Vent (radio series)

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Vent is a dark comedy series produced for BBC Radio 4 in 2006. It is written by Nigel Smith. The producer is Gareth Edwards.

A second series of 6 episodes began broadcasting on BBC Radio 4 on September 25 2007.

The story revolves around an unsuccessful writer named Ben (Neil Pearson), who is in a coma. While his wife Mary (Fiona Allen) and his mother (Josie Lawrence) hash out their emotional issues at his bedside, he lives in a fantasy world with his 2-year-old daughter "Blitzkrieg" (Leslie Ash), miraculously grown up, and remembers incidents from his life. An imaginary sitcom, apparently written by Ben and concerning a coma ward in a hospital, plays in the background.

While the flashbacks in the first series concern Ben and Mary's courtship, pursued somewhat reluctantly on Mary's part, the second series shows the slow process of recovery for Ben in parallel with their marriage, her pregnancy, and Ben's lapses of commitment. Ben's fantasy life revolves around him giving up total control of his fantasy world before returning to a real world where he has no control at all.

Writer Nigel Smith spent some time in a coma himself, later describing it in an article in The Times^[1].