Drama of the Week

Following an Arctic storm, the crew of the research vessel Coralith Epsilon find themselves stranded in thick pack ice. Cut off from the outside world and running low on supplies, hope arrives in the form of a mysterious Morse code message.
But the ship that comes to the rescue is not what they expected. Trapped together in a frozen limbo, two crews separated by a century must survive starvation, the elements, and paranoia to get home.
A chilling five-part supernatural thriller that blends claustrophobic survivalism, cosmic sci-fi and environmental geopolitics, set in one of the most hostile places on Earth - the Arctic tundra. Written by the writers of the award-winning drama podcast 'Up In Smoke', Cambria Bailey-Jones and Guy Larsen.
MARIA.....Raffey Cassidy
TIMOTHY.....Sacha Dhawan
FRED.....Tanya Moodie
LAURA.....Tiffany Smith
Writers: Cambria Bailey-Jones and Guy Larsen
Director: Nadia Molinari
Sound Designer and Technical Producer: Sharon Hughes
Technical Producer: Sam Dickinson
Production Co-ordinator : Pippa Day
Series Script Editor: Lorna Newman
Casting Manager: Alex Curran
Series Scientific Consultant: Prof. James Lea from the University of Liverpool
Weather Consultant: Andy Cutcher
Arctic Historian Consultant: Peter Martin
Army Consultant: Alec Heron
Ship Navigation Consultants: Martha Armitage & James Butters
A BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4.

By Jan Carson.
In 1930, Agatha Christie was commissioned to write a new mystery story. However, this story was to contain clues to a real-life treasure-hunt to take place on the Isle of Man. The story would then be serialised in a newspaper to encourage tourists to visit and find the hidden treasure.
This drama imagines what could have taken place during her visit to the island.
Starring Jeany Spark as Agatha Christie.
Author
Jan Carson is a writer based in Belfast. She has published three novels, three short story collections and two micro-fiction collections. Her novel ‘The Fire Starters’ won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland 2019 and her subsequent novel ‘The Raptures’ was shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year and Kerry Group Novel of the Year in 2022. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was the Seamus Heaney Centre Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast 2025. Her latest novel ‘Few and Far Between’ was published in 2026.
Cast:
Agatha Christie ... Jeany Spark
Arthur Binns Crookall ... David Holt
Alice Crookall ... Jane Slavin
Photographer ... Tom Kiteley
Colonel Westerly ... Jon Glover
All other parts were played by the company.
Production Co-ordinators: Sylvie Conway and Caoilfhinn McFadden.
Sound Design: Keith Graham
Written by Jan Carson
Directed by Michael Shannon
A BBC Audio Northern Ireland Production for BBC Radio 4.