Hi, the listing function doesn't seem to be 100% accurate.  
Take the case of this programme on Radio 4 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08bygsf

A Case of Two Cities Drama, Inspector Chen Novels

Its not in the larger listing 
and not found by Regex eg
 or 
however it is found by PID search
However browsing the RSS feed for Radio 4 (last seven days) 

http://www.iplayerconverter.co.uk/reciva...tions.aspx

I find it and searching the BBC main site I find it And I can dowload it with 
So I'm a bit puzzled - it seems a bit hit and miss, for example latest The News Quiz and Loose Ends dont seem to be appearing in get_iplayer --type=Radio but earlier progammes are.

many thanks for your help/advice (using V2.97 on W10) and I have refreshed the cache  (fantastic bit of software as well , BTW, most appreciate your efforts!)

All of those searches work fine here, with one exception: get_iplayer --type=radio Cities would never work because "Cities" is in the episode title, not the programme name. You need --fields=episode or --long. Also, downloading with --pid will work regardless of whether or not the episode is in the cache. Since your examples are all from the past weekend, I can only surmise that you haven't actually updated your cache, or else the update failed for some reason.

Thank you so much for your prompt and helpful reply.  Like I say, get_player is a tremendously useful bit of software and I appreciate everyones efforts. Regards