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The Stanley Baxter Playhouse

Comedy: Sitcoms

Series of comic plays starring Stanley Baxter

The Stanley Baxter Playhouse: Series 5

Stanley Baxter

Thelma Barlow

David Holt

Marilyn Imrie

Colin MacDonald

The Stanley Baxter Playhouse: Series 5: Episode 2: The Hat

Drama

Episode 2

Episode 2: The Hat

Series 5

The Hat

BBC Radio 4 - The Stanley Baxter Playhouse, Series 5, The Hat

A respected Scots sheriff tries to retrieve a family heirloom from his brother's coffin.

A Scots sheriff plots to retrieve his grandfather's fireman's helmet from his brother's coffin. With Thelma Barlow. From January 2013.

By Colin MacDonald.

Sheriff Finlay travels from Scotland to York for the funeral and cremation of his older brother William, with whom he didn't get on. When he gets there he is greeted with barely disguised hostility by William's widow. 

She tells him arrangements for the funeral are all made: it is going to be a Humanist service and the family heirloom fireman's hat, which was worn with pride by the brothers' grandfather, is in the coffin and is going to be incinerated along with William. 

Alistair decides to get the hat before the coffin makes its final journey into the flames. This will take him into dangerous territory, breaking into a funeral parlour at night and braving the criminal underworld to retrieve Grandad's hat and make a final peace with his brother.

Coronation Street veteran Thelma Barlow stars as his sister-in-law Louise and Stanley Baxter is Sheriff Alistair Finlay in this black comedy with a warm heart about death, brotherly love and saying goodbye.

Directed by Marilyn Imrie
A Catherine Bailey production for BBC Radio 4.

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