Podcast Drama · 2026-08-07
Illegal hare coursing: true crime from the BBC
Dead Rabbit, the third season of BBC Radio 4’s ten-part investigative documentary podcast Buried, travels from animal carcasses dumped outside a school to organised crime, the dark web and suspicions of police corruption.
Pupils arriving at a primary school are met by twenty hares' carcasses at the entrance. The hares had been killed by greyhounds, in races run on illegal betting.
Dead Rabbit, the third season of the BBC podcast series Buried, uses ten episodes to examine the world of illegal hare coursing in Britain: greyhounds set on hares, with betting attached, even though the Hunting Act has banned it since 2005 (greyhound racing may only use artificial lures; coursing live animals counts as cruelty to animals).
The story begins in February 2024, when some twenty mutilated animal carcasses are dumped outside a Hampshire primary school before classes start. From there the investigation reaches organised crime, the dark web, bets of ten thousand pounds and suspicions of police corruption.
The series' strongest thread is what happens to those who challenge it. According to the Guardian's review, people who took on the coursing organisers ended up in hospital in comas with broken legs and collapsed lungs, received rape threats, had bricks thrown through their windows, and had their dogs kidnapped and skinned. Chris Packham, who presents the series, had his car blown up outside his house in 2021. Packham calls the phenomenon low-level terrorism. More than eight and a half thousand incidents of illegal hare coursing were reported to police in the past three years.
The investigation is led by the reporters Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor, joined by the naturalist broadcaster and animal-welfare campaigner Chris Packham. The series was produced by Smoke Trail Productions for BBC Radio 4 and can be heard in full on BBC Sounds, for a year after broadcast.
Cast & Crew
- Reporter Dan Ashby
- Reporter Lucy Taylor
- Presenter Chris Packham
- Production Smoke Trail Productions (BBC Radio 4)
Sources: The Guardian — review by Daniel Dylan Wray (2026-07-18) · The Guardian — Alexi Duggins, podcasts of the week (2026-07-20) · PodcastingToday — the series announcement (2026-06-20)
AI involvement — Research: partly · Writing: partly · Verification: partly. The article is based on machine translation of original texts in English.