015 Speculative Fiction – Old
I felt that the 2018-19 crop of holiday offerings had been
voluminous, but very few of them really stood for the Christmas spirit as well
as being entertaining and original. I
almost didn’t listen to Grace and the
Angel, but I’m glad I did. It’s the
story of an Angel (Rudolph Walker) who is normally a “glad tidings” Christmas
angel who is brought in at the last moment by the Heavenly Clerk (Jonathan Forbes)
to be an Angel of Death to an old lady, Grace (Marlene Sidaway). Although you can’t see Angel, you can imagine
his flamboyant and ostentatious appearance and personality, which is heavily
Afro-Caribbean in flavor (which is partially the point—see below). You’re introduced to Grace, meanwhile, by her
writing a letter to the editor on Christmas Eve about vanishing British values.
Also nearby are St Nick (John Hartley) and Prancer (Peter Darney), who must be
unique among the canon of audio drama characters, being sentient light displays
on a roof. They sound like East End
geezers. My imagination was flailing
around, trying to reconcile this (in a good way). When inexperienced Angel arrives, he
accidentally gets tangled in the wires and has to be helped by Grace. Her childless neighbors, Rosie (Carolyn Jones)
and Vernon (Jonathan Kydd) and Liz (Carolyn Pickles) and Derek (Sean Baker) are
thrown together when Angel has caused the electricity all around the block to
go out. Grace is very resistant,
firstly, to the idea of dying—why didn’t her late husband come to take her
away?—but unmistakably, she asks, “Why did they send you?” This refers, of course, to Grace’s perception
that God and God’s angels must be white.
The drama ends on a hopeful note.
It could have easily turned saccharine, but I thought it was extremely
well-written, with strong performances (and Angel’s wings were described as
being scented in a highly sensual way you don’t get with many radio
dramas). Originally from 2001, it was
written by Sheila Goff and directed by David Hunter.
Haunting Women was
an interesting series from Dermot Bolger retelling legends about Irish female
ghosts. I liked them all, but I guess
the one that I found most memorable was “The
Riding Crop.” Beatrice (Jodi O’Neill),
a landed lady in the “big house,” threatens to disinherit her younger sister
Lucinda (Alison McKenna) if she marries Anthony (Luke Griffin), Beatrice’s
childhood sweetheart. The couple risk
her wrath and live in poverty for ten years.
Beatrice meets a Russian prince abroad, falls in love with him and
marries him, but he dies. She brings his
jewelled riding crop back to her house.
After ten years, Lucinda has had enough and forces Beatrice’s butler,
Creed (John Hewitt), to stop in his daily rounds in which he takes Beatrice by
carriage across her lands, regular as clockwork. What greets Lucinda and Anthony is a terrible
tale; Beatrice died quite a long time before, but specified in her will that
Creed would drive around her embalmed corpse just as if she was still
living. Creed was more afraid of her
dead than alive and so felt compelled to obey!
As with all the Haunting Women stories,
it had a frame story, in this case, Sharon, a cataloguer, trying to find out
from the Priest why the riding crop is still in the library of the seminary, as
they go through their valuation of the property before selling it. Produced by Gemma Bolger, this drama was
originally from 2005.
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