Urggh, I’m
more than three months late with this . . .
As it’s now
been over a year since I started listening to and reviewing radio drama (mostly
BBC and mostly from my BBC iPlayer Radio app), I thought it would be useful—if
only for myself, and perhaps the odd Google search—to give credit where I
thought credit was due. I will not
apologize for these being completely subjective selections, and I reserve the
right to present “cumulative” awards much in the way Oscars are sometimes
awarded for a body of work rather than for a specific nominated performance
(despite the rules to the contrary).
Also, given the nature of the way I listen, to call these categories “of
the Year” would be deceptive as many of the Radio 4 Extra performances are from
as long ago as four decades in the past.
With these caveats out of the way, we’ll proceed—and in no particular
order.
Outstanding Performers
Juliet Aubrey
Juliet Aubrey is on this list primarily because of her
excellent and heartfelt performance as Irene in The Forsyte Saga (2016).
Like several characters in The
Forsytes, Irene’s character is (in my opinion) difficult to completely
flesh out only with voice acting, but I think Aubrey really brought Irene alive
for me (despite having Gina McKee in my head for the role from the
offset). Aubrey is also, however, on the
list because of her memorable performance as the mysterious eponymous monster
in The Lair of the White Worm (from
2004). She also had a memorable turn in The Dressmaker’s Doll, Mike Walker’s
2003 adaptation of an Agatha Christie story.
Jessica Raine
Despite the fact that Jessica Raine will always be Verity
Lambert to me (having played her so definitively in An Adventure in Space and Time), she had an uphill battle as Fleur
Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga. Raine’s early, anonymous narrator (though it
was clear that her character must be Fleur), started out as rather too
intrusive for me. This was especially
irritating in the first episode but slowly became more acceptable as we
proceeded through the many hours of this drama.
When Raine eventually played Fleur herself rather than the narrator, she
was very affecting, more so as time went on her and her relationships with her
father, Michael, and Jon were allowed to deepen. It’s a monumental part, and I thought Raine
did a particularly good job distinguishing between young Fleur, jaded Fleur,
mature Fleur, bitter Fleur, and the narrator.
Furthermore, Fleur is not an easy character to sympathize with, let
alone like, and by the end, I felt Raine had succeeded with this.
Joseph Millson
However, the most brilliant acting from The Forsyte Saga must be Joseph Millson’s as Soames. I’m sure I’ve heard Joseph Millson in radio
before, though I can’t at the moment find any plays that I previously
reviewed. In any case, Soames is quite a
part for any actor, because he is many shades of grey, and the audience’s
sympathies—at least mine—deepened as the character aged. I even think the performance allowed us to
believe that Soames learned something, despite the whole point about the
Forsytes being they wouldn’t learn
from their mistakes. Soames was the
archetypal “man of property” who saw people as objects, most devastatingly his
wife, Irene, despite the fact (I believe) he genuinely loved her, as best as he
was able. As I said before, Soames is a
difficult character to bring to life on radio because of his rich inner life,
and the fact he is completely repressed (they got around this with giving him monologues
which worked fine, as he was thinking aloud—much like Javert in Boubil &
Schönberg’s Les Misérables, who got
to sing his inner monologues). I’m still
impressed by a short scene in The
Forsytes Saga where Soames has to tell his parents that Irene has left him,
and for once his mask slips and he breaks down, but is admonished by his
mother, “We don’t do that.” Like Jessica
Raine’s and Juliet Aubrey’s performances, Millson’s expertly allowed Soames to
age (and just with the voice, which is impressive). He was so poignant in The Forsytes Continue; it was enjoyable hearing Soames slowly
coming round from being the rather pathetic, dastardly villain of the piece to
almost become the hero (standing up for his principles). And of course the touching end of the
character in The Forsytes Return.
David Horovitch
How David Horovitch isn’t a bigger star than he is baffles
belief. I remember the first time I saw
him as a performer: first as Isaac of
York in Ivanhoe (1996) and soon
after as the German doctor in Heat of
the Sun. Over the years he has
continued to pop up as a character actor, but it wasn’t until this year that I
heard him in many memorable radio performances.
Indeed, radio allows him to both play the character parts and the lead,
as in Stepniak from 2001, based on
the true story of a Russian revolutionary who emigrated to Britain, and his
incredible performance as Robert Maxwell in The Bargain (2016). These
are, indeed, very different roles. He
was very humorous as the lawyer Probus in the comedy Burn the Aeneid!, but I was most moved by his performance in Exchanges in Bialystok (from
2003). This play is one of a handful
which have reduced me to blubbering.
Gerard McDermott
I’ve actually met Gerard McDermott, when I happened to be in
studio during the recording of Life and
Fate in 2011. He is very versatile
and usually takes on the background parts, dependable but not particularly
glamorous. I’m singling him out
particularly for two rather different roles.
I’ve been a fan of Nick Warburton’s writing for several years, and while
Our Late Supper from 2007 was not
his best play, it was arresting.
McDermott’s understated performance as a builder fit the play
perfectly. Furthermore, I fell in love
with Katie Hims’ comedy series Bangers
and Mash (1999) which stars McDermott as Jimmy, an ex-con turned caterer
who may or may not have feelings for his co-worker, Martina the nun. While all the actors in this series gave it
real warmth, McDermott was once again understatedly formidable as a plain good
guy a little lacking in self-confidence.
And his comic timing was perfect.
Let’s hear Gerard McDermott in some more starring roles.
Lee Ross
Lee Ross, I’m afraid, will always be to me Kenny from Steven
Moffat’s Press Gang (probably a role
he would not associate with his best work, but personally I think it’s Moffat’s best work). It was a pleasant surprise to start hearing
him on radio, with performances in The
Moon Flask (2014) and The Rage (2016),
both of those interestingly as rough East End types. However, it’s his long-term role as Mickey
Bliss in Tommies (which I just
started listening to in 2016) that really blew me away. Another actor has since replaced him in the
role, and I’m sure he’ll be good, but it’s a little like when Bill Johnstone
replaced Orson Welles in The
Shadow. Tommies is beautifully
conceived by the brilliant Jonathan Ruffell, and Mickey Bliss has been the
heart and soul of the storyline. The
role is a demanding one, including everything from some particularly good radio
kissing (trust me, it’s hard to do), to squelching quite believably in chalky
mud and fighting for his life after a land mine has blown up, to burning up the
airwaves with Pippa Nixon as the unstable Céléstine de Tullio. Fantastic role and fantastic actor.
Nigel Anthony
Again, the first Nigel Anthony performance I ever knowingly
heard was in Life and Fate where he
plays the cautious scientist Sokolov, the counterpoint to Kenneth Branagh’s
irrepressible Viktor Shtrum. More
recently, I got to hear him in some of his earlier roles, such as an appealing
Stephen Maturin to Michael Troughton’s Captain Jack Aubrey in Master and Commander (despite the fact
the first radio Maturin I heard was Richard Dillane’s tremendous performance
from HMS Surprise); and a small but
important part in 2011’s Carmilla. The really stand-out performance,
however, is from 1978 (!) in Victor Pemberton’s incredible Dark. I was blown away by what
must be a very young Anthony playing at least three characters in that drama,
all by modulating his voice. Great
stuff.
Anton Lesser
I first saw the urbane Anton Lesser as Mr Merdle in Little Dorrit (2008), a mini-series
that had a profound effect on me. He has
done a lot of radio work, but, again, often as supporting characters. This last year, I got to hear him in a variety
of parts that really impressed me. The Sound of Fury from 1994 was a biopic
of Billy Fury starring a very young-sounding Lesser, and the performance was
superb. Some twenty years later, he was
still on top form as Henry Irving in the searing Vampyre Man—a difficult part to play, much less imbue with
sympathy.
Tim McInnerney
I have to admit, of all the actors in BlackAdder, the one I may have regarded least was Tim
McInnerney. Imagine my surprise at the
phenomenal radio performances he has contributed. Everything from an arrogant, talentless hack
writer (in All the Dark Corners: The Desk from 2011) to the title role in Moeran’s Last Symphony (2010), the somber composer JM
Moeran. Habakkuk of Ice by Steve Walker from 2001 must be one of the
strangest plays I’ve heard, but McInnerney as a misanthropic genius was
incandescent. Hearing Voices, however, by Jim McAleavey is one of the best plays
I’ve ever heard, and much of this hinges on McInnerney’s very convincing
performance as an ageing copper who is diagnosed as schizophrenic.
Kathleen Turner
She may have
only ever played this one role on radio, but it’s enough to put her in my
all-time fave books. Kathleen Turner’s
voice is legendary anyway—she of Jessica Rabbit fame—and as VI Warshawksi in Deadlock by Sara Paretsky, adapted by Michelene
Wandor from 1993, she was spectacular.
While Turner may have bombed in the onscreen version of VI Warshawski,
she fit the radio role to a t as a bolshy Polish-American detective from
Chicago of the early 1990s. This
adaptation of book was meticulous and fast-paced, and Turner’s distinctive
voice took you along for every twist and turn in the tale.
Outstanding Directors
For me personally, directors/producers have a difficult time
standing out. Basically, if they’ve done
their job well, you shouldn’t really notice their presence at all (that’s my
opinion, anyway). Nevertheless, there
are some directors whose batting averages are just so superb, they deserve a
shout-out.
Cherry Cookson
Cherry Cookson has directed a lot of good dramas (and, to be fair, some mediocre ones,
too). The good ones range from Blue Veils and Golden Sands from 2009,
a nuanced biopic of Doctor Who theme
tune arranger Delia Derbyshire; to John Pilkington’s Apostle of Light: Louis Braille from
2010; to the aforementioned Moeran’s
Last Symphony, Burn the Aeneid!, and Stepniak;
to the crazy-scary Wishing Well starring
Rosemary Leach from 1991; to the dreamy biography of Baden-Powell played by Ian
McKellen from 2004, Be Prepared; to
the creepy Baby It’s Cold Outside from
1995. I’d like to single out Listening to Time by Judith Somerville
from 2010. This had a non-linear
timeline which was nevertheless absolutely compelling, and the music and was
haunting and unusual. It also includes
what is, in my opinion, David Troughton’s best radio performance to date, as a
Ukrainian trying to make peace with his past and the death of his brother.
Eoin O’Callaghan
I met the very talented and friendly Eoin O’Callaghan in
2007 while he was directing a Mark Lawson play, Expand This. I have since
heard him direct many a quality piece.
Last year, Holy Father (coincidentally
also by Mark Lawson) really blew me away.
In 2015, he directed the superb From
Fact to Fiction: Waiting List, a
play I felt fairly reflected the experiences of patients, doctors, and doctors’
families in the NHS. He’s worked
frequently with Hugh Costello on plays such as the gritty Smoke and Daggers from 2009.
In 2010, almost back to back, he directed two very different plays, Staring into the Fridge (which will
always stay with me as the play which starred Jimmy Nesbitt as a bitchy fridge)
and What the Nun Discovered, part of
a two-part series written to discuss the Church and child abuse in Ireland. I always know I’m in for a treat when I
listen to a radio play directed by Eoin O’Callaghan.
Martin Jenkins
I’ve been hearing good Martin Jenkins plays since I started
seriously listening to BBC Radio Drama in 2008, among them Memorials to the Missing by Stephen Wyatt (coincidentally also
starring Anton Lesser), Gerontius (also
by Stephen Wyatt), the infamous Snowman
Killing by JC Brooke. And this year,
another good play from the Fear on Four series,
the haunting and deeply unsettling Dead
Men’s Boots. However, I must say his
most impressive contribution that I’ve heard was the trilogy Looks Like Rain, Looks Like Rain Again, and
Rain on the Just by Jimmie Chinn
(from 2000-3). These deceptively simple
plays involved extremely small casts and took place over a couple of days. They were extremely well-written and acted,
but pacing and believability were key, something only the director could
ensure.
David Ian Neville
David Ian Neville is a prolific director/producer and seems
to specialize in crime dramas and serials.
However, he directs a wide range of dramas, including Exchanges in Bialystok and The Bargain, both of which I’ve already raved about (see
above)
Outstanding Writers
I found this a hard category to write about because I wanted
to resist recognizing cumulative achievements—mainly because even the most
consistent radio drama writers cannot be 100% amazing all the time (at least
I’ve found that to be the case, even with writers I’ve thought were overall
quite phenomenal). So I tried to pick
writers who wrote something new (to me, at any rate) that really packed a
punch. This often ended up being writers
of serials or series, but not always.
Nick Perry
November Dead List was one of the first
BBC Radio crime series that I listened to and reviewed, and it set the bar
high. Series 2 starred Lia Williams as DCI
Greaves, a hard-nosed but somewhat humorous, self-deprecating woman. Perry was very skilled in using both radio and
TV tropes to anchor the story and then going off into exciting realms. It had good pacing and suspense.
Katie Hims
Katie Hims
has written a lot for radio, but I single out Bangers and Mash (as I did above) for being a charming comedy
series with good characters whom I really cared about. I still wonder what happened to the
characters and their complicated love lives.
Lenny Henry
I like Lenny
Henry the actor a lot, but sometimes self-performed pieces by actor-writers
have little substance. I can gladly say
that wasn’t the case for the series of self-penned short monologues, Rogues’ Gallery, which were funny,
clever, and full of personality, allowing Henry to show his range as an actor
as well as a writer. My favorite one so
far was actually the Christmas special which hasn’t been reviewed yet, but of
the first series, I really liked I Never
Forget a Face. The speaker was a
blind Black Brummie who was having the worst day of his life—he’d just been
mugged by a creep who thought nothing of beating up blind people. It was very funny, felt very real, was very
radiogenic, and actually had a happy ending.
These have been well-received so there will be another series this year.
Wally K Daly
I heard a
Wally K Daly play in 2008 (Whistling
Wally’s Son), but it’s really the work I’ve heard more recently that has
struck me. Specializing mainly in
speculative fiction (although I’ve just heard a historical drama by him about
Rasputin), Dally’s The Children of
Witchwood remains one of the most interesting speculative fiction series
I’ve ever heard. A young adult science fiction/mystery/fantasy story with hints
of Twilight and Arthur C. Clarke . .
. interestingly, directed by Jenny Stephens who wrote Raphael Raphael). I also
highly rated Daly’s 2004, a dystopian
story with eerie similarities to today, which has been rather influential on my
own fiction. In it, the British people
legitimately put the Peace Party into power, and they began a radical approach
to removing those convicted by crime.
It’s frighteningly ingenious—they send everyone from the overflowing
prisons “up north” to the exclusion zone where all criminals are stuck within a
50-mile radius to fend for themselves. A
purging of cities’ red light districts bring in the petty offenders into the
next zone which is a concentric circle around the first one. The third zone is reserved for the criminals’
families and conscientious objectors who refused to be bartagged. As the system is about to be put into place,
the play ends ominously.
Alistair MacGowan
I’d heard
Alistair MacGowan, memorably, read The
Canterville Ghost, which I liked despite my general indifference to audio
books. However, Field Notes, a comedy about the composer John Field and starring
MacGowan, was excellent entertainment.
The piece was nicely structured, clever, and you could sympathize with
Field (cantankerous, lecherous, drunken sot that he was). Sometimes, biopics on radio lack a certain
“oomph” and forward motion to the plot, which was not at all the case
here. I think he’s onto something.
Jonathan Harvey & Stephen K Amos
These
writers contributed What Does the K
Stand For?, a very funny autobiographical series about Amos, growing up
Black and gay in 1980s Brixton. Amos’
outrageous Nigerian mother dominates, though Don Gilet puts in an amusing
performance as Amos’ father. Amos and
his twin sister Stephanie go through strange experiences at school, and Amos
contrasts life in the early ‘80s with life today, commenting particularly on
celebrity and diversity. I really
enjoyed the plays, they made me laugh, and I am looking forward to hearing
more.
Philip Palmer
Palmer wrote
two very different stories that I heard this last year, The King’s Coiner, a historical drama about Isaac Newton and a
slippery counterfeiter, which was very well-written and engaging. More exotic, perhaps, was the two-part
series, Keeping the Wolf Out, a very
gritty series set in 1963 Hungary.
Although ostensibly a detective series, the cases themselves were
secondary to the machinations of the detective, raging against the confines of
communist double-speak and corruption and trying to save his own skin, even at
the cost of his marriage. I’m sure we’ll
hear more good things from Palmer.
Al Smith
I got sucked into Life
Lines, a 15 Minute Drama about an
emergency dispatcher. Although many
dramas try the trope of “found footage” or the whole play going on real time in
recordings (i.e., the dispatcher on the phone trying to help callers, or on the
phone to her sister the obstetrician, or on the phone to her partner), this one
went beyond the device and created memorable characters and some really
gripping situations, always with a twist in the tale.
