Drama of the Week

Satinder Kaur Chohan's moving drama 'Scammer' about the ruthless world of scam call centres is part of BBC Radio 4 drama collection, Secrets and Lies.

Moving between a bustling scam call centre in Delhi, India and a house under the Heathrow flight path in British Asian suburbia, Scammer centres on the relationship between two women: Anju, an Indian scam call centre worker and Deesho, a lonely Indian elderly woman, unknowingly suffering the early stages of dementia. When Deesho mistakes Anju for her granddaughter Navi, an unexpected connection begins to form between them. But as pressure mounts on Anju to make more money, she is forced to make a difficult decision.

Scammer explores a surprising intergenerational connection in a disconnected modern world, in which secrets and lies are currency in deceitful global transactions.

DEESHO.....Shelley King
ANJU.....Payal Mistry
VASHU.....Gurjeet Singh
PAPPU.....Esh Alladi

Additional voices by members of the cast, Ben Hollands and Shemiza Rashid.

Written by Satinder Kaur Chohan
Directed by Nadia Molinari
Technical Production and Sound Design by Sharon Hughes
Production Co-ordinator Ben Hollands
Casting Manger Alex Curran
Additional Technical Production by Kelly Young, Elijah Waddington

A BBC Studios Production for BBC Radio 4

A new re-imagining of The Wind in the Willows told from the margins. Set in a timeless, Kenneth Grahame-inspired England, the drama looks up from weasel-height at class, home and who gets to belong when the Wild Wood is being carved up by developers. Narrated by Penelope Wilton, it blends the familiar riverbank world with the pressures of eviction, empty grand houses and power concentrated in a few determined hands.

Kit, a young weasel, is watching her family slide into precarity as the scrubland around their burrow is sold off and the criminal Chief Weasel tightens his grip. With her best friends - Portly the otter and Radar the bat - Kit’s world collides with Mole, Ratty, Badger and other classic characters, while a grand house standing empty becomes a magnet for grievance and opportunity. What follows is a fight not for glory but for a place to live: shifting alliances, contested territory and small acts of care that build a community where suspicion says it cannot exist. A story about who gets to stay, what makes a home, and how belonging is made on the riverbank.

Dramatist Tom Morton-Smith is a playwright and screenwriter best known for the RSC’s Oppenheimer and the multi-award-winning stage adaptation of My Neighbour Totoro.

Cast:

Narrator . . . . . Penelope Wilton
Kit . . . . . Claire Morgan
Portly . . . . . Harriet Carmichael
Radar . . . . . Kathryn Drysdale
Magpie, Chief, Ratty, Badger, Toad . . . . . Ed Gaughan
Ma-Weasel . . . . . Jasmine Hyde
Mole . . . . . Django Bevan
Otter . . . . . Clive Hayward

Written by Tom Morton-Smith

Production co-ordinator: Luke MacGregor
Casting Manager: Alex Curran
Technical producers: Keith Graham, Sam Dickinson
Sound designer: Sharon Hughes
Director: Sasha Yevtushenko

A BBC Studios production

Mars, 2048. The first settlers, a mix of international workers and the super-rich. And the first unexplained death.

When a body turns up in the corridor between a scrappy warehouse and a half-built luxury hotel, no-nonsense Harbourmaster Rita Siddiqui finds herself in charge. With Earth temporarily out of contact and no official law enforcement on Mars, she ropes in Vice Captain Jaz Hickson, a wide-eyed young pilot who’s only just landed.

But murder's not their only problem. Atmospheric tests have triggered a dangerous storm. Paranoia grows as the power fails. Lights, gravity, oxygen: everything is at risk.

Rita and Jaz must navigate a growing list of suspects, a dwindling supply of patience, and a killer who’s not finished yet.

Because even 140 million miles from Earth, people still have secrets. And someone’s willing to kill to keep them.

Written by Tim Foley

CAST
RITA SIDDIQUI ..... NISHA NAYAR
JAZ HICKSON ..... LUKE NEWBERRY
KAYA ..... SASHA MCABE
DAN ..... JOANA BORJA
POWELL ..... JASON BARNETT
DR LI ..... CRYSTAL YU
WARD ..... STEFFAN RHODRI
NILS ..... DAVID MENKIN
MAX ..... SIDHANT ANAND

Sound: Sharon Hughes, Keith Graham and Neva Missirian
Production Co-ordinator: Luke MacGregor
Director: Anne Isger
Casting Manager: Alex Curran

A BBC Studios Production for BBC Radio 4

Presented by Paul French
Drama written by Sarah Wooley

Whatever anyone declared categorically about Shura Giraldi, someone else insisted on the exact opposite. Shura was handsome and beautiful; Shura was kind and good, Shura was exploitative and evil. Shura was just another struggling White Russian refugee trying to get by in 1930s China; Shura was the heart and brains of a gang that ran clubs, sex workers, illicit booze and drugs, when not robbing banks and stealing gems to fence in Shanghai. Shura loved ballet and cabaret, creating the Shura Giraldi Dance Troupe that topped the bill at all the best Peking nightclubs.

Shura sometimes presented as male and sometimes as female. When passing as a man Shura bound his breasts tightly and wore a sharp tailored suit; when she was a woman she wore startlingly coloured robes, both Chinese-style cheongsam and Western dresses, letting her raven hair flow loose, said witnesses. Shura had added an incredibly massive layer of confusion and obfuscation to anyone looking by changing gender. Switching for anonymity, for commercial gain or criminal advantage, for love, for a whim.

Paul French is a historian and writer who focuses on China in the first half of the 20th century. He's been on Shura’s trail for 15 years, digging through the paper records and archives in half a dozen countries in an attempt to get to grips with the enigma that was Shura. This story, a product of that tireless research, is full of truths, but like an old jigsaw brought down from the attic after decades, there are many pieces missing. So we're using drama, written by Sarah Wooley, to conjure and join the dots of Shura’s story, and go in search of a lost life and a forgotten world.

The search will take us from a Russian far east in violent revolution, to the chaos of the mass emigration of the White Russians, to the crowded hutongs of Peking; from that city’s nightclubs and cabarets, to the casinos of Shanghai; from a China wracked by rampaging warlordism, invaded by Japan, and then fighting its own civil war that culminated in its own revolution.

Shura saw it all; Shura lived through it all; Shura, in part, explains it all.

Shura . . . . . Maggie Bain
Zaichek . . . . . Leo Wan
Roy . . . . . Daniel York Loh
Leopard . . . . . Chris Lew Kum Hoi
Tatiana . . . . . Charlotte East
Anton . . . . . Luke Nunn
Marie . . . . . Cecilia Appiah
Saxsen . . . . . Ian Dunnett Jnr
The MC . . . . . Roger Ringrose
Anna . . . . . Jane Whittenshaw

Editing and sound design by Peter Ringrose.

Directed by Sasha Yevtushenko.

Presented by Paul French
Drama written by Sarah Wooley

Whatever anyone declared categorically about Shura Giraldi, someone else insisted on the exact opposite. Shura was handsome and beautiful; Shura was kind and good, Shura was exploitative and evil. Shura was just another struggling White Russian refugee trying to get by in 1930s China; Shura was the heart and brains of a gang that ran clubs, sex workers, illicit booze and drugs, when not robbing banks and stealing gems to fence in Shanghai. Shura loved ballet and cabaret, creating the Shura Giraldi Dance Troupe that topped the bill at all the best Peking nightclubs.

Shura sometimes presented as male and sometimes as female. When passing as a man Shura bound his breasts tightly and wore a sharp tailored suit; when she was a woman she wore startlingly coloured robes, both Chinese-style cheongsam and Western dresses, letting her raven hair flow loose, said witnesses. Shura had added an incredibly massive layer of confusion and obfuscation to anyone looking by changing gender. Switching for anonymity, for commercial gain or criminal advantage, for love, for a whim.

Paul French is a historian and writer who focuses on China in the first half of the 20th century. He's been on Shura’s trail for 15 years, digging through the paper records and archives in half a dozen countries in an attempt to get to grips with the enigma that was Shura. This story, a product of that tireless research, is full of truths, but like an old jigsaw brought down from the attic after decades, there are many pieces missing. So we're using drama, written by Sarah Wooley, to conjure and join the dots of Shura’s story, and go in search of a lost life and a forgotten world.

The search will take us from a Russian far east in violent revolution, to the chaos of the mass emigration of the White Russians, to the crowded hutongs of Peking; from that city’s nightclubs and cabarets, to the casinos of Shanghai; from a China wracked by rampaging warlordism, invaded by Japan, and then fighting its own civil war that culminated in its own revolution.

Shura saw it all; Shura lived through it all; Shura, in part, explains it all.

Shura . . . . . Maggie Bain
Zaichek . . . . . Leo Wan
Roy . . . . . Daniel York Loh
Leopard . . . . . Chris Lew Kum Hoi
Tatiana . . . . . Charlotte East
Anton . . . . . Luke Nunn
Marie . . . . . Cecilia Appiah
Saxsen . . . . . Ian Dunnett Jnr
The MC . . . . . Roger Ringrose
Anna . . . . . Jane Whittenshaw

Editing and sound design by Peter Ringrose.

Directed by Sasha Yevtushenko.