You will have noticed a slowing down of listening to radio
drama in this quarter. This is partly
due to life just getting in the way, but also due to the fact that I was forced
to delete BBC iPlayer Radio and install BBC Sounds in its place. Among BBC Sounds’ many, many flaws, it also
now takes up so much room on my phone, I can only download a maximum of 5
programmes at a time. I used to be able
to download 10+ programmes with BBC iPlayer Radio app. So, unfortunately, the BBC has shot
themselves in the foot, at least as far as I am concerned, because I am now
listening to LESS radio drama, not more, than I used to. Anyway . . .
006 Contemporary Drama – Old
Rachel’s Cousins was
originally from 2015. It’s written by
Ann Marie Di Mambro, and I found it to be very effective and affecting (and a
great lesson in avoiding voice clustering).
Rachel (Tamara Kennedy) is a Glasgow lawyer who has just had a double
mastectomy after having had breast cancer.
The only person she can confide in is her colleague and lover, the
married Alex (Robin Laing). A chance
encounter brings her into contact with her cousins, Glaswegians on the opposite
class spectrum from Rachel. Arrested for
disturbing the peace and assaulting a police officer, there’s enmity between
Rachel and her cousins Marilyn (Gabriel Quigley), Josie (Karen Bartke), and
Shirley (Sarah McCardie). Alex is able
to help them get the charges dropped, but Rachel comes around to their brother
Bobby’s (Alan McHugh) house and tells them they all may be carrying the same
cancer gene that she was and urges them to get tested for it. She is hooted out of the house, but
eventually Marilyn comes to see her.
Marilyn has also recently had a breast removed. Shirley, finding out she has the gene, opts
to have a double mastectomy as a precaution, while Josie lies to everyone about
having the gene, because her marriage to oil rigger Kevin (Stevie Hannan) is in
serious trouble. Rachel’s empty life
becomes full, due to her raucous, vulgar, but supportive cousins, and she helps
Josie have the courage to tell the truth and also to leave her husband. Meanwhile, Bobby decides to tell his daughter
Becca about the gene, a decision that causes his ex-wife Carol (Veronica Leer)
to threaten him with a restraining order.
It seems that Carol has excluded Bobby from seeing Becca (Nicola Jo
Cully) ever since Bobby fell in love with William and left to be with him. Rachel is also able to help with this. In the end, she realizes that she doesn’t
love Alex and doesn’t need him and has, throughout their affair, selfishly not
considered the feelings of Alex’s wife.
It was entertaining to hear Rachel’s restrained accent become a lot
broader the more she identified with her lower class Glaswegian cousins. I’d definitely listen to more dramas about
these characters. Rachel’s Cousins was directed by Bruce Young.
Of course I leapt at the chance to listen to Lenny Henry in
a three-part series, Bad Faith, by the
great writer Peter Jukes. Along for the
ride were the familiar tropes of organized religion and a Birmingham
setting. Henry is perfectly cast as
police chaplain Jake Thorne, a man who has lost his religion (yet for some
reason is allowed to continue as a police chaplain?). He is helped or perhaps hindered by another
police chaplain, the much more orthodox and evangelical Michael (Danny Sapani),
of whom Jake cannot help taking the mickey.
In the lovely opening episode, “Vengeance
Is Mine,” Jake is seeing Suzanne (a radiant Tracy-Ann Oberman), his Jewish
shrink, as he goes through the trauma of his lost faith and the fact his father
(Oscar James), also a minister, is suffering from dementia as well as other
debilitating problems. Jake’s wife Ruth
is away, and he is tempted to do more than flirt with Suzanne. Meanwhile, his verger Barry (Edward Clayton)
is in despair, and Jake has to help prisoner Estelle (Lolita Chakrabarti), who
is about to be released, confront Stacey (Kerry Mclean), the mother of the
teenager she ran over.
The second story was “The
Fire This Time,” perhaps the most searingly critical of the three dramas,
in which Jake and Michael disagree over what to do about Vincent Ngomwe (Jimmy
Akingbola). Vincent has been taken under
the wing of corrupt evangelical preacher Elias Wright (Cyril Nri), who
nonetheless knew Jake’s father. Vincent
is very confused. He’s been taught by his church that he needs to “de-gay”
while Jake tells him that he must first be true to himself. Rev Wright and Jake both use Vincent, Wright
to foment religious tension between Birmingham’s Muslim and Christian
communities, and Jake to dig up some dirt on Wright. Chief Superintendent Khan (Vincent Ebrahim)
of the Birmingham police is interviewing Jake for his role in Vincent’s
radicalization, as he has threatened to blow up a mosque. It’s quite a sad story. Both dramas were from 2014.
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