大象传媒

To accompany 大象传媒 Radio 4's dramatisations of the Martin Beck novels, which established crime fiction as a form for exploring social change, Mark Lawson presents five more 'Foreign Bodies' focusing on Greece, Argentina, Northern Ireland, South Africa and fictional TV crime-scenes including Broadchurch.

Examining subjects including the way in which crime novels have portrayed transitional societies in South Africa and Northern Ireland and explored the legacy of military rule in Argentina, in the first programme Lawson, in Athens, talks to writers including Petros Markaris, whose detective series featuring Inspector Costas Haritos has both predicted and depicted the Greek financial crisis.
Programme 2: Argentina - Superintendent Perro Lascano
Mark Lawson explores how Argentinian crime writers have dramatised the country's transition from dictatorship to democracy. He talks to Ernesto Mallo - whose cop, Lascano, works during the years of the military junta - and Claudia Pineiro, who argues that no Argentinian police officer can be a hero.
Programme 3: Ireland - Inspector Benedict Devlin
In the "borderlands" between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, Mark Lawson meets novelist Brian McGilloway, whose books explore the long shadows of the Troubles, and talks to him and authors from Belfast about the wave of crime-writing that the peace process has provoked.
Programme 4: South Africa - Detective Inspector Bennie Griessel
Translated from Afrikaans, the detective novels of Deon Meyer have become international best-sellers. Mark Lawson talks to Meyer about the fact and fiction of criminality in post-apartheid South Africa and meets Sifiso Mzobe, whose award-winning debut book features a young criminal in a Durban township.
Programme 5: Screenland - DS Ellie Miller, DI Sarah Lund, Captain Laure Berthaud
Crime dramas, home-made and imported, have become TV's most powerful genre. Mark Lawson talks to creative talent from the ITV hit Broadchurch, the Danish show The Killing and the French success Spiral about the medium's suitability as a crime-scene and the rise of female investigators.