Frank Bascombe: An American Life


Written by Richard Ford
Adapted by Robin Brooks


Staring Kyle Soller

Director & Producer
 Fiona McAlpine


Sound Design
Joseff Harris & Alisdair McGregor
Broadcast Assistant Hermione Sylvester

A four-part series for BBC Radio 4. Frank Bascombe, in The Sportswriter, his unguarded voice instantly wins us over and pulls us into a life that has been irrevocably changed—by the loss of a marriage, a career, a child. We then follow Frank, ever laconic and observant, through Independence Day and The Lay of the Land, witnessing his fortune’s rise and his family’s fragmentation. With finely honed prose and an eye that captures the most subtle nuances of the human condition—all its pathos and beauty and strangeness—Ford transforms this ordinary man’s life into a riveting, moving parable of life in America today. Now, in Let Me Be Frank with You, Frank sits in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. In four richly luminous narratives, Frank attempts to reconcile, interpret and console a world undone by calamity.