Press & Awards

Bed of Lies

The Telegraph
Publisher Podcast Awards | Best Limited Series & Publisher Podcast | 2022
"A stunning work of compassion and accountability"

The Press Awards| Best News Podcast
Sensitive rather than sensationalist, this documentary podcast allows the subjects to add colour and emotion on top of the host's assured reporting and knowledge. A strong edit cleverly hooks listeners in, working backwards to learn the whole story.

The Press Gazette Award| Features Journalism
The judges said the winning work “was explosive. Their sure-footed and sensitive reporting of this shameful episode was first class”
The Lovies Award: GOLD| Crime and Justice

"This is a must-listen series"
Miranda Sawyer, The Guardian
Bed of Lies 1: Read full review.

In Bed of Lies, we hear from seven different women who formed relationships with undercover policemen who joined leftwing activist groups in the 1990s and early 2000s. The practice began being exposed in 2010, but the effects are still felt by the women involved. We’re a few episodes into this gripping, complicated tale. Presenter Cara McGoogan and producer Sarah Peters are careful to tell the stories so that we can follow them: the differences and similarities between the histories are exposed. Each man seems unique and yet they all act in the same way with the women they seduce, gradually ensnaring them into a life that seems wonderful but is built on pathological dishonesty.

After their boyfriends disappear into thin air, some of these women transform into incredible sleuths, calling up old birth certificates, sitting in a pub watching for people entering undercover premises, travelling abroad to log a missing person with the authorities. Their stories are shocking and heartrending. This is a must-listen series.

"Highly recommended"
Miranda Sawyer, The Guardian
Bed of Lies 2: Read full review.

I’m late to the new second series of UK investigative podcast Bed of Lies, but, hooray, this meant I could binge all seven episodes. Anyone who listened to the first series, about women tricked into long-term relationships by undercover police officers, will expect an excellently researched but upsetting listen, and this is what we get. Bed of Lies concerns British people given blood infected with HIV and hepatitis C in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It sounds an unpromising topic, but the Bed of Lies team – reporter Cara McGoogan and producer Sarah Peters - ensure that the true, heartbreaking tales of those who suffered are given time and dignity. These real-life stories run alongside the podcast’s relentless uncovering of the facts. Highly recommended.


One Day in Entebbe

BBC Radio 4

"Immensely powerful"
Falling Tree Radio

"Loving this Entebbe doc, had totally missed the Netanyahu dimension"
Jeremy Vine, BBC broadcaster

"Fantastic piece"
Matt Frei, presenter and broadcaster

Sunday Times: Radio pick of the day.
Paul Donovan Read full review.

Clearly, calmly and coolly, this tells the story of the audacious operation, 40 years ago next week, when Israeli commandos flew 2,500 miles to free more than 100 hostages taken off a hijacked aircraft in Uganda, then under Idi Amin's control. The speacial forces special-forces mission was led by the New York-born Yonatan Netanyahu, who was killed in action: his younger brother Benjamin, now Israel's prime minister, is one of Jonathan Freeland's several interviewees here, talking about premonition and pain.

My Dream Dinner Party

BBC Radio 4
Nominated for an ARIA Award in Creative Innovation 2021'
WINNER! BBC Radio and Music Award 2019
Best Technical Production
Shortlisted for a BBC Radio and Music Award in 2018 and for the Prix Phonurgia Nova Awards in 2017.

"Coherent, believable and often humorous narrative."
The Radio Times

"Voices brilliantly edited and intercut from the radio archives." The Daily Mail

"This was a delicious confection"
Gillian Reynolds, radio critic, The Telegraph
Read the full review.

"This is what radio was invented for. Brilliant"
Dominic Waghorn, Sky News

"This was very ingenious...and beautifully pulled off."
Tom Sutcliffe, Radio 4 broadcaster and journalist

"It's 28 minutes of complete delight, deftness and wizardry...you gasp in admiration. It's genuinely a work of art" Jane Garvey, presenter, Radio 4

Steve Wright reminds his listeners with a small sample of the show. PLAY RECORDING
"This is a masterpiece of production. Clever idea brilliantly executed. You can’t hear the edits in My Dream Dinner Party." James Stewart @jamsstew

"Whoever came up with the idea of 'My Dream Dinner Party' is genius. It's riveting! God I love the wireless. Great choices."Sharon Stead @ShazStead

"This is a masterclass in speech audio editing; wonderful!" Andrew P. Sykes @CyclingEurope

"An absolutely genius production of a dinner party with dead famous people. Really fabulous conversation between them using original recordings."
Edith Maria Stefen @EdithSurrey

Shoah in Jerusalem

BBC Radio 4

"Shoah in Jerusalem was what British radio does well and so often we take it for granted, the portrayal of a personal experience that carries much wider significance....a perfectly judged piece"

Gillian Reynolds, radio critic, The Telegraph
Read the full review.

Shortlisted for Whickers World Foundation Audio award 2016. Read what the judges said.

Shoah in Jerusalem is a wonderful programme, such a deft mix of soundscape and testimony with just the right balance between the journalistic and the personal. All the elements of this piece combined to create something much bigger; the music, the pacing and the consistency of the information were compelling"

Alan Hall, radio documentary producer and founder of Falling Tree Productions.

"This was just beautifully made. Jonathan Freedland is hugely knowledgeable, yet doesn’t overcrowd the piece. Musically, holding just one note throughout a particular scene meant that you could feel the tension, and then it was dropped to give you release."

Kim Normanton, Radio Producer.


A Beastly Midsummer's Night

BBC Radio 4

"If you like adventurous speech radio, can I recommend Between The Ears on BBC Radio 3? Tonight's edition worked on so many midsummer levels..."

Ian McMillan, poet and broadcaster

"I loved A Beastly Midsummer's Night. One of radio's most powerful effects is 'intimacy'. The listener can be drawn into the web and become part of a shared conversation or experience. This is very true of this lovely documentary in the BBC Radio 3 series of adventurous radio programmes, Between The Ears"

Piers Plowright, award-winning BBC feature maker

Testimonials

"Sarah understands how to evoke a rich sense of place and social history through dynamic story telling. Through her skilful production of interviews with local people, she pulls out narratives that she weaves with music and site specific ambience, which all makes for a very powerful onsite listening experience.

Her continued professional and creative approach means that we often collaborate, most recently on apps for the City of London Visitor Trail, the Jewish Museum and Battersea Power Station"

Jo Reid, Managing Director, Calvium, app developers

"Sarah Peters has the rare ability of regularly unearthing great stories. Sarah also has the skill - shared only by great producers - of encouraging people to tell their stories in the most compelling way. She has a great journalistic eye, excellent judgment, and a fine ear for sound. Sarah's radio features are the only programmes that always move me, and always make me think."

Iain Chambers, Executive producer and co-founder
Open Audio

"Sarah's work on the Sounds Jewish podcast for the Guardian is without doubt some of the best audio we have ever produced and along with presenter Alan Dein she evolved this podcast into one that captured the poetry of peoples' experiences, that mapped the diversity of Jewish lives. Comparable to This American Life, Sarah's podcasts left a legacy of evergreen audio on the Guardian site that continues to engage our users"

Jason Phipps, Head of Audio, Guardian

"Working with Sarah is a joy. She combines a fierce intelligence with an unerring ear for what makes story compelling. She can bring humour and warmth to the most challenging of subjects. She quickly grasped what we needed on every occasion and delivered on time with both professionalism and creative flair. She was also open to new ideas and happy to make changes, working with us at every step of the way.

I would not hesitate for an instant to work with her again."

Abigail Morris, Chief Executive Jewish Museum

I've worked with Sarah on a range of productions and they have always been stand-out, never mundane. She is a rare combination of journalist and artist, able to dissect complex and difficult subjects with sensitivity and maturity and confect them into gripping, often beautiful, pieces.

Peregrine Andrews, Sound Editor and Producer
Moving Air