World Drama

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Worldplay 4: Pontypool by Tony Burgess

Broadcast Saturday 20 June at 1901 GMT (you can listen to the play for two weeks from the time of broadcast)

The fourth in our Worldplay season is from Canada. Pontypool is a psychological thriller depicting the outbreak a new kind of virus, one that seems to infect language itself.

A blizzard has hit the small town of Pontypool, Ontario. For morning talk radio host Grant Mazzy, it means a dreary succession of school closing announcements. Out of the midst of the routine traffic, sports and news items, there emerge sporadic reports of groups of people roaming the streets, apparently motivated by a single word or phrase, repeated over and over. Things quickly escalate into violence: mobs of people are reportedly pulling each other limb from limb.

Pontypool is ground zero, it seems, for an outbreak of a new strain of virus, activated by the English language itself. It's up to Grant and the team at CLSY Beacon Radio to stay on the air as long as they can to report on the spreading contagion, before they themselves become infected....

Starring: Stephen McHattie, Lisa Houle, Hrant Alianak, Georgina Reilly and Rick Roberts. Director: Bruce McDonald, produced by Gregory J. Sinclair. A CBC Production.

Coming next on World Drama...

The Day That Lehman Died by Matthew Solon

To be Broadcast Saturday 5 September 2009 at 1801 GMT

A drama charting the collapse of one of the oldest and largest investment banks in the world, which sparked the beginnings of the global recession. Specially recorded for World Drama in New York.

On September 15 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for the largest bankruptcy in US history. It sent the already unstable markets into an uncontrollable tailspin. How did the 'big beasts' of Wall Street make this critical decision? They held in their hands the future, not just of a bank, but the stability of the global financial system.

Starring: John Shea, John Rothman, Rob Campbell and Mark La Mara. Directed by John Dryden, Goldhawk Productions.