History Radio / EdReardonsWeek

* BackFromtheDead: Reardon at the beginning of series four, after using the fortuitous early publication of his obituary to dodge his creditors at the end of series three.

* TakeThat: Ed claims a play was successful "because it pandered to cheap cliches about bookish middle-aged drunks wallowing in self-pity. *''he takes a drink''* It bore no relation to reality whatsoever."

* TakeThat: Ed claims a play is successful "because it pandered to cheap cliches about bookish middle-aged drunks wallowing in self-pity. *''he takes a drink''* It bore no relation to reality whatsoever."

* VitriolicBestBuds: Reardon and Milvane. Milvane's fame as a film director really took off when he made a film out of Ed Reardon's first (and only) successful novel, without giving him any of the credit. Rancor still smolders in Ed's soul over this. But they've known each other for ages, occasionally enter into schemes and play weekly gigs together, and the only being Ed is on closer terms with is perhaps Elgar the cat.

* KindheartedCatLover: Never exactly "kind", but Ed reserves his minuscule portion of the caring instinct for his cat, allowing the audience glimpses of a fairly [[srike:decent]] acceptable human being beneath all the snark.

* UnknownRival: Ed Reardon is sort of this to Jaz Milvane.

* LoveAtFirstSight: When Ed meets a young woman who thinks that modern culture is reduced to the lowest common denominator and that everything is run by "twelve year olds", "Strangers in the Night" starts playing in his head.

--> '''Ed:''' How far will seven pounds sixty-four get me and my cat?"

* VitriolicBestBuds: Reardon and Milvane. Milvane's success as a film director really took off when he made a film out of Ed Reardon's first (and only) successful novel, without giving him any of the credit. Rancor still smolders in Ed's soul over this. But they've known each other for ages, occasionally enter into schemes and play weekly gigs together, and the only being Ed is on closer terms with is perhaps Elgar the cat.

* PerpetualPoverty: Ed again. And Elgar.

* VitriolicBestBuds: Reardon and Milvane. Milvane's success as a film director really took off when he made a film out of Ed Reardon's first (and only) successful novel, without giving him any of the credit. Rancor still smolders in Ed's soul over this. But they've known each other for ages, occasionally enter into schemes and play weekly gigs together, and the only being Ed is on closer terms with is perhaps his cat.

* StylisticSuck: The occasional glimpses of Milvane's work.

''Ed Reardon's Week'' is a BBC Radio 4 comedy, written by Chris Douglas and Andrew Nickolds. It follows Edward Reardon, a divorced, washed-up, pence-pinching writer who makes it through the day with a combination of drink and acerbic wit. His misanthropic observations about life, most of which he relays to his journal or his cat, are his favourite coping mechanism. Once a moderately promising novelist, he is now reduced to writing coffee table, "impulse buy" books about celebrity pets.

* IntelligenceEqualsIsolation: Ed, who converses more with his cat than any human being, because they're all twelve years old and stupid.
* LoveAtFirstSight: Ed meets a young woman who thinks that modern culture is reduced to the lowest common denominator and that everything is run by "twelve year olds". "Strangers in the Night" starts playing in Ed's head.

* {{Anti-Intellectualism}}: Ed's primary bone of contention with the world.

-> ''Monday: And another day dawns in the twelve-year-old celebritocracy that is New Labour Britain.''

--> ''Monday: And another day dawns in the twelve-year-old celebritocracy that is New Labour Britain.''

--> ''''Monday: And another day dawns in the twelve-year-old celebritocracy that is New Labour Britain.''''

** "Monday: And another day dawns in the twelve-year-old celebritocracy that is [[BritishPoliticalSystem New Labour Britain]]."

* InsufferableGenius: Reardon corrects everyone around him, is openly scornful of dim people, listens to and plays jazz, and has a cat named [[EdwardElgar Elgar]].

The title character's name and the broad premise are taken from ''New Grub Street'', a Victorian novel about the pains of trying to make a literary living in late 19th-century London. Ed Reardon's vastly more successful friend Jaz Milvane is also transported from the same novel.

* LoveAtFirstSight: Ed meets a young woman who thinks that modern culture is reduced to the lowest common denominator and run by "twelve year olds". "Strangers in the Night" starts playing in Ed's head.

* AntiquatedLinguistics: Ed can't write dialogue that feels "socially relevant".