Thanks again Aunt Beeb…she’s now commissioned me to write another 3 episodes of KEEPING THE WOLF OUT. A Cold War thriller with lots of goulash.
Leo Bill is cool and effective as Detective Bertalan. Andy Linden is his bastard of a boss. A man with bigotries to outrageous that he makes Donald Trump look like – look like – actually let’s not go there. He’s a bastard through and through.
And the wondrous Clare Corbett plays Bertalan’s wife Franciska. Who will, I predict, since this is how I’m writing it, become ever more important to the stories as Series 2 develops.
Way back then, in the 1960s, the countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain truly feared America. They feared its wrath, its power, and they feared its imperial ambitions. Now, with a new President-elect in place, we have even more reason to – no no! Let’s STILL not go there. Too much reality.
This show of mine has been nominated for a BBC Audio drama award. Clare Corbett is also nominated as Best Supporting Actress for her playing of Franciska.
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Have just caught this series on R4 – altho I missed some of the first episode. Really enjoyed it: fresh, original, great characterisation and some cracking dialogue. Thank you!
Excellent series. Really enjoyed it. Love the music the charaterisation, the plot, the atmosphere all of it!
Just caught this on bbc radio 4 today. Great characters and actors and loved the dialogue, very engaging so will definitely be following this series.
Thoroughly enjoying this on R4. Cracking series with excellent dialogue, plot and pace. Good female roles too – love Franciska! Love all the characters tbh.
Thank you.
Thank you – Clare is so wonderful as Franciska!
Absolutely hooked on this fantastic production.
The dialogue is superb, it’s atmospheric and when I’m listening I can actually visualise it.
Truly wonderful.
Thanks so much for those kind words, Steve. Hoping there may be another series next year!
I certainly hope so Philip.
It’s enthralling.
I love both series of Keeping the Wolf Out. The tension and the paranoia that must have existed at that time in Hungary is captured so perfectly. I think this is one of the best things I have heard on R4, and I have been listening all my life. Is there a novel version of this story, or plans for one? I love the radio play format, but my husband prefers to read. I know he would love this. Keep up the excellent work.
I’ve just binge listened to this series after hearing the first episodes a little while ago. Thank you PP for this wonderful new pulp audio fiction. I’ll have to check out your other works until you write more Keeping the Wolf Out, if that is possible! Inspiring!
Just listened to Keeping the Wolf Out. Brilliant, really loved it.
I do hope there will be more to come.
Another 3 eps have just been commissioned! Thank you…
No plans for a novel though I hope the BBC release it as a box set. 3 more eps have just been commissioned
The new series for 2020 has just been commissioned. Thank you!
Really loved this series and would very much like to listen again. Will that be possible? Also looking forward to the next series.
Just heard this afternoon’s play from your “Keeping the Wolf Out” – I’ve heard previous plays from the series, I think (having just checked online the relevant website). May I describe the other Hungary and Hungarians and people from Budapest that I knew back in the 1970′s, please? I think they were the people “who kept the wolf out” and managed to remain true to their better selves. I think I’m just over 10 years older than you, Philip, and was working for the British Tourist Authority (BTA) back in the 1970′s (so before the so-called end to the so-called “cold war”). I helped organise and escort educational travel trade visits from overseas travel agents/tour operators etc to various part of GB as part of marketing the UK, and the British hospitality and travel operators to overseas tourists, (I still think of it as one of the best jobs in the world). Tourism was then second to the Financial Services as an earner of overseas currency – so had grown to be important part of economy after a zero start from WW2 days. I had the privilege of being invited on a “return thank you visit” by British Airways, who had just started a direct flight Budapest to London, and had hosted a London weekend visit with BTA a group of travel counter staff and travel managers from some of the Hungarian state ministries (organising business travel) and for travellers from the performing arts professions. The Hungarians were generous and warm hosts to me, with a lovely sense of humour, and their bookshops were full of English language books, including a lot of Shakespeare. There was one journalist gentleman I met at a small supper party some of the younger members of the group invited me to – he was a specialist writer in Anglo African affairs. He said to me in a kindly way, towards the end of the evening: “I am a member of the Party, you know”. I was thinking of the supper “party” we’d just had, but then realized what he meant by the “Party”. Hungary survived – the Eastern States freed themselves eventually from Russia, with the help of Gorbachev’s perestroika some 15 to 20 years later, (some nations did it by music and singing, as the three Baltic States did: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia). Is there a writer out there who can write how generosity, honesty, respect and kindness survive through dark and frightening times, I wonder. Thank you.
Fascinating..
Lyrical, cynical & very human – terrific. However I fear the denuded BBC will not have the vision to steer away from the banal & continue to demand this quality of writing, acting & production – we must maintain reithian ideals & feed & cloth our cultural foot soldiers. Crack on private PP.
So glad you liked it. Another series has been written and is due to record in October – after a Covid delay – and there is hope for 1 more series after that….
I have just caught up with ‘Keeping the Wolf out’; thank you so much to all for such a compelling script and production. Like Linda M, I remember Hungary from Cold War times, though I was only there for a fortnight in July 1989; that was just before the border began to crumble of course (in late August of the same year) – events that I would not have been able to predict. I was mainly based in Esztergom on an international summer school for music teachers, studying Hungarian music education as developed by the composer Zoltan Kodaly, but I also got to know Budapest as well. I was once asked by our English language interpreter if it was necessary to join the Party to get a job in the UK…It was easy to sense what the Hungarians had gone through, though – as Linda says – they did remain true to themselves, and their culture was key to this I am sure. My memories are of warm, humorous, and very hospitable people who, at the time, had so little.
I’ve just listened to the first two episodes of this new series and all is as good as ever.
Leo Bill was outstanding today (Thursday) in the evaluation scene with his deputy, Clare Corbett is as reliable as ever.
I’m just hoping that you haven’t really killed off Tibor Forkosh though. Andy Linden is a joy to listen to playing my favourite character and I just don’t believe that you’d kill off such an important central character.
But, if you have done that, it’s a very bold move.
Keeping The Wolf Out rivals and quite often out classes Tracks for me.
I never used to think that such a thing was possible.
Thank you PP for another great series. My attention was caught by one of the early episodes when I was driving back from lunch at Rita’s Curry House in Southall a few years ago, and I’ve listened avidly ever since, usually on iPlayer while I’m at the gym. I worked in Russia in the 80s and 90s, filming ballets at the Bolshoi and Kirov, so I got a flavour of the Eastern bloc that I’m sure must have been even more intense in the 50s and 60s, and seems well imagined in your drama. My missus is from Cuba and she has become a fan too, so we look forward to more episodes in the future.
Thanks so much Keith – Series 5 has been commissioned and should be broadcast sometime next year!
Hi Steve – thanks for your thoughtful and generous comments. Leo is amazing I agree. We did kill of Tibor, which was hard to do because Andy is such a stunning actor. But my fear is that he would become a Hannibal – the psychopath who everyone comes to love. Another series is to come next year…
I wanted to say how much I enjoyed Keeping the Wolf Out, so brilliantly written and so well acted. I was drawn to it as I am a British-born person of Hungarian parents. I do wish though that the actors got the pronunciaton of Tibor’s surname correct. It is NOT pronounced Forkosh but more like Far (as in far away) and Kush (as in bus or cut). For those that might be interested, Farkas (as it’s written in Hungarian) literally means Wolf. They succceeded in pronouncing many other words well, eg the dog’s name, Kutya – literally “dog”, which I found amusing!
I would be happy to volunteer my time to guide actors on the pronunciation of Hungarian words. Where can I sign up?!
Hi Irene – I’ve only just told my producer that Farkas means Wolf! We’re currently making Season 5 of KEEPING THE WOLF (FARKAS) OUT – and the first 4 series are now available on Audible.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Keeping+the+Wolf+Out&ref=nb_sb_noss
Hi Philip, I have only just found your drama. I am married to a Hungarian who managed to escape in 1980. He lost his parents in 1956 when he, Laszlo, was 1 year. He had a good life with an elderly foster parents on a small holding. But was a hippy art student before Call up for army. I have written a short story, 5000 words, of his often funny stories of his life there. It shld be a film.
I am intrigued to know why you are interested And have written about that time in Hungary. Did you live there?
All best Sandi Dunn
Hi Philip, I have only just found your drama. I am married to a Hungarian who managed to escape in 1980. He lost his parents in 1956 when he, Laszlo, was 1 year. He had a good life with an elderly foster parents on a small holding. But was a hippy art student before Call up for army. I have written a short story, 5000 words, of his often funny stories of his life there. It shld be a film.
I am intrigued to know why you are interested And have written about that time in Hungary. Did you live there?
All best Sandi Dunn
That’s fascinating…I chose Hungary because I wanted to tell a spy story from the other side of the Iron Curtain and Hungary seemed the most interesting locale. Now I love the country hugely!
Thoroughly enjoying the series but very agitated at being unable to identify the theme tune – any ideas?
Cheerio
Larry
Glad you enjoyed! Just checking with the producer about the theme music..it’s great isn’t it?
I checked on the music: Opening is ‘Depth Charge’ by the wonderful ‘Sir Bald Diddley’, and the closing is Blue Wave by Chris Salt. Both from the appropriately named de Wolfe Music!
Hi Larry. I checked on the music: Opening is ‘Depth Charge’ by the wonderful ‘Sir Bald Diddley’, and the closing is Blue Wave by Chris Salt. Both from the appropriately named de Wolfe Music!
Many thanks Philip – I thought it sounded familiar, I have a Sir Bald Diddley (& his Wigouts) CD right here! It also looks like it was also recorded by another band – The Magnificent Escapades – on the ‘Locked into Surf’ compilation, though they acknowledge Diddley as the composer. Not to be confused by the song of the same name (“Depth Charge”) by Jon & the Nightriders.
I stumbled on Keeping the Wolf out a few weeks ago and want to write to express my appreciation. I was in the car and just happened to catch a few sentences of dialogue towards the end of an episode. When the setting became clear – early 60s Budapest, crime drama – I was immediately intrigued because it was both different and immediately interesting. I love radio drama generally, and immediately downloaded all episodes – once I had figured out where it started since the episodes are not numbered on Sounds. From the first episode i have been gripped in all respects, so much so I have to ration myself so I can make the episodes go further. It ticks so many boxes, for me at least, that I cannot believe it is not better known. I thought it was probably based on a series of novels as its quite similar the to Bernie Gunther stories by Philip Kerr in many ways, but very surprised to learn that it appears only to be a radio play series as far as im aware. I am quite surprised I have been moved sufficiently to write to the author, and when I found out you were from Port Talbot it was the icing on the cake – im basically down the road, or at least a small part of the Heads of the Valleys road. I was hoping to find out, among other things, as to whether it is ever likely to make it to TV or film, and when the next series will be available. I look forward to investigating your other work now! gratefully Phil H.
Hi Phil – what a lovely response! I love the Bernie Gunther novels but didn’t read them until after I’d started this show – it’s been 5 series over about 7 years so it’s been a huge commitment for me. And bravo for working out the order of the episodes – the way it’s organised on BBC Sounds is just crazy and not fair on any of us creatives. I’ll pass your comments on to my producer! That has made my day. Oh – my feature film THE BALLAD OF BILLY McCRAE showed in cinemas this autumn and will be on the small screen in the New Year – and is a film noir set in Port Talbot…
As far as Wolf is concerned – I am starting to explore whether there might be interest in a TV version – watch this space… Best wishes!
Absolutely cracking. Top-notch plots, twists, turns, characters, dialogue, atmospheres.
Can’t stop listening.
More of this, please.
Thank you!
Keeping the Wolf Out is a wonderful evocation of a paranoid communist society. Well served with superbly cast actors. Love it.
Thank you for those very kind words, Tim. I’m very proud of this show and the fact it spans such an extraordinary period in history…