Satan (Old Harry's Game)

Satan is a fictional character from the BBC Radio 4 comedy series Old Harry's Game by Andy Hamilton based on the concept of Satan from various religions. In the series Satan is portrayed by Hamilton himself.

Satan is the overlord of Hell, and spends his time devising diabolical tortures for those wretched souls condemned to his realm. For example, he has a Pope enclosure in which the Popes who have been condemed to hell are consigned, and as a punishment they are all eternally pregnant. Satan has many demons under his dominion which he uses to enforce the tortures.

Satan was once an Angel, but after rebelling against God, was cast out of heaven and condemned to live in hell for eternity.

When a human by the name of Professor Richard Wittingham arrives in hell Satan begins to re-evaluate his existence and takes to introspection and brooding. The Professor was a scientist who was killed in a car crash by Thomas Quintin Crisp. He led a reasonably blameless life, but was sent to hell because he did not believe in God. To begin with, the Professor believes that everything he sees in Hell is an illusion he is experiencing due to being in a coma following the car crash.

Satan strikes up a relationship with the Professor, something which almost approaches friendship. The Professor constantly tries to prove to Satan that humanity is not fundamentally evil as Satan believes. Due to his association with the Professor, some of Satan's demons, led by his henchman Gary, begin a rebellion to overthrow Satan as overlord of Hell.

Satan is almost tempted to allow himself to be killed and thus end his eternal existence, but in the end cannot allow himself to be beaten by Gary, and unleashes his Satanic powers, including an enormously powerful breath to defeat Gary. Gary is put on trial, at which the Professor becomes his advocate — much to Satan's annoyance.

After Gary's trial, Satan begins a search for a new assistant, and goes through various demons, including a malicious dolphin, and an evil computer. During this search, a demon by the name of Scumspawn tries many times unsuccesfully to become Satan's assistant, because of his stupidity and nervousness whilst trying to impress Satan. However, Scumspawn was not entirely without guile and tricked the computer into falling into a bottomless pit. Satan recognising that Scumpsawn could be quite cunning evenhtually relented and allowed him to become his assistant. In later stories Scumspawn admitted to the Professor that he was in love with Satan.