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Classic Serial

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Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status

Classic Serial: The Moonstone

Classic Serial: The Moonstone: Episode 4

Drama: Crime

The Moonstone

Episode 4

BBC Radio 4 - Classic Serial, The Moonstone, Episode 4

Blake returns from abroad determined to get to the bottom of the mystery of the diamond.

Blake returns from abroad determined to get to the bottom of the mystery of the diamond. He makes a shocking discovery and sets up a re-enactment of the fatal night a year ago.

Paul Rhys as Franklin Blake, Kenneth Cranham as Sergeant Cuff, Bill Paterson as Mr Bruff and Jasmine Hyde as Rachel Verinder star in Episode Four of Doug Lucie's dramatisation of Wilkie Collins's detective masterpiece.

Franklin Blake returns from abroad determined to get to the bottom of the mystery of the missing diamond and persuade Rachel to talk to him again. In Yorkshire he makes a shocking discovery at the quicksand and then sets up an amazing re-enactment of the fatal night a year ago.

Opium plays an important part in the re-enactment as it was used widely for killing pain in mid-Victorian England and in Blake's case by accident to help him sleep after stopping smoking cigars. A strange medical man called Ezra Jennings enters the story and movingly describes how opium has helped him to combat a disease for many years (which sounds like cancer but is never explained).

After finally discovering who stole the diamond, the action moves back to London as the Indians have reappeared just as the Moonstone is likely to leave the Bank at the end of the year's pledge. A chase to a pub in the East End of London ends tragically for a man in disguise and the final postscript from Mr Murthwaite tells of the diamond's final resting place back in the forehead of the Indian deity.

Cast:
Franklin Blake ..... Paul Rhys
Rachel Verinder ..... Jasmine Hyde
Betteridge ..... Steve Hodson
Sergeant Cuff ..... Kenneth Cranham
Mr Bruff ..... Bill Paterson
Ezra Jennings ..... Peter Marinker
Mr Luker ..... Stephen Critchlow
Rosanna Spearman ..... Alison Pettitt
Mr Murthwaite ..... Paul Bhattacharjee
Lucy ..... Rachel Atkins
Gooseberry ..... Harrison Webb

Recorded on location by Lucinda Mason Brown 
Original Music by David Chilton 
Dramatised by Doug Lucie 


Produced by Janet Whitaker 
A Goldhawk Essential production for BBC Radio 4.

BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Doug Lucie's dramatisation of Wilkie Collins' detective masterpiece from 1868

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