Quarter 3 Reviews- 018 Mystery - Old

018 Mystery – Old 

I wasn’t so sure about Kate Brannigan- Clean Break at first, though by the end I had gotten into it.  Kate Brannigan, it seemed to me, was very much like Candy Matson, if she had been British and had transferred to the end of the twentieth century instead of its midpoint.  Kate Brannigan is a Manchester-based private investigator, whose weird counterpart is her lover Richard Barclay (John Lloyd Fillingham), who seemed to be a banker?  In any case, Brannigan starts the story as the security system she installed for a man with an old English country estate has not withstood the predations of a gang who are stealing priceless pieces of art from such houses up and down the country.  When she talks to the insurance man, Michal Ragoon, she discovers that his office has been advising country estate owners to replace their real artwork with fakes—at least three of the fakes have been stolen.  Brannigan goes to her journalist friend for help as well as Dennis, a thief who now is a Thai boxing trainer.  When she gets the CC TV, Brannigan realizes that Dennis has actually been the one doing the cat burglary.  In exchange for keeping him out of the line of fire, he arranges for her, in disguise, to give a “priceless” piece of heirloom Anglo-Saxon jewelry to the buyer, whom she promptly follows. Machinations ensue.  I liked Brannigan; a fun, capable character, second only to Kathleen Turner’s VI Warshawski.  Originally from 1998, Clean Break was written by Val McDermid and produced by Melanie Harris.  It also starred Noreen Kershaw, Joseph Jones, Geoff Hinsliff, Rob Pickavance, Martin Reeve, and Kathryn Hunt.

Quarter 3 Reviews- 016 Speculative Fiction- New

016 Speculative Fiction – New

It took me awhile to get into Variations on a Theme by Neil Armstrong, but in the end I think it was more than the sum of its parts (and quite radiogenic, actually).  There was a wodge of Moon Landing-related drama on Radio 4 over the summer, and this poetic drama (unsurprisingly given Michael Symmons Roberts is one of Radio 4’s poets-in-residence, in all but name) carved out a niche.  Cleverly told, it tackled the surprisingly vital conspiracy theories about the hoaxed Moon Landing (apparently a significantly larger percentage of British people believe these conspiracies than Americans).  Laura (Verity Henry) is a waitress at a thinly-disguised Epcot Center in Florida where she serves beer to tourists and nostalgic ex-pats in a fake English pub.  There, she meets conspiracy theorist and all-around tosser, Billy (Graeme Hawley), who has spent his life making money off of collectibles.  He insists that the Moon Landings were faked, and nothing the increasingly exasperated Laura says can seem to convince him.  Meanwhile, con artists and identity thieves Belle (Lydia Wilson) and Luna (Laurel Lefko) are wandering around in the Nevada desert, seemingly validating Billy’s theories when they find what appears to be a life-sized Moon set.  It turns out, however, that this is a movie set for a film that was never made—in which Noel (Andonis James Anthony) was starring as Neil Armstrong, a role he has been playing all his life (due to his lookalike appearance).  Noel also makes an appearance at the pub in Epcot, and it’s his voice that has been giving us the poetic “Neil” monologues.  So if Noel can be a visual and aural stand-in for Armstrong, what makes him the fake?  While the drama is unequivocal on its condemnation of conspiracy theories, the way it plays with reality is very clever and satisfying.   It was directed by Susan Roberts. 

Quarter 3 Reviews- 015 Speculative Fiction- Old

015 Speculative Fiction – Old 

Greg Wise appears occasionally in BBC Radio Drama, and the stories he’s in are usually well worth the wait.  Wise teamed with Indira Varma, Chronicles of Ait:  Echo Beach promised to be a strong production.  In the end, it was extremely intriguing but did not quite resolve. Linus Scott (Wise) is a writer who, for some unknown reason, drives off and takes a break in a remote town called Ait.  There he meets Alice Pyper (Varma), whom he almost immediately conceives a passion for, but is bemused by her sister, Naomi (Amanda Drew).  The more I listened, the more I felt it resembled “The Thing That Cries in the Night” from I Love a Mystery:  characters who were telling other characters lies and half-truths as part of a web of family deception.  I never really quite understood why Alice and Naomi were lying and indeed which (if not both) of them were certifiable.  Alice was trying to sell the house left to both of them by their artist father, but Naomi didn’t want to sell; Alice claimed Naomi was mentally ill but wouldn’t put her under psychiatric care; Alice claimed that her father had an affair with a woman in the village, Agnes, who has a grown up developmentally disabled son.  Is any of this true?  It’s impossible to tell.  Chronicles of Ait:  Echo Beach was written by Michael Butt and also starred Jonathan Keeble, Patience Tomlinson, and Simon J. Williamson. It was directed by John Taylor in 2011.

Similarly, I admire David Bamber as an actor, so I listen to anything that he appears in.  Life Cycles was an interesting drama, and while I should have seen its twist coming, I didn’t.  In the 1960s, Bill (Mark Meadows), a British cyclist past his prime, is trying desperately to hold onto his place in the Tour de France.  In the 1930s, oddball Tom (Bamber) is trying to decide whether to marry Maria—who doesn’t share his passion for cycling—or not.  In the twenty-first century, Susan (Suzanna Hamilton) has just broken up with her long-term boyfriend after he decided her cycling mania was getting in the way of their relationship.  Susan goes for a ride and ends up meeting Tom.  She realizes there’s something a little odd about him, but at the same time, they feel drawn to each other . . . The twist might strike some as corny, but the characters are lovely and the whole thing works. Life Cycles was written by Jonathan Davidson, directed by Tim Dee, and was originally broadcast in 2002.