November Dead List

November-Dead-List

What’s the show about

From the BBC Radio 4 website, we have this synopsis of this new radio show :

Nicola Walker stars as a police detective who investigates a murder in London’s Catholic community in this new, gritty crime drama by Nick Perry.

Each Roman Catholic parish compiles a Book of the Dead from the lists of departed loved ones submitted by parishioners. Printed on the front of the envelopes are three words: November Dead List. A young priest opens one such envelope and discovers not a list of the dead, but a list of people he knows to be alive, and members of his congregation. At first he thinks it’s someone’s idea of a joke. Then the people named start turning up dead.

DI Flood – Nicola Walker
Father Manu -Paul Ready
John – Steve Toussaint
Father Pat – Dermot Crowley
Simon – Arthur Hughes
Terrence – John Norton
Gerry – Stephen Hogan
Kevin – Sean Murray
Eileen – Carolyn Pickles
Journalist – Carys Eleri
Producer – Sasha Yevtushenko
Writer – Nick Perry

The theme song is Roads by Portishead.

When will it be broadcast?

The show will broadcast over a five day period, with a 15 minute segment on each day, from Monday 20 January 2014 to Friday 24 January 2014, at 10:45 to 11:00 am GMT and repeated the same evening at 19:45 pm GMT.

The show is also available as an Omnibus Edition, i.e. all five episodes aired together, aired on BBC Radio 4 Extra on Saturday, 25 January 2014 at 12 noon.

After each broadcast, the show will be available on the BBC Radio iPlayer for 7 days. There is no geographic restrictions for the BBC Radio iPlayer, so you can tune in from anywhere in the world.

Reviews

There Ought to be Clowns

It’s no secret that I like me some Nicola Walker and so seeing her take the lead in Nick Perry’s radio drama November Dead List was definitely a thrill. It was the 15 minute drama of the week, five short episodes split across five days which I always find a little annoying so the omnibus edition was infinitely more preferable. A police procedural in which Walker plays a DI called in to investigate a murder which was seemingly predicted on a dead list, normally a list of deceased parishioners in a Catholic congregation but in this case, full of people who are still alive.

Soundtracked by the moody tones of Portishead’s Roads, it proved a rather effective police procedural as the race against time seems compromised by someone close to the case. From Kent wetlands to an Irish seminary and back again, Walker’s DI Flood is an utterly determined cop, at the expense of a personal life, and so the unexpected chemistry with Paul Ready’s Father Manu – who found the list – is a surprise to all but yet really well done in creating a palpable relationship in which one really invests. Lots of fun.

Update : 25 January 2014

Great news! The entire 67 minutes of this programme is now available for download and keep as an iTunes Podcast*!!! As far as we know, this is the first time one of Nicola’s radio shows is made available to fans in this manner. Lets hope the BBC will do the same in future and/or release some of her older stuff as downloadable iTunes Podcasts 😀

Thank you, RuthF, for the heads up about the programme. Thank you, Judith, for the heads up about the iTunes Podcast download! 😀

*Ed’s Note : the BBC has removed this programme from its iTunes Podcasts lists one week after the show was broadcast. 🙁

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