Like Minded People (BBC Radio 4: Friday Play)

Jan 6, 2025 7:49 AM

Author:David Eldridge,Tom Brooke,Ruth Wilson

This BBC Radio 4 'Friday Play' is a heady mix of marriage, class, and politics, as Gillian and Ray attempt to keep their relationship alive over 25 years of social change. Starring Ruth Wilson and Tom Brooke, Like Minded People was originally broadcast on 4 February 2011.

Gillian and Ray meet at University. She's from a privileged background whilst his father works in a hardware shop and his mother's a dinner lady. Despite this disparity, they embark on a relationship - a relationship that may well have burnt itself out except for a car accident that binds them together through a mixture of guilt and need. As their lives progress we are given an intimate portrait of the ups and downs of marriage and the political and social changes that help shape our lives.

Starring Ruth Wilson as Gillian and Tom Brooke as Ray, Like Minded People was directed by Sally Avens.

Reviews

[M]eticulously researched and gracefully written.

—— Trevor Rees-Jones , Sunday Telegraph

Manford paints a warm picture of a chaotic poor-but-happy childhood filled with earthy characters, from an eccentric uncle to a big-hearted tart he met on his paper round

—— Evening Standard

One of the most consistently funny and effortlessly charming new comics around

—— Jonathan Ross

Several instances are much less commonplace, no matter how matter-of-factly Manford relates them - such as the heroin addict uncle who used to crash on the family sofa. And there surely can't be many people who have a story about liberating a cooker from a murder victim's house ... The adventure is like a modern-day Laurel and Hardy sketch, though told with a mordant humour

—— Chortle

Who wouldn't feel a rush of delight to see the stand-up and perennial panel show host Jason Manford peeking out of their Christmas stocking?

—— Independent on Sunday

Callow's precise prose and sober judgement make this second volume of biography one to be cherished and leaves one eagerly anticipating volume three

—— Michael Arditti , Daily Mail

Callow's riveting and superlative biography satisfies at every level, and I for one cannot wait for the next volume

—— Frank McLynn , Literary Review

A vivid, sympathetic account... provides a definitive explanation of Welles's ultimate, lingering downfall

—— Financial Times

I am already looking forward to [the third volume] such is Callow's sympathetic absorption in the mass of material, which he handles with a light and ironic touch, that I found myself utterly hooked... As an actor himself Callow writes illuminatingly about Welles's performances

—— Mail on Sunday

Callow's enterprise is one of the rarest in publishing. It leaves the reader dry-mouthed with anticipation for his final, third volume

—— Alan Warner , Guardian

The only biog really worth it's salt this year...reliably entertaining, wise and sane

—— Catherine Shoard , Evening Standard

Welles’s packed schedule is rifled through with chatty elegance

—— Catherine Shoard , Sunday Telegraph

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