:00+00:00

Brian Sibley is a bit of a legend in radio. Presenter (Radio 4 arts programme Kaleidoscope and the World Service arts magazine Meridian), contributor and playwright, he paired up with writer Michael Bakewell on the classic dramatisation of Lord of the Rings, he did the complete Narnia series, and back in 1985 he did a classy, award-winning adaptation of Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan and Gormenghast for Radio 4.

So when he got in touch in January 2010 to suggest that we extend the Titus franchise with Peake's third book, Titus Alone, and with the as yet to be published conclusion to the series - Titus Awakes (written by Peake's widow, Maeve Gilmore) - I just had to see if I could get Radio 4 to sit up and take interest.

And did they. Jeremy Howe, Radio 4 drama commissioner, suggested that we present all four books, in an epic 6-hours of the classic serial. The decision came in June last year, and, with the full backing of the Peake estate, Brian started work.

We had lots of tricky decisions to take - how to keep Peake's extraordinary prose, how to split the episodes, how to manage the tricky transition when Titus leaves Gothic Gormenghast and enters the stream-punk sci-fi world of Titus Alone. Brian decided that he wasn't even going to look at his 1980s scripts. He was going to start again from scratch. We devised a punishing script delivery schedule, and booked a twelve-day recording stint for late May.

On the 25th May there was a cast of twenty actors gathered in a room in Broadcasting House for the first read-through. And what a cast: Miranda Richardson confessed to being a die-hard Peake fan, Paul Rhys rehearsed a few owl noises, James Fleet and Tamsin Greig tried out a few Prunesquallor laughs, and Fenella Woolgar and Claudie Blakley started talking (and thinking) in unison as the identical Groan twins.

The recording schedule was like something out of Gormenghast's ritual box, literally hundreds of scenes, featuring dozens of deaths, a number of falls from great height, fires, floods and mayhem in a menagerie. But at 6.00pm on Saturday 11th June, David Warner and Luke Treadaway staggered out of the studio and posed for a final picture on the steps of All Souls. The recording was done.

Roger Goula is an amazing composer. His music paints Titus's world in a fantastic array of aural colours. And Peter Ringrose has matched the music with a brilliant sound design. I hope that you all enjoy listening to the fruit of their labours, and that you enjoy entering for a while into Mervyn Peake's extraordinary world.

Jeremy Mortimer is Executive Producer Audio Drama

Dramatiser Brian Sibley on Mervyn Peake's classic series:
The History of Titus Groan starts on Sunday 10th July at 3pm and is available to listen to on the Radio 4 website. The full serial will Series Stacked and be available until the 21st August
The pictures show (from top): Titus Groan (Luke Treadaway) with the Artist (David Warner); Irma Prunesquallor (Tamsin Greig) with Professor Bellgrove (William Gaunt); Steerpike (Carl Prekopp) fighting with Barquentine (Gerard McDermott).
Visit Brian Sibley's blog and the official Mervyn Peake site.

Series catch-up for speech-based radio programmes is here

2011-02-24T16:37:06+00:00

Editor's note: from the BBC Radio blog, great news for lovers of Radio 4 series - SB

Ever since 2002, when we started offering listeners the chance to hear radio programmes on demand via the original Radio Player, listeners have consistently asked to be able to catch up on all the episodes of series whilst that series is on air. There is nothing more frustrating, they told us, than getting interested in a serial in the third week and not being able to catch up on the first two parts which disappear after 7 days. In fact we became quite concerned that people might not even start listening to a serial if they felt they would not be able to keep up.

Well, today we have had good news. The BBC Trust has approved plans to introduce 'series catch-up' for radio...

Continue reading this blog post, and leave a comment, on the BBC Radio blog...

Appreciating Smiley

2009-12-14T09:53:11+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/smiley-season/

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy part three has been and gone for me - though if you missed it you get the repeat next Saturday evening at 2100 and you can listen again on the Radio 4 web site.

And I thought it was fabulously good.

We have an audience measurement system for appreciation - called AIs - which should not be taken as religion. Sometimes the sample sizes are small, some genres (new comedy) always do less well than others... old favourites etc... and I do not use AIs as a mainstay of commissioning. So I risk inconsistency when I point out that the AIs for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy were 91. This is astonishingly high... indeed, about as high as it gets.

This is my third bout of Smiley-mania. First came Alec Guinness in the TV adaptation in 1979 - then I read the books - and now this with Simon Russell Beale as Smiley. I think he's been extraordinary. And the dramatisers - Robert Forrest and Shaun McKenna - have done wonderfully well in striking a balance between faithfulness to the text and necessary compression.

Do catch it.

Mark Damazer is Controller of BBC Radio 4

The Complete Smiley, Radio 4's season of dramatisations of John le Carré's Smiley stories, carries on until Summer 2010.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is part of the BBC's 'series catch-up trial' so you can listen to all three episodes on iPlayer or on the Radio 4 web site until seven days after the final episode is transmitted (20 December). Read about the series catch-up trial here.
Jeremy Howe, Commissioning Editor for drama at Radio 4, wrote about the Smiley season here on the blog.
There's a Wikipedia entry about the BBC's Appreciation Index.
The picture shows Simon Russell Beale from a set of production pictures taken for the season by Phil Fisk. There are more here.

Chain Gang on Radio 7 - drama that you write

2009-10-01T15:10:07+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio7/chaingang/

The nice people at Radio 4 have asked if I'd like to blog about a drama I'm producing for its digital sister-station, Radio 7. It's not something we've been asked to do before, so I'm guessing they, like me, are intrigued by the rather unusual nature of it.

The first thing to say about it is that it's short. Each episode is only a couple of minutes long, but it does mean that we can feature it on 7 in those gaps which would be filled with things like the shipping forecast on Radio 4. And we're hoping at that length it will go down well as a podcast too - we're adding in a bit of behind-the-scenes recording for that.

The other thing about it is that it isn't finished. This isn't just carelessness or brinkmanship on our part, but rather a deliberate ploy to engage our listeners in the process of storytelling. We've asked the award-winning short story writer Robert Shearman to write the first episode. That went out on Radio 7 on Saturday night at 1755, after which we've been asking people to head off to the website to send in their storylines for episode two. We've just been looking through those, and there's an amazing sea of creativity out there. Robert is at work now dramatising the best one which we'll record tomorrow and broadcast on Saturday. Hopefully it will all build to a fitting climax just before Christmas (we've some special plans for this), and we can all sit down with our turkey sandwiches on Boxing Day to enjoy the whole story together for the first time.

And what's the story about? Well, Brian and Susan Ferguson are enjoying a relaxed meal on their honeymoon. Brian heads off to pay the bill, and suddenly there's another woman at the table, issuing Susan with a dramatic warning. The stranger's name? Mrs Ferguson... the other Mrs Ferguson. There is a further twist, believe it or not in a two minute episode, but I'll leave that for you to hear - the whole thing will remain on iPlayer through the Autumn.

Now we know you're a clever lot on Radio 4, curious minds and all that, so it'd be great if we could persuade a few of you to defect for just a few minutes to join our Chain Gang. Listen out on Saturday night, and then and get writing some storylines for episode three...

Paul Arnold is a producer at BBC Radio 7

Chain Gang is on Radio 7 at 1755 Saturdays. You can listen to the whole series until a week after the final transmission thanks to the wonders of the 'series catch-up trial'. You're invited to take a survey about series catch-up here.
At the end of episode one you can hear a fascinating interview with the drama's cast about the bewildering process of recording a drama that hasn't been written yet.
The previous series of Chain Gang won a Sony Radio Academy Award.
There's a podcast to subscribe to too.
Robert Shearman wrote 'Dalek', the episode of Doctor Who which brought the Daleks into the 21st century.

Series catch-up for Radio 4 programmes

2009-07-13T11:48:41+00:00

Yesterday something small but significant happened. Instead of disappearing from iPlayer when its 7 days were up, the first Episode of The Complete Smiley - The Spy Who Came in From the Cold stayed put. Which means that you can go back and listen to it before listening to Episode 2.

The unusual behaviour of The Spy is down to the "Series catch-up" feature of iPlayer - something that's been on offer for some TV series for a while, and which we're now starting to trial for radio programmes. Series catch-up means that all the episodes in a series are available until 7 days after the final episode is broadcast. So you don't have to worry about keeping up each week, but can catch up with the story so far at any point during the series.

There will be around 30 series in the trial between now and mid January, including quite a few from Radio 4. Most of the le Carré season will be included as well as an exciting Dickens serialisation and a complete series of Behind Closed Doors later in the year.

The reason that we're only offering a limited number of series is because this is a trial. The BBC already has permission from the BBC Trust, who regulate what we do, to offer TV programmes with series catch-up, but we don't yet have permission for radio. We're running the trial to find out how useful or interesting people think this is, and to establish what it would mean to offer it more widely. If all goes well we'll then use the information from the trial to ask for permission to offer series catch-up as a permanent feature.

I realise the BBC's internal processes may sometimes seem a touch bureaucratic, but it's important that we find out how popular or useful a new feature might be, how much it might cost, and also what impact it might have on the wider industry, before we decide whether to launch it. This particular trial is limited to 30 series, and we've picked them from across networks and genres to make sure we get a broad range of feedback (here's a list of the Radio 4 series included).

If you're interested in telling us what you think about series catch-up, as part of this trial, then you can take part in a survey that we're running. There's a link below, along with some more info. I'll also be happy to respond to any comments you post on this blog over the next couple of weeks.

Sarah Prag is Executive Producer, Audio Services at BBC Audio & Music Interactive

A list of the Radio 4 programmes included in the trial.
Troy's post from the BBC Internet blog announcing series catch-up for TV programmes last year.
The series catch-up survey is now closed.
Picture, Car rear view mirror, by net_efekt. Used under licence.