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The Reunion

Factual: Life Stories

Series which reunites a group of people intimately involved in a moment of modern history

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The Reunion: Alan Bennett's Talking Heads

06/09/2015

Alan Bennett's Talking Heads

BBC Radio 4 - The Reunion, Alan Bennett's Talking Heads

Sue MacGregor gathers key players from Alan Bennett's groundbreaking TV monologue series.

Sue MacGregor reunites five key players, including Alan Bennett himself, to discuss his groundbreaking TV monologues, which told extraordinary stories about ordinary people.

The alcoholic and Godless wife of a vicar, a curtain-twitching meddler who finds happiness in prison and a timid suburban housewife who falls in love with a murderer. Three of 12 seemingly remarkable yet ordinary characters who made up Alan Bennett's two series of ground-breaking TV monologues.

Despite a script for just one voice, each play is peopled with vivid additional characters and dramatic action, so vivid that years later some viewers falsely remember seeing "off-screen" characters.

The heartbreaking and hilarious stories were a big hit with TV audiences who saw ordinary folk like them grappling with indignities, dilemmas and disasters.

In this edition of The Reunion, Alan Bennett describes who inspired his characters and why he choose the monologue form.

Penelope Wilton, who appeared as Rosemary in Nights in the Garden of Spain, explains to Sue MacGregor how it took two days to decipher Bennett's terrible handwriting before she realised that he'd written a Talking Head for her.

Tristram Powell directed two episodes and describes his less is more approach allowing the actors, and significantly Bennett's writing, to captivate viewers, rather than slick editing and eye-catching sets.

The concept of a monologue was virtually unheard of in television and has rarely been tried since. It was initially met with scepticism by some, including, actress Patricia Routledge who recalls how Bennett patiently waited for her to capitulate. She went on to appear in two episodes.


Producer: Karen Pirie
Series Producer: David Prest

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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