The shortlist for the 2025 BBC Audio Drama Awards was released on December 16. The winners will be announced on March 30, 2025 in a ceremony in the Radio Theatre at BBC Broadcasting House London.

The finalists of genre interest follow. Click here for the complete 2025 shortlist.

Best Original Single Drama

• Franz and Felice by Ed Harris, producer Sasha Yevtushenko, BBC Studios Audio London
• The Call by Ron Hutchinson, producer Eoin O’Callaghan, Big Fish Radio

Best Original Series or Serial

• English Rose by Helen Cross, producer Mary Ward-Lowery, BBC Audio Wales & West
• Money Gone by Ed Sellek, producer Eloise Whitmore, Naked Productions

Best Comedy Performance

• Heath McIvor, Randy Feltface’s Destruction Manual, producer David Tyler, Pozzitive

The Marc Beeby Award for Best Debut Performance

• Nicole Miners, Camlann, producer Amber Devereux, Tin Can Audio

Best Sit Com or Comedy Drama

• Crybabies Presents….Bagbeard by Michael Clarke, James Gault and Ed Jones, producer Joe Nunnery, Boffola Pictures

Best Use of Sound

• Money Gone, sound by Eloise Whitmore, producer Tony Churnside, Naked Productions *
• Restless Dreams, sound by Eloise Whitmore, producer Eloise Whitmore, Naked Productions

Best Podcast Audio Drama

• Doctor Who – the Eleventh Doctor Chronicles by Georgia Cook, Max Kashevsky and Alfie Shaw, producer Alfie Shaw, Big Finish Productions *
• The Skies Are Watching written and produced by Jon Frechette and Todd Luoto, Goldhawk Productions

SHOW NOTES:

English Rose is “Stylish and surprising fantasy horror with a comic twist.”

Money Gone takes a look fifteen minutes into the future: “Valentine’s Day 2025. The UK awakes to financial catastrophe and no one can access any money. Ross sees opportunity as the country descends into chaos, but Grace has picked the worst day run away.”

Randy Feltface’s Destruction Manual is about accelerating climate change and ending humanity.

Camlann is “A post-apocalyptic fiction podcast inspired by Arthuriana.”

The blurb for Crybabies Presents…Bagbeard says, “When recently fired science teacher, Chris Mystery, discovers an alien being in Slugwich Woods, he’s thrust into an epic adventure as he attempts to evade a psychopathic government agent and present his discovery to the Institute of Brilliant Scientists (IBS)…”

Doctor Who – the Eleventh Doctor Chronicles is likely self-explanatory.

In a couple of cases the “genre interest” extends to a pair of dramas marking the centenary of Kafka’s death, one in which he figures as a person, Franz and Felice, and another inspired by his work, Restless Dreams.

And The Call is genre adjacent: “A woman caller wakens a college professor just before dawn. She says she works for the Intelligence Services and that he, the teacher, is to stay on the phone as he is to evacuate all the neighbours in his block after which it is going to be destroyed by a missile.”

Likewise, The Skies Are Watching: “Heather Haskins went missing two years ago. Discovered aboard a flight without a ticket or identification, she now believes she’s a woman named Coral Goran, it’s 1938, and that she was abducted on the night of Orson Welles’ infamous War of the Worlds broadcast. Her family struggles to come to terms with this turn of events while searching for answers.”