Radio Listener: Hunting Mr Hyde | The Strange Case of Dr Hyde | Ghost Stories of E Nesbit

THE “fine bogy tale” that hatched from a nightmare that tormented Robert Louis Stevenson, to end up as The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, has become a byword for gothic horror and the duality of good and evil, interpreted on screen by everyone from Spencer Tracy to James Nesbitt (not to mention Bugs Bunny).

Invariably, the plot is set in Victorian London, but for swirling Cockney fog, substitute Auld Reekie’s haar, as crime writer Louise Welsh journeys from Soho to Edinburgh’s New Town to unearth the roots of Stevenson’s classic.

In Hunting Mr Hyde she is joined by retired Episcopalian bishop Richard Holloway as she runs the original Hyde to ground down a dank 
Edinburgh close.

The good old Caledonian antisyzygy is taken further by Radio Scotland in a new, four-part drama by Chris Dolan, based on Stevenson’s tale. The Strange Case of Dr Hyde stars David Rintoul, Jimmy Chisholm, Jane Poole and others as police in modern Edinburgh enlist an eccentric pathologist, Dr Hyde (naturally) in their attempts to solve a grisly murder.

And just to maintain that Halloween frisson, if you associate E Nesbit with that cosy old perennial The Railway Children, think again, as Radio 4 Extra runs five Ghost Stories of E Nesbit, starting on Monday with The Shadow. It’s about three sensitive girls stuck in an isolated house and ... yes, they’re not alone.