Press Release: The Good Listener
2 min readTHE GOOD LISTENER
A new 3 part radio drama from Holy Mountain is a highly authentic portrayal of life inside GCHQ.
BBC Radio 4
Monday 31st October at 1415
Tuesday 1st November at 1415
Wednesday 2nd November at 1415
Listen to the trailer:
The Good Listener is the result of a long and detailed research process undertaken by its creators, writer Fin Kennedy and director Boz Temple-Morris, into the doings of GCHQ, the spy agency responsible for cyber security and digital operations. This is the third outing for the production after one-off radio dramas in 2014 and 2015. During this time Fin and Boz have consulted professionals and experts from all sides, even gaining access to GCHQ itself. Their enquiry has been wide ranging, looking at day to day life inside the ‘doughnut’ as well as the operations themselves and the political context.
This story begins a reluctant Henry Morcombe and his team are preparing to listen in to the G20 conference of world leaders. A cyber-attack is detected that targets the electricity network across London – not unusual in itself, but this one is remarkable in its complexity and resilience. Clearly a major attack is about to unfold. This could be a terrorist act, a criminal one or even an attack sponsored by a nation state. The team need to find the source and neutralise the threat before blackouts bring chaos and major casualties.
Cyber-crime targeting critical infrastructure remains an issue of serious concern to guardians of national security around the world. Highly secretive projects exist not only to defend against such attacks but also to use them offensively against nation state targets.
Owen Teale (Game of Thrones, and currently appearing with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in No Mans Land) stars as Henry Morcombe, an old school GCHQ agent who is fighting from within to keep the agency from becoming like their USA counterparts, NSA, whom he considers to be data-hungry and militaristic.
Holy Mountain are known for innovative productions that are rich in sound and also for tackling serious issues with rigour and balance. See below.
Director and Producer Boz Temple-Morris;
“We’re telling a really good story about normal people trying to do an abnormal job. The work of GCHQ is so central to the way we live today – and vital to our national security – and yet so little little is known about what they do and how they do it. Should we be more grateful for the protection they offer us or more angry at the liberties they take with our privacy? Maybe both? The Good Listener takes the audience inside the doughnut but lets them judge what’s happening for themselves.”
The Good Listener is created by Fin Kennedy and Boz Temple-Morris and also features the work of Hassan Abdulrazzak (writer, part 2) and Anders Lustgarten (writer, part 3).
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