Category Archives: Audio Drama/Radio Plays

Doctor Who: Dark Tides. Big Finish Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Christopher Eccleston, Billie Piper, Ben Arogundade, Doon Mackichan, David Shaw-Parker, Sam Stafford.

Occasionally what Doctor Who needs is a good old fashioned ghost story…or at least what can pass for one in the world of science and speculative fiction, and like the classic New Who tale The Unquiet Dead, there is a lot more to take in than what may be read or heard as things that go bump in the night cannot be explained simply as a ghost, but as something far deadlier to The Doctor, Rose Tyler, and the Knights of Atlas in search of the lost spaceship Vesterbold.

Doctor Who: Dark Tides. Big Finish Audio Drama Review. full post

(370 words, estimated 1:29 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor Adventures – Thirteen O’ Clock. Big Finish Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Christopher Eccleston, Billie Piper, Will Chitty, Indigo Griffiths, Dan Starkey, Sophie Thompson.

A return of a foe thought defeated is always an occasion in which the listener of the Big Finish audios finds intriguing. There is after all always the need to delve further into the relationship between aggressor and the complex mind of the Doctor, and never more so when it one that is fought with the unshakable terror of what can be seen as the myth or the fairytale given corporeal form.

Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor Adventures – Thirteen O’ Clock. Big Finish Audio Drama Review. full post

(439 words, estimated 1:45 mins reading time)

Central Intelligence: Series Three. Radio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Kim Cattrall, Kelsey Grammer, Johnny Flynn, Elena Delia, Donald Sage Mackay, Tim Ahern, Carlyss Peer, Jennifer Armour, David Menkin, Christopher Ragland, Joseph Balderrama, Akie Kotabe, Nettie Chickering, Laurel Lefkow, Jason Watkins, Rob Benedict, Tyreke Leslie, Vivek Maden, Richard Southgate, Ian Porter, Lily Lefkow, David Menkin, Roy McCrerey, Julee Cerda, Walles Hamonde, Rachael Stirling, Philipe Bosher, Clay Zackery, Ben Cura, David Duchovny, Aaron Teoh, Sotty Pong, Kerry Shale.

Central Intelligence: Series Three. Radio Drama Review. full post

(520 words, estimated 2:05 mins reading time)

Milady. Parts 3 and 4. Radio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Selin Hizli, Carl Prekopp, Hattie Morahan, Ian Dunnet Jnr, Simon Scardifield, Jasmine Hyde, Chris Lew Kum Hoi.

You cannot keep a bad girl, a wronged woman, a misunderstood and vengeful female down for long, for the moment you think they are defeated, they rise up more powerful, more commanding than ever, and one of the finest examples of that in literature is of Milady de Winter.

Milady. Parts 3 and 4. Radio Drama Review. full post

(423 words, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

Smoke And Mirrors. Radio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Rupert Everett, Reece Budin.

There are people to whom history has, if not forgotten, then slowly erased from public view. Some of these are heroes of war to which their services had to remain under the cover of secrecy and mystery to avoid a conflict of interests later down the line where governments change and public opinion may shift due to the response to falsehoods, allegations, and fear, and it is to the right of the researcher, the scribe, and the playwright that these almost fearless people are now underlined and shown to be for the heroes that they are; no matter what they did before or after the war.

Smoke And Mirrors. Radio Drama Review. full post

(532 words, estimated 2:08 mins reading time)

Happy Holidays. Radio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Jane Slavin, Lizzy McInnerny, Greta Scacchi, David Menkin.

It is a nightmare of the modern world, to find yourself arrested and placed in the void of bureaucracy, becoming almost disappeared, because the logical systems and beliefs of freedom have been erased by paranoia, the uniforms of hate and distrust blocking access to leave a country, on the basis that you may have posted a thought online, overstayed your welcome by a day, or just been someone to whom a member of their ever-increasing numbers of officialdom took exception to; this is the trauma awaiting all in this brave new world.

Happy Holidays. Radio Drama Review. full post

(409 words, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

The Truth About Phyllis Twigg. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Tamsin Greig, Rory Kinnear, Aja Dodd, Amit Shah, Will Harrison-Wallace, Haydn Watts, Flora Saner, Hannah Brine.

Names are unavoidably erased from history, some through the sheer fact that not everybody can be remembered, and some because they have found a way to work under the auspices of a nom de plume, of hiding in plain sight so that the creative can have autonomy over their work whilst also holding onto the privilege of privacy. For writers and artists, it can lead to a thought of losing out on the credit where it was due, the public only adoring the name, and not the person behind it, gripping hard on to concealment at the cost of recognition.

The Truth About Phyllis Twigg. Audio Drama Review. full post

(450 words, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Dare You. Big Finish. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Christopher Eccleston, Billie Piper, Jack Ayres, Camille Coduri, Beverley Klein, Harry Myers, Dan Starkey.

The voices in our head are ones to which often guide us and steer us from trouble, they warn of the temptations, the moments that will knock us sideways, the ones that allow us to keep a clear conscious; it may be instinctive, it might be just common sense, but the voice of reason and respect is there to keep us from being foolish and a social pain.

Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Dare You. Big Finish. Audio Drama Review. full post

(536 words, estimated 2:09 mins reading time)

The Haunted Man. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Rosie Baker, Paterson Joseph, Jeff Rawle, Tim Speyer, Dan Starkey, Matthew Steer, Tilly Vosburgh.

The final novella from one of Britain’s finest ever writers, Charles Dickens, is the subject of a twin release from Average Romp this festive eve, and alongside The Cricket On The Hearth, the adaption of The Haunted Man is one that has been lovingly restored to the consciousness of the public thanks to the writing of Eddie Robson and Jonathan Morris, and their Big Finish colleagues Lisa Bowerman and Howard Carter.

The Haunted Man. Audio Drama Review. full post

(444 words, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

The Cricket On The Hearth. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Tony Marshall, Bronté Barbé, Graham Fellows, Geoff Leesley, Jason Forbes, Katie Moore.

The Cricket On The Hearth may not be considered by many in today’s world as being a tale of dramatic substance, especially when set alongside the more weightier themes discussed and revealed in Charles Dickens’ major works, but for one of the sheer all time greats of English literature, one of the few to have an entire genre named after him, the short novella perhaps rings more true of the human need for the unexplained to hold significance than that which came before in the 1843 story, A Christmas Carol.

The Cricket On The Hearth. Audio Drama Review. full post

(472 words, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)