Series 1-4: 5 X 45 mins, Series 5: 4 x 45 mins

For me, it is only rarely that I come to the end of a series and want to immediately listen all over again. This is the exception.

In Series 1 to 3 (with a cameo in the very final episode), Sir Anthony Sher, one of Britain's finest Shakespearean actors, plays the only non Shakespearean role I can recall hearing him in on the radio. He plays Alan Armstrong, a Labour Prime Minister, a "Blair like" PM, though unlike the latter, one feels he is both human and fallible (of the person upon whom he is based, I will say nothing.) In Series 4 & 5, Damian Lewis, another fine actor, plays the part of the first openly gay PM - and a Conservative to boot - Simon Laity, a character unlike any PM I can think of.

Each episode covers a single day in the life of the Prime Minister and his advisers, days in which they must react to party turmoil, domestic issues, foreign affairs problems, financial crises, etc, while he and his staff also deal with their own personal problems. In a less capable writer's hands, this could so easily have been no more than a political soap, but instead Jonathan Myerson created scripts which rise far above the standard of much radio (and nearly all current TV) drama. Indeed, at times it feels more like a fly on the wall documentary.

Brilliant casting of support characters, well defined and always developing characterisation, together with detailed research on the real working of Downing Street make this in my opinion one of the finest, yet least known radio drama series of recent years.

As a politician would say, I commend these plays to the House.