David Tennant Audios I'm Trying To Find: Robert Louis Stevenson (2005)
...a five-part Book Of The Week that's been devilishly hard to locate
David has had a long audio love affair with the works of the Scottish novelist, poet, travel writer and essayist Robert Louis Stevenson. In the past thirty-plus years, David’s been involved with a number of radio dramas based on Stevenson’s work.
In 2011, he played Robert Louis Stevenson himself in the BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play Stevenson In Love. Then, in 2016, he pulled double duty during BBC Radio 4’s Robert Louis Stevenson season by introducing presentations of The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde and Kidnapped, and starring in Terror On The South Seas in ‘The Beach Of Falesa’ and ‘The Ebb Tide’. (A BBC Audio Drama Collection compiled in May of 2023 includes all the 2016 recordings I just mentioned, and can be found here if you’d like to listen to them)! And in late 2021, there was an announcement that David and his wife Georgia would executive produce and star in Hide, a “re-imagining of the [Jekyll & Hyde] myth for the 21st Century.”
While there’s been no more word about Hide (IMDb lists it in pre-production, but Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters - both of whom were supposed to write and act as its showrunners - have since moved on to write/showrun for the Amazon Prime series Gen V), articles about Hide mention another fact which once again ties David firmly to Stevenson’s universe: one of David’s earliest audios is a 1993 BBC radio dramatization of Stevenson’s most iconic work, The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde! As David himself said, “One of my earliest jobs was playing ‘first policeman’ in…Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
I’m sure a future post of mine will dive deeper into that 1993 production, but as today’s post is about an audio production of David’s that I don’t have, my interest today lies a little further afield. But it’s still connected to Stevenson.
Author Claire Harman published Robert Louis Stevenson: A Biography on 7 February 2005, with media previews in late January. It was published by HarperCollins in the UK and the US (where it was titled Myself and the Other Fellow and published on 1 November 2005). The book was shortlisted for the Saltire Award in 2005. If you’re interested in reading the autobiography, you can check it out right here at the Internet Archive.
BBC Radio 4 certainly wasted no time at all in abridging the book for its listeners! It only took six weeks or so to arrange for the book to be abridged by the BBC’s Polly Coles, put it in the hands of producer Clive Brill and Pacificus Productions to cast and record, and get it scheduled for broadcast.
By this time, of course, David was well known to Brill. He’d worked with the producer since 1998, when he joined a cast of 400 of the UK’s finest Shakespearean actors to record The Complete Arkangel Shakespeare (an audio compilation I’ll definitely explore in-depth in the future). Besides the Arkangel set, David had previously worked with Brill on many more audio dramas, some of which include The Golden Triangle: The Order Of Release, Fire In The Heart, and Life's Little Ironies: The Tragedy of Two Ambitions (an audio drama I’ve explored in greater depth in this previous post.)
Called Robert Louis Stevenson, the drama was broadcast in five parts on BBC Radio 4 as their Book Of The Week from 21 March 2005 to 25 March 2005:
21 Mar 2005: 9:45a-10a; repeated 12:30a-12:48a - Childhood
As a boy, Stevenson was also often confined to bed with mystery illnesses, giving him time to develop his imagination and fantasies.
22 Mar 2005: 9:45a-10a; repeated 12:30a-12:48a - Fanny Osbourne
Stevenson met his future American wife in an artist's colony in France. In days he was hooked, and so began his dogged pursuit of her across the USA.
23 Mar 2005: 9:45a-10a; repeated 12:30a-12:48a - Jekyll and Hyde
One of the most famous stories in the world came to Stevenson in a dream. The first draft was thrown into the fire but within 10 weeks he had acquired international fame.
24 Mar 2005: 9:45a-10a; repeated 12:30a-12:48a - Fame
After the death of his father, Stevenson moved to the states for health reasons. Accompanied by his mother, he was soon to discover what becoming a celebrity entailed.
25 Mar 2005: 9:45a-10a; repeated 12:30a-12:48a - Samoa
Almost on a whim, Stevenson had a desire to go on an extended yachting cruise to the South Pacific. The longer he was at sea, the happier and healthier he became. He finally settled on Samoa, the island that was to become his last home.
It’s surprising how difficult this audio has been for me to find, given how many of the audios David recorded in the 1990s and early 2000’s have been so much easier to find. There are a lot of reasons why, I suppose, but one which immediately springs to mind? It’s a five-part series. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons it’s a bit more difficult to locate than a one-off broadcast; a recorder would have to be diligent to record all five parts over five days.
What’s even more ironic? This audio series ended its broadcast only the day before the rebooted Doctor Who aired (and less than a week before Christopher Eccleston announced he was leaving the show.) David was then announced as the Tenth Doctor only a few weeks later, on 16 April 2005. I’ve often found myself wondering if this broadcast would’ve been better preserved by collectors if David’s announcement had come just one month previously.
I thought I’d found it back in 2017, but my hopes were dashed when what I received was from a different production altogether. I’ve even spoken very briefly to the author, Claire Harman, about whether she knew of any existing copies of the five-part audio drama series. Sadly - and as I expected - she did not. However, I appreciated her kind response.
I have a few more avenues to explore, so I’ll keep everyone updated should I strike gold. And if anyone reading out there knows where I might find it, do send me a direct message using the button below. I would happily trade you another of my audios for this one. But in the meantime? My journey continues!
Great reading this. He’s done so much audio work and it’s really hard to find any of it. You’ve been a wonderful resource.
Thank you!