Goalhanger launching Bear Hunt drama
September 3, 2026



Goalhanger, the media company behind The Rest Is History, The Rest Is Politics and Sherlock & Co, is launching Bear Hunt, a new ten-part original audio drama following a fictional mission to assassinate one of the world’s most powerful and heavily protected leaders.

Created by Goalhanger’s drama team, Joel Emery and Adam Jarrell, the series was developed with input from current and former military and defence professionals, including serving airborne serviceman and military adviser Sergeant Dave Allen, grounding its fictional world in real-world political, intelligence and operational detail.


Tony Pastor, Co-Founder of Goalhanger, commented: “I first met Dave Allen in Arnhem in 2024, when Al Murray, James Holland and I were recording We Have Ways of Making You Talk for the 80th anniversary of Market Garden. A year later, walking our dogs on the Dorset coast, I asked him a hypothetical question: ‘If the British government decided to eliminate a foreign leader, how would we do it?’ Dave immediately replied: ‘Do you want your assassin back?’ And that was it. We were off. Every time Joel, Adam and I got a little fanciful with the story, Dave dragged us back to reality. The weapons, logistics and practicalities all had to stand up. Bear Hunt is completely fictional, but we wanted the world around it to feel frighteningly plausible.”

Emery & Jarrell added: “One of the great things about audio drama is that there’s almost no limit to the scale of the world you can build. With Bear Hunt, we can move from Downing Street to Washington, onto the battlefield and deep behind enemy lines, while the listener does so much of the visual work themselves. After Sherlock & Co., we wanted to take that freedom into a completely different genre and it’s exactly the kind of ambitious, original storytelling we want to build more of with Goalhanger Drama.”

Bear Hunt reunites several familiar voices from its ensemble alongside well-known names from elsewhere in the Goalhanger network, including Al Murray, co-host of We Have Ways of Making You Talk, and Dominic Sandbrook, co-host of The Rest Is History and The Book Club.

The first two episodes of Bear Hunt will be released on September 10th, with new episodes released weekly. The series will be available on all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.