The audio drama series stars Kim Cattrall, Ed Harris and Johnny Flynn.
Among a raft of new commissions, BBC Radio 4 has announced Central Intelligence.
The 10-part drama will take us inside the early years of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency.
Here’s what we know about Central Intelligence:
Central Intelligence tells the true insider story of the CIA from the perspective of Eloise Page (Kim Cattrall), who joined on the agency’s first day in 1947 and became one of its most powerful women. Narrating in hindsight, Eloise takes the listener on a journey spanning the staggering world events that shaped her career, as well as portraying her relationships with early CIA leaders, Allen Dulles (Ed Harris) and Richard Helms (Johnny Flynn).
The series offers listeners a chance to be a fly-on-the-wall to the heated debates and decisions that shaped world history and continue to have ramifications in the present day. Told with the polite but sharp, brutally honest, questioning mind she was famous for, in an organization that was long run by a ‘male, pale and Yale’ hierarchy of men, Eloise is a compelling witness to the ambitions, values, strengths and weaknesses of a string of early CIA leaders whose decisions – good and bad – have shaped the world we live in.
Kim Cattrall said:
“I was pleased to be asked to join BBC Radio 4’s Central Intelligence. A very well-written, factual and entertaining history of the Central Intelligence Agency from its uncertain inception. A human story full of false starts, gaffs, blunders, and thankfully triumphs on the world stage. A thrilling story of Russian Roulette. I was engrossed learning the true story of how this vital agency grew and prospered before and during the Cold War.”
The series comes from producer Emma Hearn at Goldhawk Productions Ltd, for BBC Radio 4.
Goldhawk’s John Scott Dryden adds:
“Goldhawk has built a reputation for dramas based on real-life, world-changing events such as the collapse of Lehman Brothers bank, the Greek Debt Crisis. This is bigger. The story of the CIA told from insiders’ accounts and declassified documents, feels huge and important and casts a light on the world we live in today.”
Central Intelligence is part of Radio 4’s popular Limelight strand. Listeners can subscribe on BBC Sounds to hear the first episode on 13th September, with weekly episodes to follow.
Other Radio 4 Drama commissions
We can also look forward to…
A new adaptation of King Lear starring Richard Wilson and produced by Brill Productions.
New Charles Dickens dramatizations: Hard Times, Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend.
A season of dramas on the theme of rule breaking. The first, Breaking the Rules: A House Called Insanity, stars Anne-Marie Duff (Suspect).
BBC Sounds
There’s also an extensive back catalogue of audio drama available on BBC Sounds. Highlights include a reading of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four by Martin Freeman, Juliet Stevenson and Tom Hollander and two Franz Kafka dramatizations. The Trial, stars Iwan Rheon, Nina Wadia and Mark Heap, while The Man Who Disappeared, stars Divian Ladwa and Fenella Woolgar.