The Guardian produced an article asking what was happening in The week in radio and podcasts: Riot Girls; Between the Ears: A Cow a Day.
Miranda Sawyer has problems with much of the dialogue in modern audio dramas. Here’s a snippet of her article:
Radio drama. Oh God. I try, really I do, but so much of it leaves me either rigid with boredom or seething with irritation, madly stomping round the park yelping “No one talks like this!” at the dog. And BBC radio drama is the worst. It’s all so written. Which would be fine, if the writing were taken to a poetic extreme, if the playwrights used rhythm and rhyme and pause and imagery in the way of Harold Pinter or Philip Ridley or Sarah Kane or debbie tucker green. But when you’re listening to something that’s meant to be natural and you can hear the tap-tap of computer keys running through? That’s not good. Plus, it’s not enough to have a neat concept, a contemporary idea to be examined. Journalists have those. Playwrights should take such concepts and ideas and tear them apart, stab them in the stomach, watch them scab over and then pick at the wound. Not just place everybody in sitcom positions and offer us the hilarious consequences.
Gah. Sorry. It’s just I was looking forward to Radio 4’s Riot Girls last week. The tagline reads thus: “Series of no-holds-barred dramas written by women, featuring extraordinary female characters and their lives.” Perhaps an ancient queen, a sporting heroine, a political revolutionary, a working warrior? Perhaps not…
Let’s be positive. The dramatic adaptations of Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride and Doris Lessing’s The Good Terrorist (Yes! Revolutionaries!) were fine – though of course the books are far better – but some of the specially commissioned drama was woeful. Which just goes to show that even good writers – and these plays were all written by good writers – struggle with radio plays.
How do you feel about audio dramatic dialogue? Do you think it should be more realistic or heightened in some way?
