Anansi Boys

1st Broadcast 30th July 2017 to Sept 2017 BBC Radio 4

Director

Allegra McIlroy

Producer

Allegra McIlroy

Adaptor

Dirk Maggs

Written By

Neil Gaiman

Produced For

BBC Radio 4

Produced by

A Perfectly Normal production for BBC Radio 4

Synopsis

Episode 1: 'Stories are Webs. They are connected strand to strand....'Neil Gariman's Anansi Boys comes to Radio 4, with a stellar cast, and a specially commissioned song written and performed by Jacob Anderson (Game of Thrones's Grey Worm) who makes his radio debut as Fat Charlie Nancy, a South London boy whose dad is trouble. And not just your standard, run of the mill kind of trouble: more like, your trickster God and master of mischief and storytelling kind of trouble.

Anansi Boys is a story of love, laughter, music and murder, old gods and new tricks, which takes Fat Charlie from his home in London to Florida, the Caribbean, and the very Beginning of the World itself. Or the End of the World. Depending on which direction you're coming from.

Jacob Anderson is a musician (as Raleigh Ritchie) as well as an actor. Starring as Fat Charlie, a young man who struggles to find his voice, he has also written and performed a specially commissioned song - Charlie's Song - which forms part of the magical fabric of Anansi Boys.

Episode 2: When his father dies, Fat Charlie Nancy (Jacob Anderson) discovers that not only was the late Mr Nancy (Lenny Henry) actually the god Anansi, but that he also has a long-lost brother, Spider (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), who is everything Fat Charlie is not. When Spider begins to take over Fat Charlie's life, flat and even his fiancée Rosie (Sheila Atim), Fat Charlie is forced to make a pact that lands him in even more trouble. Not just with his boss (Julian Rhind-Tutt), the wife of their biggest client (Julie Hesmondhalgh) and police officer Daisy Day (Pippa Bennett-Warner), but with the gods themselves...

Anansi Boys is a magical web of a story that spans the old world and the new, from South London to the Southern US, the fictional Caribbean Island of St Andrews, and the Mountains at the End of the World. Or the Beginning of the World. Depending on which way you're heading.

Episode 3: 'Fat Charlie has a headache, a grieving heart, and a cash bonus from Graham Coats of two thousand pounds'

A gentle boy whose dad made him feel small, Fat Charlie Nancy is now overwhelmed by the discovery of a brother he never knew he had (not to mention the fact that his dad is the Spider God Anansi). As Spider (not so much feckless as absent on the day they handed out feck) tramples carelessly across Charlie's life, Charlie begins to discover in himself a growing fire.

Episode 4: Charlie begins to follow the strands of the web to its centre and takes the first steps to owning his own story. Through an unexpected séance, he slips across the hairsbreadth between worlds, to the place of the old gods, and encounters his father's old enemies, Tiger and Bird.

Anansi Boys is a magical web of a story that spans the old world and the new, from South London to the Southern US, the fictional Caribbean Island of St Andrews, and the Mountains at the End of the World. Or the Beginning of the World. Depending on which way you're heading.

Episode 5: Anansi Boys is a magical web of a story that spans the old world and the new, from South London to the Southern US, the fictional Caribbean Island of St Andrews, and the Mountains at the End of the World. Or the Beginning of the World. Depending on which way you're heading.

Episode 6: Anansi Boys is a magical web of a story that spans the old world and the new, from South London to the Southern US, to the fictional Caribbean Island of St Andrews, and the Mountains at the End of the World. Or the Beginning of the World. Depending on which way you're heading.

Jacob Anderson is a musician (as Raleigh Ritchie) as well as an actor. Starring as Fat Charlie, a young man who struggles to find his voice, he has also written and performed a specially commissioned song - Charlie's Song - which forms part of the magical fabric of Anansi Boys.