Looking for Billy

Nicholas le Prevost and Jemma Redgrave star in Nigel Williams' gumshoe road movie, set in the Alaskan Oil Fields.

Looking for Billy takes us up Alaska’s Haul Road all the way to the Arctic Sea. Every day alongside the road, above the tundra, billions of barrels of oil are being piped south from the wells discovered in the 1960’s, on the North Slope. As a private detective sets out with his mysterious client to investigate protests against the pipeline, we learn what that oil discovery did to the indigenous Inupiat people of Alaska.

The Price of Oil season of factual dramas explores the history of oil - and the price we've paid for it. It takes us from 1951 to 2045, and around the world from Iran to Alaska, Libya, Nigeria, Turkmenistan, Washington and onto Scotland's offshore rigs, to explore the role oil has played in shaping our world.

Devised by Nicolas Kent, with Jack Bradley & Jonathan Myerson, the season was produced by Jonquil Panting for BBC Audio.

As director of London’s Tricycle theatre for almost 30 years, Nicolas Kent championed responsive factual and political drama, including seasons of plays by renowned writers about Afghanistan (The Great Game) and nuclear weapons (The Bomb). Now he brings that experience to BBC Radio 4, to tell the story of oil.

Charlie ..... Nicholas le Prevost
Susannah ..... Jemma Redgrave
Jez ..... Sam Dale
Jenny ..... Amelia Lowdell
Billy ..... Mark Edel-Hunt,
Mack ..... David Hounslow
Hitch-hiker ..... Chris Pavlo

Inupiat translations provided by Chelsey Zibell

Looking For Billy was directed by Nicolas Kent.