RLF Writers’ News: December 2025

Ed Harris has written the libretto for The Little Zombie Girl, an alternative Family Christmas show from London Youth Opera.

The show – which features music by Omar Shahryar – is described as “a comic, heart-warming, Gothic opera about an undead girl with a magical singing voice”.

Playing at the Shaw Theatre on 13 and 14 December. For tickets, see here.

Claudine Toutoungi’s new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility will be the finale of the forthcoming BBC Radio 4 Jane Austen season that runs through December, to mark the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth on 16 December.

The two-part adaptation offers a fresh take on Austen’s themes of love, heartbreak, and sisterhood and stars Tamsin Greig, narrating the tale of sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood through the character of Austen herself. Madeleine Mantock, Rose Basista, Ben Hardy, Enyi Okoronkwo and Richard Goulding co-star, and the broadcast is directed by Anne Isger.

Listen to Drama on 4: Sense and Sensibility, part one on Saturday 20 December and part two on Sunday 21 December, or afterwards on BBC Sounds.

Claudine Toutoungi will also feature in BBC Radio 4’s Opening Lines before each episode, speaking to presenter John Yorke. Listen to part one on 20 December, and part two on 21 December.

Also appearing as part of the BBC Radio 4 Jane Austen 250th anniversary season is Austen biographer Dr Paula Byrne, who will present a ten-part factual series, When I Met Jane Austen, joined by a stellar line-up of guests including David Baddiel, Katherine Rundell, Val McDermid, Kate Atkinson, Andrew Davies, Amy Heckerling, Gurinder Chadha, Marlon James, Colm Tóibín and Philippa Perry.

Each episode explores how Austen’s work has shaped and inspired their lives and creative journeys. Paula has been thinking and writing about Austen for the best part of thirty years and her guests’ experiences will inspire her own reflections, drawn from the places that held special meaning for Austen.

When I Met Jane Austen will be on BBC Radio 4 from Monday 15 – Friday 19 December. Listen here, or on BBC Sounds.

Satinder Kaur Chohan’s new radio drama Scammer is available now on BBC Sounds, as BBC Saturday Drama of the Week and part of the Secrets and Lies season.

Moving between a bustling scam call centre in Delhi, India and a house under the Heathrow flight path in British Asian suburbia, Scammer centres on the relationship between two women: Anju, an Indian scam call centre worker and Deesho, a lonely Indian elderly woman, unknowingly suffering the early stages of dementia. When Deesho mistakes Anju for her granddaughter Navi, an unexpected connection begins to form between them. But as pressure mounts on Anju to make more money, she is forced to make a difficult decision.

Scammer explores a surprising intergenerational connection in a disconnected modern world, in which secrets and lies are currency in global transactions. Featuring Shelley King and Payal Mistry. Directed by Nadia Molinari.

Listen here, or on BBC Sounds.

Tina Pepler’s two-part Radio 4 dramatisation of The Grass is Singing, the debut novel by RLF beneficiary and Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing, has been repeated on Radio 4 Extra. An explosive exploration of the racial politics of 1940s Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) is available to listen to on BBC Sounds until 24 December.

Listen here.

Stephen Wyatt‘s 2-part dramatisation of Emile Zola’s novel about the rise of the department store, The Ladies’ Paradise, is being repeated on Radio 4 Extra and is available now on BBC Sounds.

Zola’s novel follows Denise Baudu, who comes to Paris to find work in her uncle’s shop and is inexorably towards his chief rival The Ladies’ Paradise, owned by the ambitious and charismatic Octave Mouret. Listen here.

Emily Berry’s The Little Box Which Contains the World is an exploration of the agoraphobia she was diagnosed with over ten years ago and which limits her ability to travel.

A poetic journey through the lives of people who don’t like going on journeys, it explores what it means to come up against the boundaries of the self, and how might those limits be breached through the power of the imagination – in the words of poet Vasko Popa, “the little box which contains the world”.

Part of the Illuminated season on Radio 4. Available now on BBC Sounds. Listen here.