#bbc lord of the rings radio drama

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Rewatching (or re-listening-to) the BBC Lord of the Rings audioplay again because @tolkien-feels reminded me how great it is, and it’s uncanny how similar Michael Hordern’s Gandalf in the audioplay and Ian McKellen’s in the movies sound. I think Sir Ian must have listened to the play and taken it as a model!

Everyone in the play is great, but Peter Woodthorpe’s Gollum and Peter Howell’s Saruman are the absolute standout performances. I think they surpass the movies, and that’s saying something given how fantastic Andy Serkis and Christopher Lee were.

Also FYI, Ian Holm, who plays Bilbo in the movies, voices Frodo in the audiodrama - I think that was a very lovely homage by the movies!

#tolkien #the lord of the rings #lord of the rings movies #bbc lord of the rings radio drama

[cantsayidont]

For anyone who's keen on the Peter Jackson LORD OF THE RINGS movies and has had difficulty getting into the book, I really highly recommend Phil Dragash's Soundscape LOTR project, an unofficial, unabridged audiobook with music and sound effects from the film soundtracks. (Because it's unauthorized, you can't buy it, but it's around if you look on the interwebs.)

Dragash is a very good voice actor — so good that the retention of "he said" type dialogue markers is sometimes jarring — and captures the characters very well (although he mostly recites rather than sings the songs). Every so often he stumbles on the pronunciation of a word (curiously, more often real ones than Tolkien's constructed ones — for instance, in Bilbo's song of Earendil, "mariner" becomes "mareener"), but that's also true of the authorized audiobook readers. The Dragash version is clearly superior to both the 1990 audiobook by Robert Inglis (Inglis sings, but his performance of the characters is often stuffy) and the recent 2021 Andy Serkis version (Serkis is a wonderful actor, but some of the characters are beyond his range, and he sometimes seems daunted by Tolkien's poetic constructions). The main downside is that because the Soundscape project is a labor of love done without benefit of professional audio mixing tools, the music can occasionally drown out the narration; Dragash has redone several of the chapters over the years to address this.

Dragash's audio version is a good bridge for people coming from the films, since it's informed by them (in the performance of the characters as well as in the music), but as an unabridged adaptation, it restores excised subplots and flattened characterization, while capturing the sweep of Tolkien's language.

I now prefer it to the two modern audio dramatizations of LOTR: The 1979 Mind's Eye version, adapted by James Arrington (who also plays Gandalf), is essentially an abridged audiobook with multiple voice actors; Arrington is excellent as Gandalf, but the rest of the cast, drawn from local community theater, is not, making it a very mixed bag. The 1981/1982 BBC radio version, adapted by Brian Sibbery and Michael Bakewell (initially as 26 half-hour episodes, later reedited to 13 hour-long installments), is generally very good, with Ian Holm and Bill Nighy outstanding as Frodo and Sam and Michael Hordern a fine Gandalf (although I think Arrington better captured Gandalf's prickliness). However, not all the actors are of the same caliber (Jack May as Théoden isn't a patch on Bernard Hill); the clever idea of presenting the Battle of the Pelénnor Fields as a medieval ballad (by Oz Clarke and the Ambrosian Singers) ends up being hard to decipher; the transformation of narrative exposition to dialogue works in some spots and not others; and the inevitable abridgements are painful if you're familiar with the full text. I certainly wouldn't discourage anyone from the BBC version, and at 12½ hours, it's not much longer than the extended versions of the films, but it's no longer the gold standard for Tolkien audio.

#lord of the rings #lotr #jrr tolkien #audiobook #radio drama #bbc lotr #phil dragash #brian sibbery #michael bakewell #james arrington #ian holm #bill nighy #andy serkis

[azazel-dreams]

Lord of the Rings - The Hobbit (BBC radio adaptation)

Rating: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

#Lord of the Rings #The Hobbit #BBC radio adaptation #audio drama #JRR Tolkien #cd #cd recommendation #my photo #CD Reviews #music reviews

[aetchbook-skarchive]

A simple cypher I made and the lyrics I used to practice it. I knew the lyrics from the LOTR BBC radio drama. It was so impactful to me as a child that it’s etched into my heart even now. I think when dementia sets in I will still knows these songs. I misremembered & misspelled the lyrics when writing these pages, but if you’d like to hear the words as Bill Nighy sang them click here.

#2008 #sketch #skarchive #sketchbook #queued #LOTR #Lord of the Rings #BBC LOTR #LOTR radio drama #Gil Galad #Bill Nighy

[catwouthats]

Love all these BBC radio installments. They always manage to make all the stories sound much gayer than they already are.

#I’m listening to the lotr bbc radio rn #and let’s not forget the infamous Good Omens radio #good omens #lord of the rings #bbc radio drama

[marta-bee]

Not quite sure why, but I'm just feeling the Blind Guardian song tonight.

#this and the bbc radio drama were my introduction to middle-earth #i never claimed to be normal #tolkien #lord of the rings #'other hearts and hands' indeed #Youtube

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday Percy James Patrick, AKA Scottish actor, Sylvester McCoy who was born 20th August 1943, in Dunoon.

His father was killed in the Second World War a couple of months before he was born, and he was brought up by his mother, his grandmother and aunts.

He attended St. Mun’s, primary School in the town and as Percy Smith he trained as a priest, joining Blair's College, a seminary in Aberdeen, for boys between the ages of twelve and sixteen he then gave it up and applied to become a Monk! This was rejected, as he was too young, so Percy returned to Dunoon and finished his education at Dunoon Grammar School.

On leaving school he took a holiday to the bright lights of London and ended up staying, taking a number of jobs, he sold insurance, acted as a bodyguard for the Rolling Stones, then gained a job selling tickets and keeping the books in a theatre box office. Eventually, he joined the Ken Campbell Roadshow. Along with Bob Hoskins, Jane Wood, and Dave Hill, McCoy started performing a range of sketches with the umbrella theme of “modern myths.”

McCoy found himself for a while in a double-act with Hoskins before Hoskins left to pursue his film career. When working with Ken Campbell in an improvised a circus-based act about a fictitious stuntman called Sylvester McCoy he thought it would be amusing if the program stated that this character was played by "Sylvester McCoy". While at the Royal Court Theatre, one of the critics missed the joke and assumed that Sylvester McCoy was a real person. McCoy liked the irony of this and adopted the name of his stage identity.

His big break came when McCoy was starring at the National Theatre in “The Pied Piper”, a musical play written especially for him, when he learned that the BBC was looking for a new lead actor to replace Colin Baker in “Doctor Who”. He later won the role as the seventh Doctor and the first Scottish one!

Following “Doctor Who,” McCoy continues to work extensively in theatre, films, radio, opera, and on television.He sees himself as an all round entertainer, his talents include,playing the xylophone and the spoons. He can also juggle and once gained a reputation for stuffing live ferrets down his trousers.

McCoy was considered for the role of Bilbo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and must have made a lasting impression on the filmmakers as they were later to cast him as Radagast the Brown in The Hobbit films.

Like many other former Time Lords, Sylvester has televised the role, in 2022 we aw him return in The Power of the Doctor, I assume there is a chance he will crop up in the 60th anniversary specials, although I can't see him being mentioned as yet.

Sylvester is still keeping busy, he is lined up to appear in the BBC drama Father Brown, it will air next year. This year he appeared in the horror film, Necronomicon, it only has two reviews on IMDB, both slating it. The website also notes that he has four more projects in various stages of production.

#scotland #scottish #actor #theatre #cinema #television #dr who #the seventh doctor #the doctor

[jiangwanyinsimp]

An Incomplete (and Very Long) list of thing Edwin Payne missed while he was stuck in Hell

This list emerged because I was talking about how he would have missed the end of World War One and then the list kept going. It is not complete or in order, and is provided simply for posterity

ww2

spanish flu

the hindenburg disaster

the rise of public radio

Irish independence

fast food as a concept

the hinterkaifeck murders

the extinction of the california grizzly

the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb

television

jet aircraft

supersonic aircraft

the moon landing

THE OFFICIAL FOUNDING OF THE SOVIET UNION

the jazz age

surrealism

the first woman to swim the english channel

the BBC

Amelia Earhart

Tintin

the discovery of Pluto

the crash of airship R101

the founding of porsche

the geneva convention

UK abandonment of the gold standard

the discovery of 22 elements on the periodic table

technicolor

Australia starting and losing the Emu war

the creation of the Royal Christmas message

the Great Depression

FM radio

the first canned beer

pre-sliced bread

the recognition of stress as a biological condition

the extinction of the thylacine

the destruction of the Crystal Palace

the first full feature length animated film (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)

the nylon bristle toothbrush

Batman

the last use of the guillotine for an official state execution

Gone With the Wind (the book AND the film)

the founding of Greggs

Looney Tunes

the discovery of the Lascaux cave paintings

Agatha Christie's works

Cheerios

the discovery of nuclear fission and all subsequent nuclear discoveries

the airplane ejection seat

The Little Prince

LSD

the lifting of the prohibition of married British women working as teachers

the disappearance of flight 19

the first formula one grand prix

Mensa

the invention of the magic 8 ball

the Doomsday Clock

the AK-47

the first commercial microwave

the Kinsey reports

the first time Idaho Fish and Game parachuted beavers into the wild

humanity's entry to space

the beginning of the broadcast of the Archers (the longest running present day drama by number of episodes)

the Korean War

the polio vaccine

the first nuclear powered submarine

The Lord of the Rings

Moomins

transistor radio

the TV dinner/ready meal

ICBMs

the entire life of Elvis Presley

Kermit the Frog

My Fair Lady (the film and musical adaptations)

Grace Kelly's wedding

the Entire Life Of Marilyn Monroe

the Beat Generation

Eurovision

Helvetica typeface

the peace symbol

the Cod Wars

computer games

Dyatlov Pass incident

Barbie

Missile Mail

the Declaration of the Rights of the Child

the MOSFET

particle accelerators

the Beatles

the recovery of the Vasa

the first Six Flags

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Catch-22

the Vietnam War

Silent Spring

The Rolling Stones

the night of the long knives

Vatican II

James Bond

the Cuban Missile Crisis

Thích Quảng Đức's self-immolation

the "I Have A Dream" speech

JFK Assassination

the smiley face

Mary Poppins (1964)

IntelSat

the last British execution

high speed rail

the first time "fuck" was said on british tv

the Moors Murders

the Grateful Dead

the British parliament decriminalizing homosexuality

most of the literary career of Pablo Neruda

Fleetwood Mac

the Parker Morris Standards

the end of steam passenger travel in the UK

Led Zeppelin

Earth Day

the first temporary artificial heart

the first person to row an ocean solo

Woodstock

the Zodiac Killer

the nationalization of Rolls-Royce

decimalisation of UK currency

the first e-book

the first microprocessor

DB Cooper

the first email

the Biological Weapons Convention

Watergate

the start of the Troubles

The Joy of Sex

all attempts to climb Mount Everest and the eventual first ascent

ABBA

the invention of the Rubik's Cube

the Moorgate tube crash

the first Cricket World Cup

the global eradication of Smallpox

Star Wars

the Tenerife airport disaster

the discovery of the rings of Uranus

Red Rum winning three Grand Nationals

the Concorde

the start of the broadcast of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Jonestown

Synthetic insulin

the Thorpe affair

the release of God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols

Monty Python

the election of Margaret Thatcher

Star Trek

Iron Maiden

the incident where the dingo ate a baby in Australia

the end of iron and steel production in the UK's Black Country

the first London Marathon

Charles and Diana's wedding

the church of England votes to elect women to holy orders

the 1981 UK tornado outbreak

the first child born by IVF

the Falklands War

the raising of the Mary Rose

the invention of ciabatta bread

the discovery of the Titanic

the King's Cross Fire

Top Gun

Lockerbie bombing

#dead boy detectives #shit andy says #I don't honestly have an explanation for this #edwin payne

[carlandrea]

Are you familiar with the 1981 BBC radio drama of The Lord of the Rings? It is a big favorite of mine.

you know i cannot say that I am! Why is it your favorite? I might check it out :)

[ladyaislinn]

Rufus' VOICE p1

Ring for Jeeves (2014) with Rufus Sewell (Rory) plot and podcast stars Martin Jarvis, Rufus Sewell, Joanne Whalley, Glenne Headly, Ian Ogilvy, Jamie Bamber, Moira Quirk, Daisy Hydon and more

#ladyaislinn #rufus #sewell #rufussewell rufus #rufussewell #ladyaislinn69

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Re: your ask post on favorite movie performances and Christopher Lee's Saruman, what are your thoughts on the BBC audiodrama version of that scene?

The audiodrama is fantastic! their Saruman is very, very good in that scene. That’s probably the best performance of the scene you’ll ever find.

#tolkien #the lord of the rings #bbc lord of the rings radio drama

[treeherd]

Robert Stephens' stately, resonant voice definitively conveyed the character of Aragorn in the BBC's 1981 radio drama of The Lord of the Rings but he put no less heart into his turn as the villainous Abner Brown in the 1984 TV adaptation of The Box of Delights which was first broadcast when I was but one day old. I'm old enough to appreciate them both now and never will be too old.

#robert stephens #maggie smith

[hello-robin-goodfellow]

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fdymvue&psig=AOvVaw1lzSEx-jh7AX6fBR6SYdIG&ust=1593830727952000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA0QjhxqFwoTCKikm-qKsOoCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAE

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fphilarcher1&psig=AOvVaw1lzSEx-jh7AX6fBR6SYdIG&ust=1593830727952000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAQQtaYDahcKEwiopJvqirDqAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQCQ

In those two twitter posts, i finded posted that better quality and colored photos of the late Sir Ian Holm (alongside Michael Hordern, who voiced Gandalf, and John Le Mesurier, who voiced Bilbo) recording his voice acting performance as Frodo Baggins for 1981s BBC Radio 4 The Lord of the Rings adaptation.

@amalthea9

#ian holm #sir ian holm #michael hordern #john le mesurier #bbc #bbc radio 4 #tolkien's legendarium #brian sibley #gerard murphy #j.r.r. tolkien #stephen oliver #fantasy #literature #radio drama #the lord of the rings #l.o.t.r #lord of the rings

[penny-anna]

Were you talking awhile back about a really good Lord of the Rings audio drama?

oh i might have been!! I post about the 1981 BBC radio series sometimes which is very good.

[pilvimarja]

I have a mighty urge to rewatch the LotR trilogy for the first time in years! Maybe listen to the audiobook or the BBC radio drama. The Lord of the Rings used to be an annual thing for me and I'd always get into LotR mode around November and December ever since 2001, but I kind of fell out of it in the early 2010s.

I'm watching a video about the history of Moria on Youtube right now and it's made me realize just how much I miss LotR.

#personal post

[marta-bee]

I was poking around and found the Lord of the Rings radio dramatization I mentioned earlier online. Highly recommended.

#tolkien #The Lord of the Rings #bbc lord of the rings