I’m managing
to start this just after the Oscars, so maybe I can get it out reasonably early
in 2020? We can only hope!
See the
caveat from previous years:
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
Carolyn Pickles
I don’t know that Carolyn Pickles still performs in radio
drama; however, if you look at her back catalogue you can see she has appeared
in untold numbers of roles, usually smaller parts, over nearly twenty
years. While it’s relatively rare to
find her playing the lead, I realized that she is a good actor, whether taking
the lead or as a “character actor,” and it was time to acknowledge this. In the past, I heard her in such dramas as
Katie Hims’ Black Eyed Girls (2017),
The Wyndham Case (2001), The Recall Man (2001), Five Summers and Johnny Onion (2005), Keeping Ann-Marie (2003), The Divine Comedy (2014), Don’t Look Now (2001), and just as I
was starting to keep a log of radio drama that I listened to, The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan
in 2009, where she and Anton Lesser did justice to a most British drama of
repression and relationships.
In 2019, however, she was in top form in no less than four
dramas heard throughout the year on Radio 4 Extra. These included her taking the role of the
eccentric and damaged love interest Alison in Melissa Murray’s Pass the Parcel (2005), starring again
opposite Anton Lesser. She was the
pivotal character Imelda in Melissa Murray’s The Inheritance from 1999. Simon Bovey, a radio dramatist for whom I
have great respect given he wrote The
Voice of God in 2006, wrote The
Launch in 2002, which starred Pickles as Elizabeth. During the Second World War, Jack Avery
(Trevor Peacock) was a young pilot, along with his brother Alan. He watched flying ace Bingham (Ronald Pickup)
shoot his brother’s plane. Incensed and
insistent that justice should be done, Jack works tirelessly for decades to
bring Bingham to justice (as he sees it).
Everyone around him denies that this could have happened. When, at last, his tale is told in an exposé
book published by Paul Katz (Ewan Bailey), he is surprised to be met
face-to-face with Bingham. Jack’s
bitterness has affected every aspect of his life, such that his relationship
with his daughter Elizabeth is fraught.
She argues that Jack’s crusade has drained any evidence of the real Alan
from life, so that she doesn’t even know the kind of her person that her uncle
was. At the book launch, Jack also meets
Herman Wulff (Christopher Godwin), who was also flying at that time—albeit on
the other side. The message which Jack
must absorb—and believe me, throughout the drama it’s really touch and go
whether he will actually absorb this or not—is forgiveness. Finally, Pickles played another Liz in the
fantastic Grace and the Angel (2001). For more on that, please keep reading.
Andrew Wincott
In 2003, Bruce Young (see below) directed an adaptation by
Gerda Stevenson of Mary Brunton’s novel Self-Control.
I had mixed feelings about the
drama—Jane Austen found the novel well-intentioned and well-written but the
plot totally improbable. I would have to agree, and in some ways it feels much
more like a parody of Mrs Radcliffe’s romances, without being overtly Gothic. Nevertheless, I was much impressed by Andrew
Wincott’s performance as anti-hero Colonel Hargrave. One can’t help feeling a little sorry for
Hargrave, as his passion flies off the pages of this book; Wincott gives the
role everything he’s got, despite it being an opportunity to chew the scenery,
and the heroine Laura, despite the author’s best efforts, being a little trying
as a person.
Sean Pertwee
Sean Pertwee doesn’t do much radio drama, so it’s always an
event when he’s in a role. Burning Both Ends: When Oliver Reed Met Keith Moon from 2011
was a wonderful comedy, and Pertwee memorable as Oliver Reed (Arthur Darvill
equally memorable as Keith Moon). Reed
is isolated as the premiere British star of his age; never trained as an actor
and veering between confident bluster and insecurity, he deplores the falseness
of Hollywood. Keith Moon, meanwhile, is
simply mental, going through life as one chaotic game after another. Together, they spell destruction and
devil-may-care for the rest of the world, but for each other, it’s the ultimate
bromance (if you have to employ such a wretched term).
David Harewood
Time Hops by Alan
Gilbey and David Richard-Fox was a madcap sci fi comedy from 1994. It’s debatable how well it’s aged, but what
is not debatable is David Harewood’s larger-than-life performance as RV101, a
rabbit warrior from the future. Time Hops is the unlikely story of EK6,
a mouse-scientist from the future, and her pursuer, RV101, a rabbit-warrior,
also from the future. Harewood was absolutely wonderful as the murderous,
rather Judge Dredd-like RV101. Eek (as
the mouse called herself) decided to steal a Time Bike and go to the past to
try to stop the cataclysmic event that caused the Earth to be polluted, and all
life on it to be reduced to mutated mice, rats, and rabbits living in
underground warrens. Eek went back to
1994 where she met surly teenager Steph, her younger brother Max, and local
rabble-rouser Baz. The majority of the
next four episodes sees RV101 and Baz in pursuit of Steph, Max, and Eek as they
hop through time. Aside from the cop-ot
ending, this comedy was very fun.
Michael Mears
Although now 20 years old, I had to highlight A Slow Train to Woking, written and
performed by Michael Mears. Mears convincingly played 28 separate characters in
this dark comedy, and did so beautifully, to the point where you forgot it was
a man performing in falsetto the role of his mother singing hymns in a frail
voice, or the train driver, or the pub landlord, or . . . Daniel takes the slow
train to Woking every weekend to visit his mother, whose grip on his soul is
absolute. He takes the slow train, then
a bus, so that he can delay this torture for as long as possible. His mother calls him all during the week,
too. When his cousin Bram suggests that
Daniel move his mother to a retirement community, his mother Lily responds
with, “After all I’ve done for you . . .”
Impressive stuff.
Amaka Okafor
Alison Hindell’s adaptation of Renaissance play Arden of Favesham, based on a real-life
murder case, was impressive. The
acting was exceptional, particularly Amaka Okafor, who distinguished herself as
a totally believable Alice. Alice has
been married to land-owner Arden for some time.
She also has a lover, Mosby. Alice
and Mosby are determined to eliminate Arden, and when Arden robs his neighbor
Greene out of some land, the otherwise mild-mannered man now has a grudge—which
Alice quickly turns to her advantage by claiming that her husband has abused
her, and Greene comes to her rescue.
What is also very interesting is to follow Alice’s, Mosby’s, and Arden’s
various machinations, whereby they are able to convince themselves or each
other of things they knew to be utterly false moments ago (much like Richard
III). The only disappointing thing was
that, in true Renaissance morality play style, the murderers repented of their
deed, seconds after Alice had stabbed her husband savagely herself. I would have much preferred for the killers
to get on with their lives and try to evade capture; nevertheless, the actors
sold this sudden remorse for all it was worth.
Patricia Routledge
Although playing superficially similar roles—older women
dealing with disappointments in life—Patricia Routledge drew great emotional
depth and authenticity from two dramas heard this year. In May
Child by Elizabeth Kuti from 2004, she played Margaret, who gets a phone
message from Ron, who is back in England after having spent some time living in
the Costa del Sol. He wants to reconnect
with her. Margaret, who is in the habit
of talking to herself, dismisses his message.
She likes living alone and doesn’t want to interact with anyone,
including the rather pathetic May, a schoolgirl who shows up during a
thunderstorm (in fact, she has to climb through a window because Margaret has
put so many locks on the door she can’t be bothered to open it). Margaret tries her damnedest to send May
away, preserving every last defense as May gets her to admit that she was once
engaged to Roy but chickened out of marrying him. She spent all her working life in a butcher’s
shop at the till and hated it. Indeed,
as May forces Margaret to admit, she has not had real happiness in life since
childhood—and has indeed not felt she deserved happiness.
Sound Barriers by
Sarah Daniels from the following year is a fantastic drama, with another role
played with great sensitivity by Routledge.
Each character recounts what has been happening to them in monologue,
without ever interacting with each other.
I’m not a huge fan of the monologue in radio drama, but this usage was
exceptional. It’s also not clear for a long time how the three characters know
each other, but they are brought together in a solid, Love Actually-like fashion by the end. Audrey, played by Routledge,
is an elderly lady who lives in a flat and is perturbed by her neighbor, a
young professional with a new baby who cries all the time, and Ian, a deaf
man. Audrey’s story is very poignant
because her daughter lives in the US, and Audrey can only visit her for a week
per year. Audrey is so lonely and
depressed, she spends her time going by bus to a shopping center where she
pretends she is in America, and that her daughter’s family is going to come
round the corner any moment. Ian is the
deaf man who lives in the same flats as Audrey, and his perspective is a
remarkable one. He navigates life in the
hearing world by lip-reading and writing on a notepad. Eventually, Audrey and Ian realize they have
been used by the desperate mother, who is unable to come to terms with the fact
her baby has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and that she is an alcoholic, by helping
her fulfil the requirements of her social worker, Jenny. Can any happy ending be earned by these
characters? The drama is remarkable and
so is Routledge’s performance.
Outstanding Directors
Melanie Harris
Melanie Harris has directed many radio dramas. She directed both instalments of Val
McDermid’s private eye Kate Brannigan stories from 1998 and 1999 respectively, Clean Break and The Right Chemistry. While I preferred Clean Break, both were stylish, well-made thrillers. Brannigan, a Manchester-based investigator,
spent the first story investigating insurance fraud and trying to get back
priceless paintings (and fakes). In the
second story, she and her lover Richard investigated blackmail at a chemical
factory. I liked Brannigan; a fun,
capable character, second only to Kathleen Turner’s VI Warshawski, brought
alive by Harris’ directing.
Bruce Young
I’ve heard many, many radio dramas directed by Bruce
Young. He received a Golden Weevil in 2017,
and you can read about a fraction of his productions in that entry. I am highlighting here specifically a drama
from 2015, Rachel’s Cousins by Ann
Marie Di Mambro. 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 (Alan McHugh). 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). The drama (with a large dose
of comedy) follows the difficult and painful reconciliation between Rachel and
her cousins, each of whom has their various crosses to bear, as she implores
them to get tested to find out if they share the same gene as she does, which
could lead to their developing breast cancer like she did. It was entertaining to hear Rachel’s
restrained accent become a lot broader the more she identified with her lower
class Glaswegian cousins, and it’s a testament to Bruce Young’s casting
abilities that he made each of these characters sound distinctive, rather than
“just a bunch of Glaswegian women” or, heaven forfend, “a bunch of Scottish
women.”
Karen Rose
Karen Rose produces drama for Sweet Talk Productions, and
thus she presided over two very good dramas, in my opinion, in 2019. The first was The Not Knowing by Daniel Maier.
It was difficult not to get involved with the characters in this very
radiogenic story. It used time the way
the human mind can: rapidly moving
forward to 10 minutes from now, or thirty years, imagining all kinds of
outcomes for situations which are purely imaginary—yet realistic to be
believable. The drama focuses on ten minutes in the life of a mother, Harriet
(Louise Brealey), whose toddler goes missing in a crowded grocery store. Her marriage to Alex (Mark Bazeley) is
already unravelling, and Harriet imagines all kinds of ways for it to finally
hit the rocks, inventing for herself a therapist (Pippa Haywood). The drama keeps the listener guessing and so
emotionally involved that ending evinced palpable belief.
Making Plans with
Nigel was another drama Karen Rose produced. It was a funny and entertaining
semi-autobiographical dark comedy by Stuart Houghton, who uses his diagnosis
with breast cancer in 2016 as the jumping off point for a flight of fancy. Houghton is played here by Mark Benton, who
begins the story at a pub where Stu has been meeting with his comedy writing
group. He would do anything to have a
drama on Radio 4, he says. Be careful
what you wish for, he also says. Not
realizing (as I didn’t!) that men could also get breast cancer, Stu ignores the
lump in his breast until he finally works up the courage to go to the doctor
(Emma Fielding). He begins a series of
tests until he gets his diagnosis from Mr Kashap (Paul Bazely). Struggling to tell his wife Natalie (Sally
Lindsay) and worrying about the impact of the diagnosis on his kids, Stu is
also tormented by the tumour which has taken on the persona of Nigel Farage
(Lewis MacLeod). It’s harrowing stuff,
but it also written in a way that is very funny, with Nigel constantly
haranguing Stu, and Stu repeatedly having self-deprecating interior
monologues. Stu opts for chemo after
being advised on the odds by his oncologist Ben (John Ramm) and counts himself
lucky compared to Fiorentina (Becky Wright), an Italian lady trapped by her
condition whose mother also has breast cancer. The story has a happy ending (if
only Brexit did, too). Well-cast and
well-directed, Making Plans with Nigel tread
the thin line between anguish and emancipation.
Polly Thomas
In 2019, I heard two wonderful dramas directed by Polly
Thomas, one from 2000 and one from 2019, a Naked Production. The latter was Rage, a Mark Lawson adaptation of an
acclaimed Polish crime thriller written by Zygmunt Miloszewski. The characters were wonderfully
idiosyncratic, and the crime was chilling.
While the drama revolves around the traditionally high incidences of
domestic violence in Poland, it is still told from the point of view of a male
detective, the self-absorbed, sarcastic, insightful womanizer Teodor Szacki
(Bryan Dick)—hence its thought-provoking, ambiguous message. Teo has moved from
posting to posting, restless and seemingly unhappy about the state of justice
in Poland. While in Warsaw, his boss was
“Russian feminazi” Olga Kuzniecow (Alexandra Mathie). She is his boss once again in Olmsted. Teo’s live-in girlfriend, the much younger
Klara (Rachel Austin), followed him from Warsaw and is furious when he breaks
up with her, seemingly so his teenage daughter, Hela (Caitlin Ward), can move
in with him temporarily while her mother is pursuing scholarly study in the US. Despite Teo’s general likeability, the way he
misunderstands women and his failure as a parent make him deeply flawed. A really thought-provoking mystery, it was
produced by Eloise Whitmore and executive produced by John Dryden. Excellent stuff; I would love to hear other
Miloszewski novels adapted.
Nearly twenty years earlier, Polly Thomas directed another
kind of story, though coincidentally with strong feminist themes running
through it also. This was Crazy Big Fish by Gill Adams. It’s the
story of five women who meet in order to audition for a part in contemporary,
northern vernacular earthy stage drama Fish
and Leather, written by Gill Adams (how meta). Indeed, the unifying and expositional device
that opens each episode is Gill’s answerphone message, after which the various
women leave messages of various coherence throughout the serial. Rita (Deborah
McAndrew) is a middle aged (and we are led to believe, dumpy and rather
unattractive) housewife. She’s never learned
to read properly, and has spent the last twenty years raising children with her
highly traditional husband, Billy (Terence Mann), who is now mostly out of
work. She has little money, few friends,
and a fairly circumscribed existence, living with her mother, Gladys (Ruth
Holden), the only person who believes in Rita—more than Rita herself does. Indeed, Rita would never have had the courage
to audition for Fish and Leather had
her mother not forced her to do so. At
the audition, Rita meets Pauline (Rachel Davies), and it’s hate at first sight. Like Rita, Pauline is middle aged and not
particularly attractive and is very loud-mouthed and sharp. Eventually, when they are cast as Fish and Leather, Rita and Pauline come
to appreciate each other. Sandy (Katy
Cavanagh) is living with her bourgeois, upwardly mobile mother, with whom she
really cannot get along, after having left her job as a dancer on a cruise
ship. She is too good for her town and
can’t wait to get out. Sandy becomes the
costume designer and makeup artist for the production. Part of what softens Pauline is Babs (Sally
Walsh), a young woman who has spent most of her adult life taking care of her
cantankerous, emotionally abusive, alcoholic father. All of the women are very engaging, and it
makes for a hilarious comedy and a moving story, in which you hope against all
odds they succeed.
Simon Morecroft
I’m less familiar with Simon Morecroft’s work, but Ordinary Heroes by Paul Marquess and
Sally Tatchell blew me away. Newbie PC
Scott Knight (Joel Phillimore) is on his first beat in Whitechapel with veteran
PC Nisha Hussain (Nisha Nayar). It seems
like it’s going to be a quiet night.
However, what they don’t know (and the audience does) is that Haneefa
(Susannah Fielding) and Zeenat (Gurkiran
Kaur) Khan, along with their brother-in-law Tariq (Devesh Kishore), have
decided to avenge Haneefa’s husband Rassoul’s death by blowing themselves
up. It’s a nail-biting thriller and very
believable, I thought; as good as any contemporary cop drama on TV.
Outstanding Writers
Amna Saleem
It’s always a joy to hear a new voice on BBC Radio and to be
on the lookout for the exciting things that are going to come from them. One such is Amna Saleem, who wrote the
hilarious comedy Beta Female, produced
by Ed Moorish for Somethin’ Else. Amna has
written a fictionalized version of herself; this Amna (Kiran Sonia Sawar) is a
modern Asian woman who has to reconcile her background with her day-to-day
living, as when she brings her boyfriend Theo (Tom Stourton) to an Eid
celebration. In pretending to be engaged
to Tom, she thinks she’s pulled the wool over the eyes of her mother (Sudha
Bhurchar) and father (Bhasker Patel), but neither is fooled—thinking they have
to keep up the pretence to please the other, more conservative parent. Her uncle and aunt (Anil Goutam, Nina Wadia),
however, are dreadful. Her brother Haris
(Omar Raza) has rejected his British Asian status to be a regular old Scottish
lad, whereas younger sister Sunnah (Amna Saleem) is much more orthodox. It was very funny and taught me a lot about
the day-to-day lives of Scottish Asian Muslims. I am sure they must be making more episodes!
Philip Palmer
Philip Palmer got a Golden Weevil in 2016, and ever since
that initial series of Keeping the Wolf
Out, the 1960s Hungarian Soviet police procedural/spy thriller, I’ve been
hungrily awaiting more of the same.
Thus, Palmer receives another Golden Weevil in 2019 for a further series
of Keeping the Wolf Out, still
starring Leo Bill and Clare Corbett as married couple Berthold and Franckisca,
but with the addition of Joseph Ayre as József Szabados, Berthold’s highly
suspect second-in-command. Keeping the Wolf Out is probably some
of the best crime fiction ever written.
Michael Symmons Roberts
Poet Michael Symmons Roberts has been a frequent contributor
to BBC Radio. In 2019, he wrote two
excellent (and quite different) dramas. Luke, Acts was an interesting attempt
to breathe life into the distant past. I have to admit I know very little about
early Christianity, about the writers of the Gospels. Well, this drama, based on the text of the
Gospel of Luke and Acts, caught me up pretty quickly. It’s just conceivable that Luke’s
letters—which form the basis for the Gospel—were written to someone called
Theophila not Theophilus, so we find Luke (David Schofield) hiding out in Rome,
where Theophila (Verity Henry), a Roman with some legal training, tries to help
him prepare a defense for Paul, who is in prison. Through the texts, we hear about the ministry
of Jesus as well as days in the lives of Paul (Jason Done) and Peter (Shaun
Mason). Meanwhile, Luke, Theophila and
her believer mother try to stay one step ahead of the rioting mob. I quite enjoyed it and learned a lot. It was directed by Sharon Sephton and
produced by Susan Roberts.
There were oodles of audio dramas commemorating fifty years
since the Moon landing, and one of them was the very clever Variations on a Theme by Neil Armstrong
by Michael Symmons Roberts (directed by Susan Roberts and sharing some of the
same cast members as Luke, Acts). 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) in a
playful and self-reflexive way. Furthermore, it was allowed to have its degrees
of ambiguity in a way that probably wouldn’t have worked as well in another
medium. 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—or is it? Noel (Andonis James Anthony), who has been
“playing” Neil Armstrong in monologues throughout the drama, makes an
appearance at the pub in Epcot, as a Neil Armstrong lookalike as well as
soundalike. 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.
Lucy Catherine
Lucy Catherine is recognized here for two recent radio
dramas and one from nearly twenty years ago.
An impressive range! In 2000, she
wrote A to Z, the story of the
real-life woman who conceived the A to Z
maps/guides in 1936 (if you live in the UK, is omething you learn very
quickly is that these guides are a British staple). Phyllis Pearsall (Catherine McCormack) was
the unconventional daughter of two eccentric parents. Her father, Alexander
Gross, was a Hungarian map-maker, imperious, uncompromising, and highly
conservative. Her mother was a
hypochondriac British woman (Phyllida Law), and some time before 1936, Gross
had moved to the US, and the couple had separated. Insisting on running her father’s map-making
business, Phyllis spent her time trudging through London’s streets at all hours
as she sketched the rabbit’s warren of streets. Naturally, all of this driven,
obsessive industry precludes her having “normal” relationships, leading to the
breakdown of her marriage and her inability to let well-meaning
Cambridge-toff-turned-communist, Len, get close to her. It’s tragic on a personal level and makes for
harrowing drama. Nevertheless, Phyllis
succeeds in finishing her map on time and finally stands up to her parents. And the rest is history, I suppose.
At the end of 2018, Lucy Catherine adapted Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology. While I know a fair bit about Greek
mythology and am not a huge fan of Neil Gaiman (so sue me!), I found this epic
drama impossible not to enjoy. It
starred Diana Rigg as a mysterious woman who tells a bedbound youngster stories
of the Nine Realms. Of course, it’s
impressively cast, with Derek Jacobi as Odin.
I don’t know who Colin Morgan is, but he played a very sympathetic Loki. The story of Fenrir (Rhashan Stone) and his
sister Hel (Saffron Coomber) was very sad, actually, though it was reassuring
that the storyteller told the sick child that even after the end, after
Ragnarok, it was not actually the end.
Finally, my favorite by far of these dramas was 2019’s Lights, Camera, Kidnap! directed by
Sasha Yevtushenko. Based on the true
story of Sin-sen Auk (Liz Sutherland) and her husband Chue Un-Hi (Paul Courtney
Hu) and how they escaped the North Korean Communist regime in the 1980s. But it’s a lot more than that: they were South Korea’s dream couple, she the
actress, he the film director. However,
fame drew them apart. They divorced, and
it was only when Kim Jong Il (Leo Wong) had them kidnapped that they were drawn
back together. Kim Jong Il, a keen
cinema-goer, also believed in the propaganda power of films. He was certain that if Korea’s best actress
and best director teamed up again in the service of the Revolution, they could
change the world. Brainwashed and
brutalized after years of being separated from their families, Sen and Chue had
to learn to trust each other again. Once
they did, they hatched a daring plan: to
be allowed to visit the West and defect.
A daring, fascinating, and quite stylish thriller.
Dermot Bolger
In 2005, Dermot Bolger wrote a series called Haunting Women which was rebroadcast on
Radio 4 Extra in 2019. These were all
dramas based on Irish legends of the supernatural, which each involved a female
ghost, and all of them were quite evocative and compelling, some creepier and
more disturbing than others. They also
provided a chance for the same cast members to play a lot of different
characters. The only one of the famous
Irish female ghosts I’d ever heard of was the one haunting the linen mill
(based on a documentary in 2017, she’s still haunting that mill). Each drama was only 15 minutes long, so
Bolger’s writing had to enable them to pack in a lot of story. Generally this was done by having one
character telling another about what happened in the past, which is what
happened in “The Linen Mill.” Scarier was “The Shimmering Dress,” a beautiful ward named Cecilia in rural 18th
century Ireland was trying to fend off the unwanted advances of a local
squire. She determined to leave Ireland
for London because the stress was too much to bear. However, just before she was to leave, her
guardian was called away—on a fabricated fool’s errand, it turned out—and her
servants were tricked into leaving her unguarded. The climax was deferred when the listeners
were suddenly transferred to the present day, with an old man telling his granddaughter
the story of the empty house, burned down when he was a child, that used to
house Cecilia’s and the squire’s phantoms.
I’ve never heard this particular legend before, but it makes a terrific,
if violent, story. “The Waiting Wall”
was not so much scary as it was generally unsettling. This one involved a grandmother and
granddaughter visiting a village, once again in rural Ireland. The granddaughter discovered that her
grandmother’s sister had been the one who had said she was going to get out and
travel. Instead, she took a ride home
from an English salesman and was so upset about being compromised (with her
sweetheart waiting patiently by the churchyard wall) that she killed
herself. She wasn’t buried on
consecrated ground, naturally, so she haunted the churchyard wall. Thus, the living sister came back and shared
all her travels with the girl who ultimately never left home. “The
Riding Crop” was probably my favorite, with a Gothic, Romantic, macabre
edge that also reminded me of William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”—and the
true story of Hannah Beswick. In the
frame story, Sharon, a cataloguer of a seminary archive, is trying to find out why
a jewelled riding crop is still in the library, as they go through their
valuation of the property before selling it.
The story is this: Beatrice, a
landed lady in the “big house,” threatens to disinherit her younger sister
Lucinda if she marries Anthony (Griffin), Beatrice’s childhood sweetheart. The couple risk her wrath and live in poverty
for ten years. Beatrice meets a Russian
prince abroad, falls in love with him and marries him, but he dies. She brings his jewelled riding crop back to
her house. But is Beatrice more
threatening dead than she was alive? All
of these impressive tales from Dermot Bolger.
Sheila Goff
I previously mentioned Grace
and the Angel by Sheila Goff. It’s
the story of an Angel (Rudolph Walker) who is normally a “glad tidings”
Christmas angel who is brought in at the last moment by the Heavenly Clerk (Jonathan
Forbes) to be an Angel of Death to an old lady, Grace (Marlene Sidaway). Although you can’t see Angel, you can imagine
his flamboyant and ostentatious appearance and personality, which is heavily
Afro-Caribbean in flavor (which is partially the point). You’re introduced to Grace, meanwhile, by her
writing a letter to the editor on Christmas Eve about vanishing British values.
Also nearby are St Nick (John Hartley) and Prancer (Peter Darney), who must be
unique among the canon of audio drama characters, being sentient light displays
on a roof. They sound like East End
geezers. The abstract and otherworldly does, indeed, meet the mundane in this
drama, with Grace insistent that Angel can’t be her angel. Meanwhile, her
childless neighbors, Rosie (Carolyn Jones) and Vernon (Jonathan Kydd) and Liz (Carolyn
Pickles) and Derek (Sean Baker) are thrown together (due to clumsy Angel’s
inexpert landing which tangles him up in power lines). The four neighbors are
all middle-aged, but Liz reveals to Rosie that she’s pregnant—and scared. The drama ends on a hopeful note. It could have easily turned saccharine, but I
thought it was extremely well-written, with strong performances (and Angel’s
wings were described as being scented in a highly sensual way you don’t get with
many radio dramas).
Whew! Roll on 2020
and more fantastic audio dramas!
