The ABC's place for creative audio fiction from Australia's best writers and emerging creators. Thought-provoking writing and sumptuous sound design.
Untrue Romance - The Last Kiss
In our final episode of Untrue Romance, we bring you an ending, and maybe a beginning.
6/10/2021 • 19 minutes, 45 seconds
Untrue Romance - Pina Coladas
Who doesn't love pina coladas, and getting caught in the rain?
6/3/2021 • 20 minutes, 51 seconds
Untrue Romance - Looking Back to Look Forward
In this episode of Untrue Romance, we're looking back at past loves. Potentially tricky, sometimes awkward, but if you don’t look back, you’ll never go forward, or that’s what they say.
5/27/2021 • 38 minutes, 21 seconds
Untrue Romance - Love, Out of This World
Romance from worlds unexplored, unexpected and unknown
5/20/2021 • 24 minutes, 15 seconds
Untrue Romance - Crushes
We’ve all been there, haven’t we? That thrill of a new crush… that delicious moment where we don’t know which way it might go for us.
5/13/2021 • 23 minutes
Untrue Romance - The Telephone
Has the smart phone destroyed romance?
5/6/2021 • 24 minutes, 59 seconds
The Right Fit - Dessert
The sun's setting in Bali, but will it set on Marco and Belinda too?
5/5/2021 • 25 minutes, 19 seconds
The Right Fit: Main Course
Nothing says; “let's get it on” better than a collecting a Spare at the Bowling Lanes.
4/28/2021 • 23 minutes, 18 seconds
The Right Fit: Entree
Some men try flowers and chocolates...others sign up to be community mentors.
4/21/2021 • 21 minutes, 12 seconds
The Right Fit
An audio rom-com for those of us who believe that love can happen anywhere, at any time.
4/14/2021 • 25 minutes, 10 seconds
Corona Tales — part five
We look back at what got us through the lockdown and we take a glimpse at that first week of the pandemic when it's fairly safe to say, everyone felt a bit nuts.
1/23/2021 • 25 minutes, 13 seconds
Corona Tales — part four
COVID-19 stories from those who endured the lockdown alone and those who were never left alone.
1/16/2021 • 25 minutes, 14 seconds
Corona Tales — part three
Either having nowhere to isolate or a job that requires you to be in thick of things. Corona Tales explores stories from those who couldn't just bunker down during the pandemic.
1/9/2021 • 25 minutes, 11 seconds
Corona Tales — part two
COVID-19 stories of our most intimate relationships, the reimagining we're all doing around them and a gentle reminder, that the world has been here before.
1/2/2021 • 25 minutes, 15 seconds
Corona Tales — part one
Stories of family, friendship and even romance under the cloud of COVID-19.
12/26/2020 • 25 minutes, 15 seconds
How to Make Gravy: a tribute to the Australian classic
Here at Fictions, we're fans of this song too, so we decided to reach out to writers Paul Daley and Van Badham to give us their take on the story of Joe, Dan and their family.
12/19/2020 • 28 minutes, 47 seconds
Dear Santa
With travel difficult and gathering in big groups discouraged, Christmas will likely be a little strange this year so Fictions is presenting a series of letters written to things that will be missed most during the upcoming festive season.
12/5/2020 • 25 minutes, 21 seconds
An ode to the telephone
Remember when your phone wasn’t with you 24/7? When you used it to make actual calls? Or you sat there, looking at it, waiting desperately for it to ring? Fictions is going back in time, with two stories about the telephone, family, and real connection.
11/28/2020 • 24 minutes, 56 seconds
Trish + Golden Evan
Fictions presents two short stories of imperfect women — women saying the wrong things, doing the wrong things, and certainly not fitting into any sort of "good girl" mold.
11/21/2020 • 25 minutes
Earlier that evening
A country pub, a regional hospital and a courtroom. Fictions presents three short thrillers set in regional Australia, very late at night.
11/14/2020 • 25 minutes, 15 seconds
04 | Single Room: Banned
For a young Indigenous mother, an ugly incident at a football game has meant time in jail and a life-time ban from her son's footy matches. Now she wants the ban lifted.
11/7/2020 • 25 minutes, 15 seconds
03 | Single Room: Safety Switch
The true story of two actors arrested on a busy Melbourne street loading prop guns into the boot of their car. Was this an act of sheer stupidity or were they planning something more sinister?
10/31/2020 • 25 minutes, 52 seconds
02 | Single Room: The Vault of Lost Things
People visit lost property offices in hope of finding missing precious items, often overwhelmed with joy when these things miraculously show up. The Vault is the story of a woman chasing that feeling.
10/24/2020 • 25 minutes, 32 seconds
01 | Single Room: Kinder Surprise
They say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, this rings a little too true in this competitive mother daughter comedy.
10/17/2020 • 23 minutes, 11 seconds
Guinea Pig Years and Swimming Alone
Two short stories that explore the way animals reflect what's going on in our heads and in our worlds. And it's not always cute and fluffy.
10/10/2020 • 24 minutes, 46 seconds
INTRODUCING — The Quarantine Chronicles
The chronicles are seven short works of audio fiction written by top North American playwrights, and they capture the spirit of our distanced, disorienting and deranged times — with wonderfully weird results. You can listen to PlayME and the Quarantine Chronicles on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts.
8/25/2020 • 31 seconds
06 | Untrue Crime: Big Steel
Two young lawyers return to the town where they grew up to surf a wave of ice addiction, defending a generation of hopeless junkies from the law and from themselves. But ice doesn't only tempt the weak and the poor...
8/22/2020 • 25 minutes, 1 second
05 | Untrue Crime: Sate
In Sate, a water conference turns nasty when its Indigenous participants demand justice.
8/15/2020 • 23 minutes
04 | Untrue Crime: Slammin' with the poet king
A story of poetry slams, hipster beer and the wild chase to bring a slam poet to justice — poetic justice, that is.
8/8/2020 • 26 minutes, 5 seconds
03 | Untrue Crime: Tippy
The death of a dog has terrible consequences. When the 'mad rooter' is slaughtered, a young girl takes charge...
8/1/2020 • 24 minutes, 5 seconds
02 | Untrue Crime: The Delivery
A desperate man borrows money from a bikie gang, with terrifying consequences. The bikies force him to make 'one' delivery for them — but will he every really be free?
7/25/2020 • 25 minutes, 16 seconds
01 | Untrue Crime: Immersion
Cate Kennedy's gripping story of a fly fisher who meets a barmaid in the mountains. He doesn't realise at first, but the two of them share a sinister secret.
7/18/2020 • 25 minutes, 25 seconds
BONUS | Untrue Crime: Peter Temple
Fictions presents a previously unpublished story by the late, great Australian crime writer, Peter Temple.
7/15/2020 • 11 minutes, 19 seconds
I Got You and Cooking with Sophia
On Fictions, we meet a mannequin, a woman with an unexpected past, and a screen goddess.
7/11/2020 • 20 minutes, 25 seconds
Corona Tales — part six
In a share house in Toronto, Canada, three women decide to use their time in quarantine to start a punk band. The only problem is, they don't know how to play their instruments.
5/23/2020 • 30 minutes, 17 seconds
Corona Tales — part five
We look back at what got us through the lockdown (for a lot of us that involved online shopping) and we take a glimpse at that first week of the pandemic when it's fairly safe to say, everyone felt a bit nuts.
5/16/2020 • 25 minutes, 10 seconds
Corona Tales — part four
COVID-19 stories from those who endured the lockdown alone and those who were never left alone.
5/9/2020 • 25 minutes, 7 seconds
Corona Tales — part three
Either having nowhere to isolate or a job that requires you to be in thick of things. This week Corona Tales explores stories from those who can't just bunker down during this pandemic.
5/2/2020 • 25 minutes, 13 seconds
Corona Tales — part two
COVID-19 stories of our most intimate relationships, the reimagining we're all doing around them and a gentle reminder, that the world has been here before.
4/25/2020 • 25 minutes, 7 seconds
Corona Tales — part one
Stories of family, friendship and even romance under the cloud of COVID-19.
4/18/2020 • 25 minutes, 14 seconds
No Standing. No Dancing. episode four
Having tracked Phil Spencer's teenage journey as a political, chest-thumping, angsty poet, in the final episode of No Standing. No Dancing, the middle-class father of two grapples with his newfound identity.
3/28/2020 • 15 minutes, 54 seconds
No Standing. No Dancing. episode three
Phil Spencer drags out old notebooks to revisit some of his classic rhyming couplets and haikus penned as an angsty teenager.
3/21/2020 • 14 minutes, 6 seconds
No Standing. No Dancing. episode two
For teenagers of the 80s and 90s, forming a rock band with your high school mates was almost a rite of passage. Comedian and writer Phil Spencer remembers doing just that.
3/14/2020 • 11 minutes, 51 seconds
No Standing. No Dancing. episode one
It’s 2003 and the US, Britain and Australia have officially invaded Iraq. So what’s that got to do with a spotty 17-year-old from Oxfordshire?
3/7/2020 • 13 minutes, 7 seconds
Oz Gothic — Moving Sitting Ducks
When did the experience of fear become synonymous with the passage into womanhood?
2/29/2020 • 29 minutes, 16 seconds
Fictions presents No Standing. No Dancing.
No Standing. No Dancing, written by comedian Phil Spencer, is a four-part personal memoir about parenthood, poetry and Peppa Pig.
2/26/2020 • 1 minute, 25 seconds
Oz Gothic — The Walker
As floodwaters rise on a central Queensland property, repressed memories emerge of a trauma left behind.
2/22/2020 • 30 minutes, 45 seconds
Oz Gothic — On the Comora
A move to the country doesn’t go as planned for a young primary school teacher.
2/15/2020 • 29 minutes, 20 seconds
Oz Gothic — Workers of all lands unite
A writer who can't write, with appalling taste in men, finds herself in possession of a mysterious itch.
2/8/2020 • 27 minutes, 5 seconds
Oz Gothic — The Pool
A young woman revisits the backyard pool of her childhood and is reminded that you can never really tell who your neighbours are.
2/1/2020 • 25 minutes, 3 seconds
Oz Gothic — The Promise
A man's life disintegrates in the wake of broken trust and religious fervour. By renowned writer Tony Birch.
1/25/2020 • 27 minutes, 32 seconds
INTRODUCING — Radio National Fictions
Radio National Fictions is the ABC's place for creative audio fiction. Working with Australia's best writers and emerging creators, Fictions will bring you thought-provoking writing and sumptuous sound design. We deal in the hilarious, the gritty and sometimes the dystopian. Starts Saturday, January 25.