Hugh Bonneville Narrates 9-Part Baskervilles Podcast
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- Hugh Bonneville narrates a nine-part podcast adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" for network Noiser, with the first episode landing April 27 and subsequent episodes dropping twice weekly.
- Noiser+ subscribers gain early access beginning April 23, and all episodes will be offered ad-free on BBC Sounds in addition to standard podcast platforms.
- Bonneville said the production deliberately restores Conan Doyle's original nine-part serial structure with episode-ending cliffhangers "to let listeners feel those cliffhangers the way Victorian readers felt them."
- The production layers an original score, custom artwork, and immersive sound design to recreate the "foggy moors of Dartmouth," and marks the 125th anniversary of the story's publication in The Strand magazine.
- Noiser executive producer Katrina Hughes framed the release as an anniversary tribute, saying the team "wanted to mark the anniversary of The Hound of the Baskervilles with a production that truly rose to the occasion."
- The Baskervilles podcast extends Noiser's slate of celebrity-narrated classics, which previously attached Julie Andrews to a Pride and Prejudice adaptation and David Suchet to Charles Dickens Ghost Stories; Bonneville has also already narrated Sherlock Holmes short stories for the network.
Why it matters: Noiser is positioning itself as a destination for prestige audio adaptations of public-domain classics, recruiting A-list British acting talent (Bonneville, Andrews, Suchet) to compete for listeners on platforms including BBC Sounds. The cliffhanger-driven nine-part structure is a deliberate bet that serialized storytelling, which built the story's original Victorian readership, can drive the same engagement in podcast form more than a century later.
