In a futuristic dystopia, a teenager is medically aged 30 years to punish him for a crime he didn't commit.

The chilling story of a middle class man whose desperate weathering of the current economic crisis ends with the arrival one night of a debt collector with an offer that surely cannot be turned down.

Blackball follows the fortunes of Cliff Starkey, a working-class fine of lawn bowls with an exceptional talent. Wanting to take on the Aussies he manages to become regional champion, only to get banned. Sports agent Rich Schwartz picks him up and makes him so popular the Bowls Committee deem to lift the ban. Now the question is whether he can regain his form and his friends to beat the Aussies.

“A drama set in the sixties in which 11-year-old West Indian boy James is caught between two cultures.” - Radio Times (2000)

Josie d’Arby hosts and evening of music from Hoddinott Hall in the company of Sir Bryn Terfel, Kizzy Crawford and actress Hannah Daniel together with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.