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The Best Laid Plans

Episode 1: A Slight Admin Error

Duration: 30 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 FMLatest broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 Extra

Ardal O'Hanlon plays Smallbone - an idiot angel who's sent to earth to fix his mistakes.

In this first episode, Smallbone learns to use his new human body and ends up taking on the CEO of Grapefruit, a powerful technology company that wants to knock down the local library to expand their store.

In 1885, God (Geoff McGivern) nodded off. In 2015, he awoke to discover that his idiot servant, the angel Smallbone, had accidentally handed out God's plans for the next millennium when he was only meant to hand out plans for the next century. A thousand years of leisurely human progression has been crammed into the last 130. No wonder we're all so stressed. We weren't even meant to have pocket calculators until 2550.

Not only that, but God's blueprints should have run out in the mid-eighties – but we kept going. Humans are now inventing things God never even dreamed of - mobile phones, wireless internet and Made in Chelsea.

Smallbone is cast down to Earth in human form by God, tasked with the dauntingly vague mission of 'reversing the last thirteen decades of human progression'. The problem is that Smallbone is the world's biggest fan - he loves modern technology and his new human body, and he becomes distracted by everything that he's meant to destroy. Especially escalators.

Smallbone.......Ardal O'Hanlon
God.................Geoff McGivern
Tanya..............Esther Smith
Toby................Mike Wozniak
Susan..............Ruth Bratt

Supporting Roles: Duncan Wisbey and Ruth Bratt

Written by Mark Daydy

Produced by Ben Worsfield
A Lucky Giant production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in 2015. Show less

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