BBC Radio – The Sonic Society

This Spectator article wants to point out to those enamoured with the latest craze of podcast-madness, that radio hasn’t exactly been overwhelmed by the downloading RSS feeds.

Podcasts, too, have yet to master drama; it will surely become established, challenging the corporation to maintain its commitment to what is for many of us the USP of BBC Radio. Roy Williams’s modernisation of John Wyndham’s 1957 sci-fi novel The Midwich Cuckoos, on Radio 4 at New Year, was a chilling reflection of the original. Directed by Polly Thomas with Jenny Sealey and her theatre company Graeae, which is led by disabled actors, the drama suggests a link between the cuckoos of Wyndham’s novel and that sense of being different, ostracised by a society that does not understand you. Some of the cast members are profoundly deaf, which you can hear in their voices, some are black, adding levels of meaning to the text. The sound design (by Eloise Whitmore) and specially composed music by Oliver Vibrans added to the strange atmosphere. This was properly creepy.

Check out the detailed article by Kate Chisholm for more!

I’m always amazed at the flexibility and breadth of radio drama. The longer I live in this medium, the more I’m excited by the variety of stories that can be told. For example, The Irish Times look at a multi-part series based on the love letters of a British soldier and his Irish sweetheart:

Love letters between a British soldier and his Irish sweetheart have been turned into a radio drama which will run for the next five months. *

The letters were between an English soldier Eric Appleby from Liverpool who was a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery.

He was sent for training to Athlone and it was here that he met local girl Phyllis Kelly at a dance in March 1915. Eric was later moved to the Western Front but they kept in touch in a series of extraordinary letters.

Before he was posted to the front they wrote about “love days” but they were only together four times after he completed his training. He was posted to the Western Front and was eventually killed at the Battle of the Somme in October 1916.

Love Letters From The Front began on Sunday at 12.30pm on BBC Radio Ulster and BBC Radio Foyle and carries on for 137 consecutive days.

The letters will be read out in self-contained short episodes which will be broadcast from Thursday April 21st at 11.55am and again at 11.50pm up until the end of October of this year. Each episode lasts five minutes.

Tag: BBC Radio

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