Lena Headey’s new eight-part comedy drama Intimacy will arrive on the Arc podcast feed on Sounds on 22 July, with Radio 4 beginning broadcasts on 27 July. The series will then air at 11pm on Monday nights, giving listeners an early boxset release before the radio rollout begins.
Headey plays Liza Simmons, an intimacy coordinator who takes a job on a glossy big-budget movie shooting on a Greek island, only to find the director is a man from her past whom she blames for ruining her life. As boundaries are crossed and power shifts, Liza becomes more isolated, with only the female crew member Kate offering any real support.
The launch gives Sounds and Radio 4 a fresh premium audio drama built around a cast that also includes Hannah Waddingham, Maisie Williams, Alison Steadman, Thaddea Graham, Matthew Broome and Tom Goodman-Hill. It also extends Merman’s run of high-profile audio and screen work, after projects including Bad Sisters, Amandaland and the podcast series People Who Knew Me.
For Headey, the role puts a professional guardian of consent into a personal story that is anything but steady. That contrast is the point of the drama: Liza understands how to be the safe pair of hands for everyone else, but the series asks what happens when she has to choose between speaking up and keeping her job, or staying quiet and losing herself.
Sounds will carry Intimacy first as a boxset from 22 July, while Radio 4 will follow five days later with a weekly schedule. That staggered release should turn the drama into a two-stage launch, with the first audience able to binge it online before a wider radio crowd catches up on Monday nights.
