Quarter 2 Reviews - 4/8

ll three of these excellent dramas showed a strong vein of regionalism, which perhaps helped make them so memorable.  From 2001, Ghost on the Moor by Peter Wolf was literally haunting, though perhaps not in the way you might think.  I enjoyed this tense and atmospheric drama artfully revealed slowly and with engaging and real-seeming characters.  Graeme (Robert Glenister) is haunted by what he did to Katrina (Jasmine Hyde) three years previously.  He’s stopped living his life, just working the night shift at the same petrol station that his tipsy old uncle (Thomas Arnold) does.  In his free time, he goes to the library to look at books of photos, trying to hide the fact he is illiterate.  Geraldine (Jenny Stoller), a recent London transplant to this Yorkshire community, finds him out and tries to get him to join her literacy group.  At first he is reluctant, but there is strong chemistry between them, even though she is rather older.  One of the best performances from Robert Glenister, who is always fine in whatever role he plays. It was directed by Cherry Cookson.

Talking Latin by Carolyn Bonnyman was a very slow burn, and as I listened to it bit by bit over several days, I was about to give up on it.  However, I’m glad I stuck it out as it was a twist at the end, and I had started to care about the characters.  Karen (Julie Dunkeyson) and her husband Steve have a very dysfunctional relationship.  One day, Karen decides just to leave.  She takes the car and the clothes on her back.  Seven years later, she’s still working for Sal Minelli (yes, it’s a joke they exploit) who runs a fast food fry-up shop in Glasgow.  Karen refuses to open up to anyone about her past, but she’s become part of the fry-up family and visits Sal in hospital.  Sal and his wife Francesca (Scots-Italian) are having a ruby wedding anniversary, to which Karen and copper Davie go (in fancy dress as it’s Halloween).  Davie has been trying for a long time to get together with the cagey Karen.  Just when it looks like they’re going to, Steve shows up.  He has gone through a total reversal in his life, now a mature student at university in history and classical languages (hence the title), with a girlfriend and a child on the way.  Will Karen come to terms with her past?  I think why I initially had problems with the play was the extremely Naturalistic dialogue which didn’t seem to say anything, so I kept drifting from it as you would listening to DJ chat or zoo show.  Also, it was difficult for me to identify with Karen, who holds education in contempt; yet I thought the writing was very convincing. With all the characters Scottish, it was an exercise in creating different vocal texture without resorting to accent.  Directed by David Jackson Young, it was originally from 2004.

I quite liked Road to the Borders, a story about a man who had grown up in London with a southern English mother and a very proudly Scots father, who went on and on about being a Borders man.  It was told in a non-linear way, which was definitely part of the charm.  The man was up in Hewick (pronounced, can you believe it, HOIK!) to fulfil his dad’s last wish, to have his ashes scattered in the churchyard.  The man fulfils his duty fully knowing who he might run into there:  his ex-wife.  The lead performance (Jasper Britton) lent a lot of warmth to the character, and it was also impressively bolstered by on location recordings in Hewick, where there IS an annual Reivers Festival.  There was also a very satisfying scene in which the man threw a wet sponge in someone’s face.  Originally from 2012, it was written by Douglas Livingstone and starred Ralph Rhea, Sophie Roberts, Rob Hasty, Callum Docherty, and Vivian Hilegrum.  It was directed by Jane Morgan.