Brian Gulliver's Travels
| Genre | Satire/Sitcom |
|---|---|
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language(s) | English |
| Home station |
BBC Radio 4 (Series 1) BBC Radio 4 Extra (Series 2) |
| Starring |
Neil Pearson Mariah Gale Paul Bhattacharjee |
| Created by | Bill Dare |
| Written by | Bill Dare and Dan Tetsell (Series 2: Ep 3) |
| Produced by | Steven Canny |
| Air dates | 21 February 2011 to 30 July 2012 |
| No. of series | 2 |
| No. of episodes | 12 |
| Website | At BBC Radio 4 |
Brian Gulliver's Travels is a satirical comedy series and also a novel created and written by Bill Dare, first broadcast on 21 February 2011 on BBC Radio 4. A second series first broadcast on 25 June 2012 on BBC Radio 4 Extra. The series is a modern pastiche of the Jonathan Swift novel Gulliver's Travels. The series revolves around the character Brian Gulliver, played by Neil Pearson. Gulliver is a travel documentary presenter who at the beginning of series is revealed to have been missing for six years, claiming to have travelled to the previously undiscovered continent of Clafrenia. His stories lead him to being put in psychiatric hospital where they believe that he is suffering some sort of delusion. In each episode he is visited by his daughter Rachel (Mariah Gale), who writes about the countries that he claims to have visited.
Brian Gulliver's Travels is created and written by Bill Dare. According to the BBC website: "For years Bill Dare wanted to create a satire about different worlds exploring [Rudyard] Kipling's idea that we travel, 'not just to explore civilizations, but to better understand our own'. But science fiction and space ships never interested him, so he put the idea on ice. Then Brian Gulliver arrived and meant that our hero could be lost in a fictional world without the need for any sci-fi."
The BBC website also says that the original Gulliver's Travels was the only book that Dare read whilst he was at university.
The novel, inspired by some stories in the radio series, is published by Pilrig Press, 4 July 2013.
It begins:
"At half past ten, nine days after my 21st birthday, I made my way to a psychiatric hospital in Highgate, North London, to meet my father, who had been missing for six years. In the two weeks since his reappearance, he had sent numerous emails in which he described “extraordinary worlds, and curious beings".
Of the novel, Ian Hislop wrote: "A modern tale that keeps the flavour of the original classic, cleverly managing to provoke both laughter - and thought".
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Wikipedia