Tune in today at 11.30am on BBC Radio 4 to hear the first episode of The Best Laid Plans by Mark Daydy, starring Ardal O’Hanlon, Geoff McGivern and Esther Smith.

Click here to stream, or to catch up via iPlayer after transmission.

In 1885, God (Geoff McGivern) nodded off. In 2015, he awoke to discover that his idiot servant, the angel Smallbone (Ardal O’Hanlon), had accidentally handed out God’s plans for the next millennium when he was only meant to hand out plans for the next century. A thousand years of leisurely human progression (we weren’t even meant to have pocket calculators until 2550) has been crammed into the last 130. No wonder we’re all so stressed.

Not only that, but God’s blueprints should have run out in the mid-eighties – but we kept going. Humans are now inventing things God never even dreamt of: mobile phones, wireless internet and Made in Chelsea.

Smallbone is cast down to Earth in human form by God, tasked with the dauntingly vague mission of ‘reversing the last thirteen decades of human progression.’ The problem is, Smallbone has discovered he loves the modern world, and is becoming distracted by everything that he’s meant to destroy (especially escalators)…

But maybe there’s a better way of keeping the world from racing out of control. He (just about) convinces Tanya (Esther Smith), an activist, that he’s an angel – although Smallbone is such a blundering idiot she’s never quite sure. Tanya always has a cause to protest against, and Smallbone always tags along and inevitably gets roped in. And sometimes, through small victories, they change the world for the better. At least, they do if Smallbone doesn’t get distracted by playing Angry Birds on Tanya’s iPhone.

The Best Laid Plans also stars Mike Wozniak as Toby, Ruth Bratt as Susan, and Duncan Wisbey as the supporting roles.

The programme is written by Mark Daydy and produced by Ben Worsfield for Lucky Giant.

Photography by Karla Gowlett.