Showing titles in Entertainment & Performing Arts

Clive Merrison stars as Holmes, with Michael Williams as Watson, in this collection from the unique, fully dramatised BBC Radio 4 canon. These 12 stories range from Holmes' very first case to the epic struggle between Holmes and Moriarty high above the Reichenbach Falls.

Car Talk, winner of a Peabody Award, is broadcast each week to NPR stations nationwide. The world's wackiest call-in show, it mixes automotive advice with wisecracks, roadside philosophy, and guffaws. No problem is too ridiculous, no solution too absurd, and before you know it, "you've wasted another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk". Or, in this case, four.

Paterson Joseph, John Hurt, Lesley Manville and Harriet Walter are among the cast of BBC Radio 4's epic full-cast dramatisation. Adapted for radio by Timberlake Wertenbaker, Leo Tolstoy's epic story follows the fortunes of three Russian aristocratic families during the Napoleonic War. First broadcast on New Year's Day 2015, the drama also features Alun Armstrong, Natasha Little, David Calder, Phoebe Fox, Sam Reid and Joanna David. Duration: 10 hours approx.

This is the story of how John Madden and Pat Summerall got to CBS and, although very different, how they became the greatest broadcast team of all time. It is told by Rich Podolsky, who worked alongside them both at CBS. Separately, they were great. Together, they were the greatest ever. Madden & Summerall is about two stalwarts of the game, but their story is not without controversy.

He’s been a fixture in professional wrestling for five decades. He helped introduce a hardcore wrestling style that you see in the WWE and Japan today. He’s made his mark in Hollywood. He’s Terry Funk, and this is his story. In this captivating look at the life of a living legend, Funk opens up about growing up in a wrestling family, working with various entertainment companies (including the ECW, WWE, and WWF), and so much more.

"Why don't you come up and see me sometime?" Mae West invited and promptly captured the imagination of generations. Even today, years after her death, the actress and author is still regarded as the pop archetype of sexual wantonness and ribald humor. But who was this saucy starlet, a woman who was controversial enough to be jailed, pursued by film censors, and banned from the airwaves for the revolutionary content of her work, and yet would ascend to the status of film legend?

Since it first opened on Broadway in September 1964, Fiddler on the Roof has constantly been onstage somewhere, including five Broadway revivals, four productions on London's West End, and thousands of schools, army bases, and countries from Argentina to Japan. Barbara Isenberg interviewed the men and women behind the original production, the film, and significant revivals.

Woody Allen was once made a knight commander by France, but he didn’t know because the paperwork got lost in the mail. A decade later, he found out about the award by reading about it in the New York Times. Across nearly nine eventful decades, Allen’s life has been full of surprises. Writing...

Dinnerladies is a classic BBC sitcom based around the lives of the staff of the canteen at Manchester factory HWD Components. Written by and starring Victoria Wood a Brenda, these eight classic TV episodes are brilliantly funny, where the jokes fly as thick and as fast as granary torpedoes. Along with the day to day feeding the faces of folk, the canteen staff Bren, Twink, Jean (and all the others!) have to contend with the arrival of a royal onsite, a Japanese-themed party complete with costumes and the controversial delivery of new uniforms.

One of the most accomplished and outspoken actors today chronicles the highs and lows of his life in this beautifully written, candid memoir. Over the past three decades, Alec Baldwin has established himself as one of Hollywood’s most gifted, hilarious, and controversial leading men. From his...

With a new afterword about Colton’s battle with Covid-19 and breakup, this New York Times bestseller from former football player and star of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette is “full of the kind of juicy details ‘The Bachelor’ franchise enthusiasts yearn for” (HuffPost). Before Colton...

Taking its name from a popular series of mystery novels, Inner Sanctum Mysteries debuted over NBC's Blue Network in January 1941. It featured one of the most memorable and atmospheric openings in radio history: an organist hit a dissonant chord, a doorknob turned, and the famous "creaking door" slowly began to open. Every week, Inner Sanctum Mysteries told stories of ghosts, murderers, and lunatics.

Two new BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations of Roald Dahl's gripping autobiographical stories. These two compelling adaptations, based on Roald Dahl’s real-life tales of his of his boyhood and youthful overseas adventures, celebrate his remarkable life and commemorate his genius. Boy Dahl’s...

A probing biography of world-renowned Jewish singer and actor Al Jolson and the history of his performance in and the making of The Jazz Singer Al Jolson, born Asa Yoelson, immigrated from a shtetl in Lithuania to the United States in 1894 after his father secured a job as a rabbi in Washington...

Hollywood in the years between 1929 and 1948 was a town of moviemaking empires. The great studios were estates of talent: sprawling, dense, diverse. It was the Golden Age of the Movies, and each studio made its distinctive contribution. But how did the studios, "growing up" in the same time and place, develop so differently? What combinations of talents and temperaments gave them their signature styles?

Most people think genres are simply categories on Netflix or Amazon that provide a helpful guide to making entertainment choices. Most people are wrong. Genre stories aren’t just a small subset of the films, video games, TV shows, and books that people consume. They are the all-stars of the entertainment world, comprising the vast majority of popular stories worldwide. That’s why businesses—movie studios, production companies, video game studios, and publishing houses—buy and sell them. Legendary writing teacher John Truby provides a guide to understanding the major genres of the story world.

When Poirot arrives in France, following an urgent appeal for help, he finds he is too late. His client, a South American millionaire, has been stabbed to death and his body flung into a freshly dug open grave on the golf course adjoining the property. Meanwhile the millionaire's wife is found...

From the producer of the enormously popular Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie, Thou Shalt Laugh is the hit stand-up comedy series audiobook that's cleaning up comedy one BLEEP at a time! Thou Shalt Laugh started with a simple premise. There are dozens of incredibly gifted Christian comedians working all over the country today – why don't more people know about them?

Included in this volume: "The Tinglers": Dr. Chapin and his crew search for a primitive tribe with ties to the elusive creature that is spawned from fear with a grip like iron. "Fade Away": Private Eye Frank Wood is investigating the mysterious break-ins at the home of a wealthy old man named Jack Leonard. "Canus": a young boy must survive a bizarre rite of passage. "Road Rage": An advertising executive involved in a little fender-bender must suffer through a nightmare....

Created by Blake Edwards (of Pink Panther fame), Richard Diamond, Private Detective came to NBC radio in 1949 starring film actor and crooner Dick Powell. Powell had recently played Philip Marlowe in the popular RKO film Murder My Sweet and jumped at the chance to play a suave detective on radio. Richard Diamond was a light-hearted New York-based private eye who enjoyed ribbing the cops and singing songs to his millionairess girlfriend, Helen Asher (played by Virginia Gregg). Its theme “Leave it to Love” was whistled by Powell at the beginning of each episode.