21st Precinct
Drama
Drama
Fear on Four.
The voice sounds reassuring. That may be the most unsettling thing about it. Discover Fear on Four on Heritage Radio Vault, the BBC radio anthology of disturbing stories and supernatural unease. The programme makes room for psychological suspense as well as encounters whose explanations lie beyond the familiar.
OFFICIAL HERITAGE RADIO VAULT RECORDING
Listen to Fear on Four.
Press Play in the official Spreaker player.
Open on Spreaker ↗The player connects to Spreaker, which may use cookies and serve advertising. Audio starts when you press Play. Spreaker privacy
Fear on Four: Programme Guide.
A commonplace encounter takes a disturbing turn. Fear on Four uses the intimacy of radio to make uncertainty, expectation and an unseen threat do much of the work.
Broadcast history.
The BBC Radio 4 anthology began in 1988, with later series and a 1999 one-off. It belongs to a continuing British tradition of horror radio but is a separate production from Appointment with Fear and earlier Man in Black programmes.
Cast and creative team.
Edward de Souza introduced the earlier series as the Man in Black. Later productions did not all use that framing character. The writers, casts and directors varied between original plays and adaptations.
Where to begin.
Blood Of Eva Bergen · Hairy Hand Of Dartmoor
These available recordings offer an introduction to this collection. Their current publication dates are separate from historical broadcast dates.
An interesting detail.
The absence of a Man in Black introduction does not automatically make a recording incomplete. The researched programme history specifically distinguishes the later unframed plays.
Listening appeal.
Try a self-contained story and allow its sound and pauses to establish the situation. No continuing hero’s backstory is required, though the tone and subject vary from play to play.
Collection and date notes.
HRV lists 48 public recordings. The 48 records should not be equated automatically with 48 distinct original commissions; repeats and editions require comparison. Current podcast dates describe later archive publication, separately from original broadcast dates.
Sources.
Choose your next episode.
48 public recordings in this programme. Catalogue order is not a verified original broadcast chronology.
48 episodes available.
Questions about Fear on Four.
Does de Souza introduce every recording?
No. Later productions omitted the Man in Black framing.
Is this the earlier Appointment with Fear?
It is a separate BBC anthology drawing on a related horror tradition.
