Afternoon Drama

The Afternoon Drama (formerly Afternoon Play) is a long-running radio drama programming strand, broadcast every weekday at 2.15pm on BBC Radio 4. Each play lasts for 45 minutes, and roughly 190 new Afternoon Plays are broadcast each year.

Generally around three quarters of the episodes are self-contained dramas. The rest are short series, usually between 2 to 6 episodes, such as Number 10, McLevy, Pilgrim, or Bad Faith (the latter starring Lenny Henry). As well as original drama series, the Afternoon Play has included a number of adaptations of popular works such as The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

History

In one form or another, the Afternoon Play has been a feature of afternoons on Radio 4 since its launch in 1967, although the strict 45 minute format was not enforced until the reorganisation of Radio 4 by James Boyle in 1998, whereby the play directly follows the 2.00pm repeat of The Archers.

Several Afternoon Plays were amongst programmes held in 20 underground radio stations of the BBC's Wartime Broadcasting Service, to provide public information and morale-boosting broadcasts for 100 days after a nuclear attack.

Drama!

"Drama!" is the first single released by Erasure from their fourth studio album Wild!. It was issued by Mute Records in the UK and Sire Records in the U.S.

Written by Vince Clarke and Andy Bell, the synthpop song begins with a low-key keyboard line and a subdued vocal from Bell. As the song progresses, the instrumentation and vocals become more hectic, ultimately ending as a full-blown dancefloor anthem. "Drama!" is known for its mob-shouted "Guilty!" exclamation throughout and Bell's intricate, multi-layered background vocals. Lyrically the song addresses a person who could be considered a drama queen, experiencing "one psychological drama after another" about everyday struggles that are universal and are easily dealt with by most people. Lines such as "your shame is never-ending!" are directed at the subject of the song. The mob's vocals were added to by The Jesus and Mary Chain, who happened to be recording in the studio next door.

Released prior to Wild!, "Drama!" continued Erasure's winning streak on the UK singles chart, peaking at number four. In Germany the single also fared well, hitting number twelve. "Drama!" did not continue Erasure's chart success in the United States, where it failed to enter the Billboard Hot 100. It did, however, climb to number ten on the U.S. Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart.

Drama (Bananarama album)

Drama is the ninth studio album by the British female vocal duo Bananarama. It features eleven newly recorded tracks, along with a remix of their 1986 smash hit "Venus" (done by Soft Cell's Marc Almond) and a 2005 remix of their 1982 hit "Really Saying Something", an underground bootleg club hit produced by Solasso.

Drama is a comeback of sorts for Bananarama members Keren Woodward and Sara Dallin and is their first album to be released in their native UK since 1993. The album's first single "Move in My Direction" debuted on the UK Singles Chart at Number 14, also becoming their first UK Top 40 hit since 1993. The second single, "Look on the Floor (Hypnotic Tango)", also hit the UK Top 40, and climbed to Number 2 on the US Hot Dance Club Play chart as an import, becoming Bananarama's biggest US dancefloor hit since "Venus" two decades earlier.

The album mostly incorporates pop and eurodance musical styles, with some synthpop elements. Drama charted at a number 169 in the UK. It was later released in the United States (both in retail stores and as digital downloads) in 2006. While the album performed well on Billboard's Top Electronic Albums chart, peaking at number 21, it did not chart on the Billboard 200, the US Pop Albums chart.

Drama (genre)

In the context of film and radio, drama describes a genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone, focusing on in-depth development of realistic characters who must deal with realistic emotional struggles. A drama is commonly considered the opposite of a comedy, but may also be considered separate from other works of some broad genre, such as a fantasy. To distinguish drama as a genre of fiction from the use of the same word to mean the general storytelling mode of live performance, the word drama is often included as part of a phrase to specify its meaning. For instance, in the sense of a television genre, more common specific terms are a drama show, drama series, or television drama in the United States; dramatic programming in the United Kingdom; or teledrama in Sri Lanka. In the sense of a film genre, the common term is a drama film.

Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, child abuse, coming of age, drug addiction, emotion, hope, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, sexuality, poverty, class divisions, violence against women and corruption put characters in conflict with themselves, others, society, or even natural phenomena. Drama is one of the broadest movie genres and includes subgenres such as romantic drama, war films, sport films, period drama, courtroom drama and crime.

Afternoon (disambiguation)

Afternoon is that time of day from 1:00 PM and 5:00 PM.

Afternoon may also refer to: