005 Contemporary Drama – New
Baller by
Nathaniel Price was a great drama, and further proof that Radio 4 is
diversifying the voices heard in radio drama as of late—indeed, in the last
year, I have been very impressed by the more contemporary and diverse dramas
that have been made, all of them very well-written, acted, and produced. Makes you glad to be alive. Meshach Christie (Jervan Wayne) is a
17-year-old who has been training for professional football (soccer) since he
was six years old. He trains and lives
somewhere up north (north of London, that is) where every aspect of his life is
predicated on making him the best footballer he can be. He isn’t short of cash, but he is loathed to
hold out on his old man (Cornell S. John), who is his agent and has been
guiding him towards this role most of his life, especially since the death of
his mother. Meshach gets injured and has
to go home to London for his recovery.
There, he resists the strictures placed on him by his father, rebelling
against a man he sees as controlling, which is made worse when he finds out his
father has lost his job and is deeply in debt.
Tensions also run high between Meshach and his older brother Aaron
(Chakay Derisee), who is naturally jealous and resentful of Meshach but also
loves him and genuinely cares about him.
Meshach is also interested in childhood friend Rochelle (Leonie
Elliott), who has come back from a gap year in Africa, and asks the questions
of Meshach that I’ve always wanted to ask, namely, how can top footballers
justify the amount of money and attention they get for what they actually
do? In any case, Meshach then has to
make a choice between a “normal” life or going back to the highly pressured
life of a young top-level athlete. Baller was directed by Sally Avens.
Ordinary Heroes was
excellent, and in every way as good as any cop drama on TV. Newbie PC Scott Knight (Joel Phillimore) is
on his first beat in Whitechapel with veteran PC Nisha Hussain (Nisha Nayyar). 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 Khan (Gurkiran
Kaur), along with their brother-in-law Tariq (Devesh Kishore), have decided to
avenge Haneefa’s husband Rassoul’s death by blowing themselves up. When Rassoul died as a freedom fighter/terrorist
in Syria, the local imam refused to say a prayer for him and said his death was
a disgrace. Zeenat already felt
disgraced because her husband had divorced her.
Haneefa was white and converted and has always had a chip on her
shoulder, a resentment that will take her much further than Zeenat. A
nail-biting thriller and very believable, I thought. It was written by Paul
Marquess and Sally Tatchell and directed by Simon Morecroft.
Martin McNamara, radio drama writer Annie Caulfield’s
partner, narrated and finished My
Cambodian Twin, which saw Annie (played in the drama by Pippa Haywood)
complaining about the vacuity of stories like Eat Pray Love. She resolved
to remedy the situation by working on a book about Sophea (Uma Jackson), a
refugee of the Khmer Rouge, who was teaching traditional Cambodian dancing to
children. Sophea, when she meets Annie,
feels they are both very alike: somewhat
self-absorbed, callous, and forthright.
For this reason, they develop a bond, and Sophea tells Annie her story. Meanwhile, Annie has started to develop back
pain. When she goes to the doctor, she
finds out she has cancer. She undergoes
chemotherapy and does lose her hair (despite assurances she won’t), but then
the cancer is in remission and she is able to return to Cambodia to finish her
work. However, the cancer spreads to her
brain. While I thought the ending was a
bit sloppy, overall this was a great piece of drama and very sad. Martin was played in the drama by Paul
Ritter. It was directed by Emma Harding
and also starred Christopher Harper, Chike Chan, Kenny Blythe, and Sarah Ovens.
I found The Not
Knowing slightly irritating at first, but actually I found it difficult not
to get involved with the characters and be invested in the situation. It was also quite radiogenic in the sense it
used time in 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 enough 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) and imagining
future conversations with her friends Tina (Rebekah Staton) and Sophie
(Margaret Cabourn-Smith), as well as how her son’s disappearance will impact on
the future life of teenage daughter Rosie (Kathryn Drysdale). The
Not Knowing was written by Daniel Maier and was a Sweet Talk production
directed by Karen Rose.
