Ballylenon Complete BBC Series - Christopher Fitz-Simon

Category: Humor, Radio Productions
Language: English
Keywords: BBC Full Cast Radio 4

Written by Christopher Fitz-Simon
Read by Full Cast
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 32 Kbps
Dramatization

Ballylenon: The Complete Series 1-8
A BBC Radio 4 Comedy Drama
By: Christopher Fitz-Simon
Narrated by: Aine McCartney, Full Cast, Gerard Murphy, John Hewitt, Margaret D’Arcy, Stella McCusker, TP McKenna
Length: 19 hrs and 50 mins
Radio/TV Program
Release date: 17-09-2020
Language: English
Publisher: BBC Audio
All eight series of the comedy drama series set in a Donegal town in the 1950s and ’60s.

Ireland in the ’50s, and the days of mass tourism and indoor plumbing have not yet come to rural Co. Donegal. But in the small, sleepy town of Ballylenon, change is coming, and trouble is brewing.

A power struggle is under way for control of the town, with two rival forces aligned against each other. Seeking to rule the roost are hotel owner and undertaker Phonsie Doherty and his allies, sisters Muriel and Vera McConkey. These two formidable ladies are in charge of the corner shop/Post Office and Telephone Exchange and are known as the eyes and ears of Ballylenon - while the voice is provided by local newspaper The Vindicator.

Between them, they seem to have the means of communication sewn up - but the opposing faction, led by primary teacher Vivienne Boal, the Reverend Samuel Hawthorne and Police Officer Guard Gallagher, are determined to have their say. A supporter of cultural causes, such as music festivals and architectural conservation, Vivienne is bright, breezy and apparently straightforward - but she manages to achieve certain aims by devious means….

The antagonism between the two camps is thinly veiled - and the causes for dissension range from a proposal to demolish the Georgian courthouse to build a car park, to arguments over a ramshackle cottage that may have belonged to the family of US president Herbert Hoover. But as the ’60s dawn, the town faces a threat that unites the whole community in moral outrage: the arrival of television.

Christopher Fitz-Simon’s playful yet cynical look at Irish village life stars TP McKenna, Gerard Murphy, Margaret D’Arcy and Stella McCusker.

Production credits

Written by Christopher Fitz-Simon

Directed by Eoin O’Callaghan (Series 1-5, 7, 8) and Peter Kavanagh (Series 6)

Music arranged and performed by Stephanie Hughes

Pianist: Michael Harrison

First broadcast BBC Radio 4: 8th June-13th July 1994 (Series 1), 18th July-8th August 1995 (Series 2), 4th-25th June 1996 (Series 3), 3rd-24nd December 1997 (Series 4), 15th June-20th July 1998 (Series 5), 18th June-23rd July 1999 (Series 6), 25th November 2009-6th January 2010 (Series 7), 26th January-2nd March 2011 (Series 8)