The Lady Detectives (BBC Radio)
The Lady Detectives uses four BBC Radio 4 dramas to recover women investigators from early crime fiction who are often left out of the usual Holmes-centered history of the genre. Each episode adapts a different case, giving the short series the feel of a curated literary anthology rather than one continuing detective story.
Program History
Four-part BBC Radio 4 anthology dramatizing early female-detective fiction, adapted by Roger Danes and produced by Patrick Rayner.
The run breaks into several distinct periods: BBC Radio 4 January 2005 run (January 3, 2005 to January 24, 2005) on BBC Radio 4.
Names that turn up again and again in the surviving run include Patrick Rayner (producer), Roger Danes (radio adaptor), Gayanne Potter (performer), Abigail Docherty (performer), Crawford Logan (performer), Eileen McCallum (performer), and Paul Young (performer).
The stories often return to women detectives in early crime fiction, Victorian and Edwardian detective fiction, inheritance, wills and financial motive, jewel theft and society crime, and Scottish law and the not-proven verdict.
The show also sits in a wider radio history that includes BBC Radio 4 The Lady Detectives run and BBC revival of early female detective fiction.
All Episodes & Recordings
Search this program or browse in its validated catalog order.
The Redhill Sisterhood
Loveday Brooke is called to Redhill after police suspect a small religious sisterhood of helping a gang rob country houses. Working from observation rather than appearances, she clears the sisters,…
Mr Bovey’s Unexpected Will
Florence Cusack becomes involved in an eccentric inheritance contest in which Henry Bovey's fortune in gold sovereigns is to go to the claimant whose body weight most nearly matches the…
The Golden Slipper
Society detective Violet Strange is asked to stop a series of jewel thefts surrounding a circle of inseparable young women. A lost golden slipper, her own marked jewelry and careful…
The Law and the Lady
Soon after marrying Eustace Woodville, Valeria learns that he used another name because his first wife died by poison and a Scottish jury returned the unresolved verdict 'not proven.' Refusing…