Promised Land
with Natasha Fatah

They make gripping radio. These well-produced half-hour shows are driven by stories that cannot help but be dramatic, and are assembled to heighten that using archive news clips, music (especially for the most terrifying moments of the escape) and, most crucially, voice. Most of the telling is done by the escapees, or their families, and these programmes are testimony to how powerful personal stories can be on radio.

The most recent episode, Escape from Eritrea, features journalist Aaron Berhane, who fled in 2002 when the government closed the newspaper he had founded - the biggest independent newspaper in the country - and where he was editor-in-chief. His tale was an adrenalin rush just to listen to, let alone live. He was on the border, in the dead of night, when the border guards opened fire: "When I heard that," he recalled, "something was burning from inside. I just ran to the land of Sudan."

What gave this episode added poignancy was that Fatah interviewed him just a few weeks after his wife and children had finally joined him in Toronto after eight years' separation. This reunion framed the programme, and movingly so. It opened with the sound of his nine-year-old son singing a song in English that he had just learned at school, and closed with a comment from his daughter, who was 10 when he left. "Now, I'm a lady," she said, "Eighteen years old".

These are brilliant programmes, some telling stories from much closer to home - one includes an American army deserter - and all full of stubborn courage, braveness, luck and some jaw-dropping cruelty. Like the very best radio, they stay with you long after you've listened enrapt.

Go to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2010/aug/11/radio-head-promised-land