BBC Radio 4 Extra

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama. With recent favourites from BBC Radio 4.

Saturday Drama

Drama

Thrillers, mysteries, love stories and detective fiction.

Thrillers, mysteries, love stories and detective fiction, as well as an occasional special series

Saturday Drama: Frances Byrnes - Belle Amie

Belle Amie

13/08/2011

Frances Byrnes - Belle Amie

BBC Radio 4 - Saturday Drama, Frances Byrnes - Belle Amie

4 Extra Debut. Has age tamed ruthless 19th-century charmer Georges Duroy?

4 Extra Debut. Has age tamed ruthless 19th-century charmer Georges Duroy? Original sequel to Maupassant's Bel Ami, starring Jonathan Slinger.

Original sequel to Guy de Maupassant's novel Bel Ami - have the years tamed amoral charmer, Georges Duroy? Frances Byrnes' witty take on 19th century French politics, romance and double dealing. 

The hero of the story, Georges Duroy, nicknamed Bel Ami by the women he uses, will trample over anyone for money and power. Blessed with good looks and confidence, he is unstoppable. He meets his match in Clothilde de Marelle, the pleasure seeking bored wife of an older businessman. 

In this new sequel by Frances Byrnes, we rejoin our hero and his lover as middle age looms.

Age has taken its toll on both, but their passion is as vivid as ever. Then, when Bel Ami's father in law dies and tells his daughter, Suzanne, that her husband has slept with her mother, mid life crisis explodes. Bel Ami seeks solace with the virtuous, church going Laurine, Clothilde's daughter, and makes one last bid to refind his lost youth in a mad dash to Africa, where he has launched an ill advised military campaign. Clothilde is furious and sets out to thwart him, but first she must overcome her daughter's conviction that Bel Ami's holy conversion is for real.



The writer

Guy de Maupassant is one of the finest short story writers of the 19th century. 

The dramatist

Frances Byrnes is an award winning radio producer and writer. She won a Sony in 2008 for her Radio 4 feature, Now Wash Your Hands. 


Georges Duroy/Bel Ami ............Jonathan Slinger
Clothilde de Marelle................Emma Fielding
Suzanna....................Rhiannon Oliver
Laurine......................Sarah Ovens
Renard......................Rhys ap Hywel
Mme Walter....................Nicky Rainsford

Producer Polly Thomas
Executive producer Kate McAll

A BBC Cymru/Wales production.

BBC Radio 4

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

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.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Saturday Drama

Frances Byrnes - Belle Amie

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 4 Extra

About BBC Radio 4 Extra