“Preppers” – those intrepid ­survivalists making plans to outwit Armageddon – have been rather in the news recently, certainly enough to justify this new four-part comedy series (28 January-18 February) written by Caroline and James Moran.

Prepper
BBC Radio 4

“Preppers” – those intrepid ­survivalists making plans to outwit Armageddon – have been rather in the news recently, certainly enough to justify this new four-part comedy series (28 January-18 February) written by Caroline and James Moran. As you might imagine, the humour derives, or is intended to derive, from the contrast between the Doomsday scenarios of the premise and the deeply mundane backdrops. The world may be about to go up in flames, but in the interim we need to fillet the roadkill and count up the chickpea tins.

And so Rachel (voiced by Pearl Mackie) and Sylvia (the inimitable Sue Johnston) are not grizzled Vietnam veterans holed up in a Mid-Western stockade but a pair of doughty Englishwomen beaming out their podcasts from a garage somewhere in south Manchester. Here they run through topics that include “Our week in Prep”, “Bugging Out” (soon revealed as Prepper shorthand for “fleeing the Apocalypse”) and the importance of physical fitness (“Let’s face it, the end of the world is bound to involve running”).

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