Showing results by narrator "Toby Webster" in All Categories

Whakapapa is a Maori idea which embodies our universal human need to belong. It represents a powerful spiritual belief—that each of us is part of an unbroken and unbreakable chain of people who share a sacred identity. Owen places this concept at the core of his methods to maximise a team's performance.

Single mum and Paramedic Fiona Murchison has made it her mission to protect her little boy. Her husband was a daredevil, a risk taker, with his life played out in front of the camera. But when he died, she vowed to keep her son away from the glare of the world’s media. Now her quiet and content life is about to come crashing down around her with the arrival of a new doctor in town…

Helicopter paramedic Tama James isn’t afraid of hard work, danger or putting his patients first. And he expects nothing less from his team. But when his newest recruit arrives, the bubbly and beautiful Mikayla Elliot, he’s unimpressed to discover she didn’t earn her place. She’s the superior’s daughter. So, he’ll make it his mission to show her just how tough the job really is!

When twenty-one-year-old builder Joe Wright meets Leo, he falls in love hard, and seemingly for ever. Mature, philosophical and intensely handsome, Leo teaches Joe an appreciation of music and literature, and, most importantly, a passion for the beautiful old buildings that are disappearing from Auckland's central city. But when Leo suddenly vanishes from his life, then drifts back again years later, Joe—now a powerful developer of heritage architecture—is unable to move on from this first affair.

Pio Morgan is waiting outside a pub on a cold winter's night. There is a debt he must pay and no options left. What he does next drags a group of strangers into a web of confusion that over the course of a few days changes all their lives. There's the young Maori widow just trying to raise her children, the corporate executive hiding his mistake, the gang of criminals that will do whatever it takes to recover what they've lost and the outsider sent to town to try and figure out who did what. Time is running out for all of them as events take an increasingly sinister turn.

One night in December, twenty-two year old Ted Green makes his way to Waterloo Bridge determined to end his life. Lonely, despairing and utterly hopeless, it seems the only choice to make. That same night in December, Marianne Cooper is running away from a party. Having found her boyfriend in a passionate clinch with someone else, Marianne can’t get away fast enough. But as she makes her way along London’s South Bank, a figure catches her eye on top of the bridge. Then she sees him, a man ready to jump.

Shocking real-life stories of murderous women who used rat poison to rid themselves of husbands and other inconvenient family members. After World War II, Sydney experienced a crime wave that was chillingly calculated. Discontent mixed with despair, greed with callous disregard. Women who had lost their wartime freedoms headed back into the kitchen with sinister intent and the household poison thallium, normally used to kill rats, was repurposed to kill husbands and other inconvenient family members.

Edwina is an old-school battler. Her life revolves around the church and her job unpacking vegetables early in the morning, while around her a new generation turns Ponsonby into a trendy, uber-chic suburb. It is a chance win in a church raffle - a gym membership - that changes her life. She meets different people; makes a new young friend named Rose and transforms herself: a metamorphosis, Rose calls it.

Worn down by a job he hates and a stressful family life, middle-aged, middle-class Bradley picks up a teenage escort and commits an unspeakable crime. Now she's tied up in his warehouse and he doesn't know what to do. Max is homeless, sleeping rough and barely existing - known for cadging a cigarette from anyone passing and occasionally even the footpath. Nobody really sees Max - but he has one friend, and she's gone missing. In order to find her, Max is going to have to call on some people from his past and reopen wounds that have remained unhealed for a very long time.

It's a story that began in a rickety old home on a cold June morning in 1994, where five members of a seemingly ordinary New Zealand family were gunned down. There were two suspects. One lay dead from a single bullet to the head. The other was the only survivor: David Bain. Since then, the country has asked: Who killed the Bain family? David, or his father Robin? And why?

Jimmy Kokupe is a miracle: he's been cured. But he still carries the stigma, which makes life back on the mainland dangerous and lonely. To find a refuge, he's returned to the camp to care for his friend, fellow patient old Will, and disturbed young Charley. Healed of his physical ailments and dreaming of the girl he once planned to follow to a new life in Australia, Jimmy meets 'the lady', the island caretaker's beautiful but troubled wife who brings their food.

In an unspecified time and location, an unnamed boy is living what he feels to be an idyllic life in the faded and peeling lido where his father is a lifeguard. He idolises his father - never more so than when he saves the life of a suicidal man. The arrest of his sister Lilly later that summer brings the halcyon days to an abrupt end, however, and his family is torn apart, with Lilly sent to jail and the boy sent to a boardinghouse for dysfunctional boys: The Fell.

The hour is late. The candle is low. Tomorrow I will see whether it is my friends or a ship homewards I meet. But I must finish my story for you first. My future, my descendant, my mokopuna. So begins the tale of James Pōneke - orphaned son of a chief, ardent student of English, wide-eyed survivor. All the world’s a show when you’re a living exhibit. But anything can happen to a young New Zealander - a boy between worlds, having lost his family and tribe - on the savage streets of Victorian London.

Mr. Royston is driving his hansom through the night-time streets of Melbourne when he is hailed by a man supporting a slumped, intoxicated figure and requesting that the cabman take the unfortunate fellow home - before proceeding to drop his burden and make a rapid exit.

Most famous for his Hornblower series, iconic writer C. S. Forester tells tales of adventure like no other. This BBC radio collection features modern adaptations of five of his acclaimed novels, including The African Queen (famously adapted as an Oscar-winning film starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn) and The Gun, which was turned into the hit Hollywood movie The Pride and the Passion.

A young woman is found dead at a local beach. Sergeant Bill Granger, the local policeman, is called in to investigate. He had hoped for a quiet off-season. Instead, what seems to be a straightforward case of an unfortunate death turns into a complex web of small-town secrets and desire for revenge that will soon place Bill's family in danger. With Niko Sopoaga, a young South Auckland constable working alongside him, Bill falls into the dark and dangerous world of drug distribution and a hardened motorcycle gang wreaking havoc, while they chase a clever killer.

Lena just moved to Mandalay Close. She needed a new start, since her boyfriend cheated her out of the happy-ever-after she’d believed they were always going to share. But on the day Lena moves in, letters begin to arrive for all her new neighbours. Letters that promise to expose everyone’s deepest, darkest secrets. Every house has received one - except for Lena’s. Someone clearly wants to implicate her, to ruin her new life and turn everyone against her. She’s made an enemy, but who, and why?

New Zealand, 1928. When Wilhelm Erdinger arrives in the sleepy village of Falters Mill, claiming to want nothing more than to be left alone to pursue a self-sufficient life, the locals are more than happy to oblige. Against all expectations, his life flourishes, and he discovers both unexpected friendship and love. But as war marches ever closer, it is not the locals' growing antipathy against the German in their midst that threatens to bring his tenuous happiness crashing down, but a dark secret from his past.

Andrew and his girlfriend Jess are making a life for themselves in London, but it's a bit of a grind, and now their relationship is beginning to suffer. Andrew's best friend Jaryd, on the other hand, is living every young man's dream - a beautiful apartment in Paris, a happy relationship with the lovely Liv, and a business venture gone global. But when the two couples head off on a summer road trip around Italy, relationships are tested by temptation, drugs, and an accident that will come to define them.

Samira is an up-and-coming TV journalist, working the nightshift at a major news channel and yearning for greater things. So when she’s offered a trip to the Middle East, with Kris, the station’s brilliant but impetuous star photographer, she leaps at the chance. In the field together, Sami and Kris feel invincible, shining a light into the darkest of corners…except the newsroom, and the rest of the world, doesn’t seem to care as much as they do. Until Kris takes the photograph.