Tag: radio drama

A King’s Speech

A King’s Speech

by Mark Burgess (BBC Radio 4, 2009)

Burgess_King's Speech

A short radio play — not bad but superseded a year later by the film — detailing the relationship between speech therapist Lionel Logue and the most famous stutterer of his day, King George VI. Some of the conversations seem rather contrived towards exposition.

 

 

Torchwood: The Dead Line

Torchwood: The Dead Line

by Phil Ford (BBC, 2009)

Torchwood_Dead Line

This full-cast radio drama is more scenario- than action-based, yet the premise is quite neat and the recording evinces a subtlety not always heard in audio adventures. Moreover, Gareth David-Lloyd is afforded time and story space for a beautifully delivered, character-defining monologue.

 

 

Torchwood: Lost Souls

Torchwood: Lost Souls

by Joseph Lidster (BBC, 2008)

Torchwood_Lost Souls

Having been written and broadcast to coincide with the switching on of the Large Hadron Collider, this radio drama in retrospect seems over-focussed on that aspect of the script. Likewise the Torchwood team’s lingering trauma subsequent to the second series’ harrowing finale.

 

 

Torchwood: Asylum

Torchwood: Asylum

by Anita Sullivan (BBC, 2009)

Torchwood_Asylum

Broadcast between series two and three, this full-cast radio drama sees the Torchwood team at its peak. When a troubled teenage girl falls through the Cardiff Rift, her memories suppressed, her plight brings out both Gwen’s (superbly played) empathy and Jack’s suspicion.

 

 

Good Omens (2014)

Good Omens

by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

radio dramatisation by Dirk Maggs (BBC Worldwide, 2014)

Maggs_Good Omens

Dirk Maggs has adapted Pratchett and Gaiman’s comedic novel of the apocalypse with apposite exuberance, yet for all the well-pitched sound design and the cast’s astute voice work, this zany and enjoyable dramatisation does perforce forego the original book’s drollery of prose.