Enoch Cartwright, Victorian gentleman scientist, invests everything in the development of a machine to record the voice of his dead daughter, Emily, unaware that his living daughter Clara talks to her sister every night.

Written by Katie Hims.
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole

Enoch …. Michael Bertenshaw
Clara …. Eva Sayer
Emily …. Georgie Fuller
Wesley Blackburn …. Ben Crowe
Woman at door …. Carolyn Pickles
Joe …. John Hughes
Josie …. Priyanga Burford

After developing the means to make long distance radio transmissions, Marconi devoted much of the rest of his life to listening out for the voices of the dead. If radio can conjure a voice disembodied in space, he expected, as have legions of people since, that radio can capture the voices of those disembodied in other dimensions - in time, in ethereal planes. As technology becomes more sensitive, more diverse, more obscure, there are pioneers always ready to harness the new to the service of this age old fascination.

This is the story of five generations of a family whose members can and can't hear the dead. It's an enterprise to explore the myriad ties, stories and quirks that bind families through the generations, across the spectrum of meanings of 'listening to the dead'. Between allowing the echoes of a beloved's voice to live on, and the notion that the dead can engage in communicating new information, are vast grey areas of misinformation that beguile the bereaved and thrill the imagination.

Katie Hims' previous series with Jessica Dromgoole, Lost Property, won Best Audio Drama in the Audio Drama Awards 2011, and they are now collaborating on Radio 4's epic commission, Home Front.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2013. Show less