The Kiss is a radio series by Katie Hims, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2008, as installments of Woman's Hour Drama.
Episodes[]
| Episode Number | Title | Author | Broadcast Date | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Waterloo East | Katie Hims | 11 February 2008 | Dan breaks up with Jeanie on the platform of Waterloo East Station. She is heartbroken, but they have the best break-up kiss she has ever had. A year later they meet again and he wants her back. Jeanie knows how feckless he is, but she did love that kiss.
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| 02 | The Advertiser | Katie Hims | 12 February 2008 | A 73-year-old woman sees an astonishingly beautiful kiss at Waterloo East and determines that she wants to kiss someone for the first time in her life. She places an advert in a national newspaper.
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| 03 | The Kiss That Never Happened | Katie Hims | 13 February 2008 | Ted has imagined kissing Liesl over several years, while she has dated, got engaged, married and become a mother.
Now, when he thinks her marriage is in trouble, he feels closer than ever to the long-sought kiss.
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| 04 | The Accident | Katie Hims | 14 February 2008 | When Sean dies in an accident, his father Ray kisses him for the first time and is shocked by how cold his skin is.
Ray begins to kiss everything, from photographs and soft toys to geckos, walls and windows.
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| 05 | Jacob Lennon | Katie Hims | 15 February 2008 | Everyone at school is in love with Jacob Lennon. Andrea and Sophie imagine that kissing him must be like eating melted marshmallows. Then Andrea finds out the truth.
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Critical Reception[]
"Katie Hims’ Valentine-themed series of playlets, The Kiss, were playful hymns to osculation. Every kiss, she hinted, has a syntax and vocabulary of its own. The first play, with Lee Ross and Claire Rushbrook, was about a couple’s goodbye kiss at Waterloo station. It was about life imitating art - the girl felt as though she was in a film.
Hims’ trick was to connect the stories with such subtlety she took me by surprise. The next tale was about a woman, 77 years old and never been kissed, who advertised for men to kiss her, no strings attached. Only at the end did she reveal that her inspiration was the kissing couple at Waterloo." - Moira Petty, The Stage[2]
"...each engaged on its own terms, but Thursday's was the best. A touching tale of a man who kisses his son's corpse, and then finds himself kissing lots of other objects, it was sharply observed and finely acted, both funny and extremely touching. I loved the scene in a pet shop: 'You were kissing my gecko! Bloody Nora! What kind of a man are you?'" - Miranda Sawyer, The Guardian[3]