United Kingdoms - Fearing - a podcast by BBC Radio 4

A ground breaking five part series from exciting new writers celebrating and revealing life across the United Kingdoms in short, sharp drama, comedy, news reports, song and poetic monologue. Stories, lives and voices making a kaleidoscope of now.

Each episode features five short dramas by different writers - a total of 50 writers and 100 actors have been brought together, showcasing new writing and performing talent from every corner of the United Kingdom.

Episode 1: Fearing – a moving and powerful look at 21st Century United Kingdoms.

• MUSSELBURGH - An exhausted woman retires to bed for three days and reflects on her failings, only to realise they are a key to hope not fear.

• ERYRI, SNOWDONIA - A narrative song that explores how a child overcomes their fear about fitting in to a Welsh-speaking community. Sound Design by Nigel Lewis.

• RANDALSTOWN, COUNTY ANTRIM - A conversational poetic monologue that discusses how fear uses semantics as camouflage and a place to hide in, as though fear is a spirit that inhabits words and is loosed into our neural pathways as a result.?

• UNTHANK - A surreal comedy about your life shrinking, literally. Ivy is learning to live with her wheelchair, but fear of change has a dramatic effect on her Cumbrian farmhouse.

• TANKERTON - When house-mates leave and your zero hours contract ends, where else is there to turn in lockdown, if not home? But home is no place for the in-between, the non-conforming, so they pitch their tent on the edge of the sea and allow the waves, the sky and land to be home.


Musselburgh written by Hannah Lavery
Performed by Nalini Chetty
Produced by Kirsty Williams

Eryri written by Lisa Jên Brown
Performed by Lisa Jên brown and Martin Hoyland
Sound Design by Nigel Lewis
Produced by Martin Hoyland and James Robinson

Randalstown written and performed by Clare Dwyer Hogg
Sound Design Lucinda Mason Brown
Produced by Celia de Wolff

Unthank written by Karen Featherstone
Performed by Cherylee Houston (Ivy), Kerry Willison-Parry (Reporter) and Lekhani Chirwa (Rose)
Sound Design by Eloise Whitmore
Co-Produced by Polly Thomas and Dermot Daly
Original Music composed by Niroshini Thanbar

Tankerton written by Shelley Silas
Performed by Tigger Blaze
Sound Design by Lucinda Mason Brown
Produced by Celia de Wolff

Programme Illustration by Eleanor Hibbert

Episode Sound Designers: Lucinda Mason Brown and David Chilton, Essential Music Ltd
Curated by Celia de Wolff for Pier Productions and BBC Northern Ireland for BBC Radio 4

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