Drones

It’s my first experience with Radio New Zealand, and as such, I wanted to go for their most current stuff—Adam Macaulay told me recently that Radio NZ are the biggest single producer of audio drama in the English-speaking world.  I listened to two plays from their New Shorts series, which are short pieces by new writers, highlighting the cooperatively-made nature of much of the most up-to-the-minute audio available online.  

Drones by Dan Bain is a 20-minute story from August of this year.  It stars Kate McGill as Rebecca, an entomology student who doesn’t really feel she fits in at her new call centre job.  Having done a very brief stint in a call centre myself (who hasn’t these days?), I had to groan with recognition of the childish, statistics-obsessed attitudes of the employees and the saccharine stupidity of the manager, Carl (Jack Sergent).  As a University graduate, like Rebecca, I found it easy to empathize with her feelings of isolation—though not to the point I started talking to a colony of ants!  Then things take a turn for the slightly incredible, and although I don’t want to give anything away, I will say I was impressed with the SFX for the memorable climax to the story.    Sir David Attenborough makes a cameo, although I was (unduly) disappointed that he was played by an actor.