Ian Hart stars in these BBC Radio 4 dramatizations of Patricia Highsmith’s five Ripley novels. Tom Ripley detests murder unless it is absolutely necessary. He prefers someone else to do the dirty work. But, if he’s called on to act, there is no one more cool, calculating, and clever. In these dramatizations, BBC Radio 4 brings all Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels together in one thrilling series. In The Talented Mr Ripley, Tom makes a bid for another man’s inheritance and succeeds, but has he really got away with it? Ripley Under Ground is set a few years later, when Tom is living in luxury in a French chateau with his beautiful wife Heloise—but the clever art forgery which funds Tom’s expensive tastes is about to be uncovered. In Ripley’s Game, Tom sets up a man he dislikes to carry out two perfect murders, while in The Boy Who Followed Ripley, a rich young stalker arrives at Belle Ombre and he and Tom end up fighting for their lives. Finally, in Ripley Under Water, strange new neighbors show an overdeveloped interest in Ripley’s past. Will Tom’s shady dealings be exposed? Tense, thrilling, and atmospheric, these dramatizations are perfect evocations of Highsmith’s unique, complex, and brilliantly twisted crime novels. They were first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 from 28 February to 28 March 2009.
Author
Stephen Wyatt was educated at Latymer Upper School and then Clare College, Cambridge. After a brief spell as Lecturer in Drama at Glasgow University, he began his career as a freelance playwright in 1975 as writer/researcher with the Belgrade Theatre Coventry in Education team. His subsequent young people's theatre work includes The Magic Cabbage (Unicorn 1978), Monster (York Theatre Royal 1979) and The Witch of Wapping (Half Moon 1980). In 1982 and 1983 he was Resident Writer with the Bubble Theatre for whom he wrote Glitterballs and The Rogue's Progress. Other theatre work includes After Shave (Apollo Theatre 1978), R.I.P Maria Callas (Edinburgh Festival / Hen and Chickens 1992), A working woman (from Zola's L'Assommoir) (West Yorkshire Playhouse 1992) and The Standard Bearer (Man in the Moon 2001). He also collaborated with Jeff Clarke on The Burglar's Opera for Opera della Luna (2004) "stolen from an idea by W. S. Gilbert with music nicked from Sir Arthur Sullivan". His first work for television was Claws, filmed by the BBC in 1987, starring Simon Jones and Brenda Blethyn. Wyatt then went on to write two scripts for the science fiction series Doctor Who—these were Paradise Towers and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. Both of those serials featured Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor. His other television credits include scripts for The House of Eliott and Casualty. He has worked for BBC Radio since 1985 as both an adapter and an original playwright.
