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.