Ray Bradbury BBC Radio
Ray Bradbury BBC Radio is a curated collection rather than one historical series. It follows the BBC's relationship with Bradbury's fiction across more than five decades, from early standalone adaptations through Tales of the Bizarre and later Radio 4 productions. The changing production styles make the collection a history of adaptation as much as a Bradbury anthology.
Program History
Curated 21-item BBC Ray Bradbury radio-drama collection spanning 1962-2014. It combines standalone BBC adaptations with the 12-episode 1995-97 Tales of the Bizarre run and later Radio 4 Dangerous Visions productions.
The run breaks into several distinct periods: Early BBC Bradbury adaptations (September 12, 1962 to May 3, 1968) on BBC Radio, 1982-1991 BBC adaptations (1982-03 to August 28, 1991) on BBC Radio, Tales of the Bizarre (December 7, 1995 to December 25, 1997) on BBC Radio 4, and Modern BBC Radio 4 revivals (May 22, 2007 to June 21, 2014) on BBC Radio 4.
Names that turn up again and again in the surviving run include Hamish Wilson (director), Brian Sibley (radio adaptor), Catherine Czerkawska (radio adaptor), Adrian Bean (director), Martin Jenkins (director), Andrew Mark Sewell (director), and Bernadette Windsor (performer).
The stories often return to Ray Bradbury work adapted for BBC radio, Tales of the Bizarre BBC Radio 4 anthology, supernatural, uncanny and macabre, science fiction and speculative futures, technology, automation and media anxiety, and Mars, spaceflight and cosmic isolation.
The show also sits in a wider radio history that includes Ray Bradbury’s Tales of the Bizarre, Bradbury and BBC radio across five decades, Early BBC Ray Bradbury radio adaptations, and BBC Bradbury productions in 1982.
All Episodes & Recordings
Search this program or browse in its validated catalog order.
The Scythe
A starving family inherits a farm whose wheat field must be harvested with an old scythe. The new owner discovers that every stalk he cuts corresponds to a human life…
The Illustrated Man
A young traveler shares a camp with a tattooed wanderer whose moving illustrations reveal dark stories of replacement humans, children aiding an invasion and astronauts scattered helplessly through space. The…
The Martian Chronicles
A linked series of episodes traces humanity’s arrival on Mars, the devastation of the native Martians, the destruction and abandonment of settlements as war erupts on Earth, and Captain Wilder’s…
Leviathan 99
Ishmael joins a deep-space voyage commanded by a blind captain obsessed with destroying the vast comet Leviathan 99, the cosmic adversary that took his sight. The hunt becomes a space-age…
The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bo
After killing Donald Huxley, Acton becomes consumed by the fear that he has left fingerprints somewhere in the victim’s house. His attempt to wipe every surface expands into an obsessive…
There Will Come Soft Rains
In an empty automated house, machines continue cooking meals, cleaning rooms, announcing appointments and reciting poetry long after the family has vanished in a nuclear catastrophe. When a fire breaks…
I Sing the Body Electric
A grieving family brings home an artificial grandmother designed to care for the children after their mother’s death. Agatha refuses to trust another figure who might leave her until the…
The Day It Rained Forever
Three elderly men endure relentless heat and drought in a nearly empty desert hotel until musician Blanche Hillgood arrives carrying a harp. Her presence and music transform the stagnant house,…
The Jar
Charlie’s purchase of a grotesque carnival jar turns his home into a gathering place as neighbors project their fears, memories and fantasies onto its mysterious contents. When his wife Betty…
Have I Got a Chocolate Bar for Yo
A young man repeatedly visits a priest to confess what he treats as an overpowering devotion to chocolate, describing candy with the fervor of a religious convert. Their odd spiritual…
The Veldt
George and Lydia Hadley become alarmed by their children’s obsessive attachment to an immersive learning room that repeatedly creates a violent African veldt. When they finally try to destroy the…
And So Died Riabouchinska
A police investigation into a death at a theater focuses on ventriloquist John Fabian and his exquisite female dummy, Riabouchinska. The detective learns that the puppet was modeled on Fabian’s…
Night Call Collect
An elderly man living alone on an abandoned Mars begins receiving telephone calls from recordings made by his younger self decades earlier. The increasingly cruel automated voice reminds him how…
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade discover that a mysterious carnival can alter age through its carousel and that its owners, Mr. Dark and Mr. Cooger, feed on human fear and…
Jack in the Box
Edward has been raised inside an isolated house where his mother teaches him that their enclosed estate is the entire universe and that the world beyond its gate means death.…
The Man Upstairs
Young Douglas grows suspicious of the strange boarder living upstairs after unexplained deaths occur nearby and he notices the man’s aversion to silver. Remembering how his grandmother stuffs poultry, Douglas…
Skeleton
A hypochondriac becomes obsessed with the skeleton inside his own body and seeks out a mysterious bone specialist. His fear grows into a conviction that his bones are an alien…
Kaleidoscope
An accident tears a spacecraft apart and flings its crew in different directions through space with no hope of rescue. As their radio contact fades, the astronauts argue, confess regrets…
The Wind
A man named Alan becomes convinced that the world’s winds are a living predator that has tracked him home after years of study. His friend Herb initially treats the warnings…
The Emissary
Bedridden Marion depends on her dog Toby to bring the outside world to her, reading the seasons from his fur and welcoming the visitors he seems to recruit. After Toby…
Fahrenheit 451
Fireman Guy Montag begins questioning a society that burns books after meeting the curious Clarisse and witnessing the human cost of his work. He secretly turns to former professor Faber,…