"Pepys was as professional as anything on BBC Radio....."
Stephen Games in The Independent
"....quixotic campaign to save commercial radio from the usual solid line-up of music, news and phone-ins......"
Sid Smith in Time Out
"With so much pioneering work already achieved Independent Radio Drama Productions have established themselves with a viable presence in radio drama......they have pledged to encourage the recording of new material and the work of new writers"
Bob Tyler in The Stage and Television Today
"They are not quite the only operators in the field, but the Stakhanovite Crook and Shannon are surely the most tireless.....Scarcely a week goes by without some new project emerging"
Nigel Andrew in The Listener
"Radio drama is not quite confined to the BBC. London's LBC has carried an hour a week for more than a decade - unrivalled by any other commercial radio station in Europe. All of it is made by a small non-profit-making company called Independent Radio Drama Productions. IRDP gave Simon Beaufoy his first national exposure when his radio play Saddam's Arms (about a marriage break-up during the Gulf War) won the Woolwich Young Radio Playwrights' Competition in 1993. Beaufoy went on to write the smash hit film The Full Monty. IRDP also produced the first play of Martin McDonagh, whose work was subsequently staged at both the National and the Royal Court, after his scripts were rejected by the far-from-infallible BBC no fewer than 11 times."
Paul Donovan in The Sunday Times
"The short bite, in my opinion, gives the philistines at those stations the excuse that they are doing drama"
Nick McCarty at the Radio Academy Festival
"It's a tough life, making drama for commercial radio"
Sid Smith in Time Out
"The Internet Play of the Month for June, Dr Karpinski's Circus Phenomena is an enjoyable piece of hokum about three young Scots stranded in a spooky rural hotel at Hogmanay. Jane Duncan's drama telegraphs its plot-twists, but its feel for the Scottish way of joshing is convincing, as are the performances, especially Natalie Robb's"
Anne Karpf in The Guardian - June '98
"Excellent shoestring Independent Radio Drama Productions"
Anne Karpf in The Guardian
"Hats off to Independent Radio Drama Productions Ltd"
B.A. Young in the Financial Times
"At the workshop the class included a teacher, an actor, a consultant psychiatrist and a novelist, part of a 75-strong group of writers who became interested in the potential of the sound medium for playwrights after hearing Tim Crook and Richard Shannon at the New London Radio Playwrights' Festival last month."
Martin Wroe in the Independent
"......they have a predilection for angst-driven monologues featuring young men in hopeless situations"
Russell Twisk in The Observer
"....narrative and characterisation are so weak I couldn't see the point of it......Direction and production by Tim Crook and Richard Shannon, who have written a book on writing for radio, so this must be how they like it. And I have always admired them......."
B.A. Young in the Financial Times
"The indefatigable Independent Radio Drama Production company......"
B.A. Young in the Financial Times
"At the moment, IRDP is a shoestring business with much of the post-production work done in Crook's spare bedroom...."
Russell Twisk in The Observer
"IRDP is a shoestring operation with great ambitions...."
Roger Nuttall in the Mail on Sunday
"Mary Shelley's Frankenstein....directed by Kenneth Branagh....Let's see: We've got a dynamic cast, a super director, a lavish set and a classic novel that can either go as commentary on man versus science, friendship and beauty or a spine-tingling horror story. So this movie's supposed to be super, right? Wrong. Frankenstein is now one of the year's biggest disappointments, and even a bigger disappointment to fans of Kenneth Branagh and Robert de Niro........Branagh should have learned his lesson from National Public Radio, which followed the novel with a decent eight-part series, the only way to do an epic of this length...."
Rob Mayer, writing for South Idaho Press in 1994, comparing Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein movie with IRDP's dramatisation of Mary Shelley's novel which was broadcast on NPR
".....very lively listening it was, too, imaginatively produced and well acted"
Val Arnold-Foster in The Guardian, writing about Pepys
"I have seen a good deal of publicity for IRDP recently and I must say that I congratulate you on your energy and initiative"
John Tydeman, then Head of Drama at BBC Radio, in a letter to IRDP in 1990
"I have heard some of IRDP's productions....I was not greatly impressed"
Richard Imison while he was deputy head of Drama at BBC Radio
"I think the competition gave me the confidence to feel I had the right to call myself a writer"
Anna Hashmi, one of the winners of the Woolwich Young Radio Playwrights' Competition
".....the unsung hero of the competition, IRDP's administrative guru, Marja Giejgo"
Michael Kavanagh in The Stage and Television Today
"Disbanded drama departments litter the history of Independent Radio like autumn leaves......"
The London Evening Standard in 1987 in pessimistic mood about the future of the brand new Independent Radio Drama Productions!
".....set up Independent Radio Drama Productions on borrowed money and buckets of enthusiasm"
Russell Twisk in The Observer
"Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the first UK Internet Play of the Month, accessible to anyone with a computer and a modem. It even stars the PM's father-in-law, Tony Booth. Modern or what?"
Anne Karpf in The Guardian
"It's amazing what people are using real audio for. This week, a British outfit called Independent Radio Drama Productions started broadcasting an 'Internet play of the month' on its site."
John Naughton in The Observer
"No sane person invites guests to dinner, offers them a lick of caviar and then dishes up cold turnip. I'm truly sorry to put the boot in to drama on commercial radio, for goodness knows there's precious little of it....."
Sue Arnold in The Observer
