Category Archives: Audio Drama/Radio Plays

Sapphire And Steel: Wall Of Darkness. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: David Warner, Susannah Harker, Louise Jameson, Ian Hallard, Robert Maloney, Timothy Watson, Joannah Tincey.

It is with good reason that as a species are both repelled and somehow fascinated by the threat of nuclear war; there is after all no middle ground when it comes to the shadow that has loomed large over us since the reports and pictures came from Japan of the first explosions over Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We are caught in the fire of expectant and imminent death, so much so that until the threat is finally dismantled and the last remains of the sickness that guides the ultimate force of humanity’s desire for destruction is a long distant memory, we shall forever be enthralled by what damage it can cause to our planet.

Sapphire And Steel: Wall Of Darkness. Audio Drama Review. full post

(459 words, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)

Sapphire And Steel: Zero. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: David Warner, Susannah Harker, David Collings, Mark Gatiss, Angela Bruce.

Time is forever decaying, what might be considered a moment of absolute endeavour by humanity in one moment, slowly erodes to the point where all that follows becomes ordinary, routine, and then, like everything that was once painstakingly spectacular becomes mundane, predictable, safe.

Sapphire And Steel: Zero. Audio Drama Review. full post

(495 words, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

Sapphire And Steel: Remember Me. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: David Warner, Susannah Harker, Sam Kelly, Joannah Tincey, David Horovitch.

Our greatest curse as a human being is surely that of nostalgia, the memory we wrap in gold and sepia, the melancholy we hold up as the epitome of our life on Earth; doomed to go over the lines forever, condemned by the failures of our time, nostalgia in all its forms is the blissful high before the regretful and terminal low.

Sapphire And Steel: Remember Me. Audio Drama Review. full post

(413 words, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)

Sapphire And Steel: Second Sight. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Blair McDonough, Anna Skellern, Lisa Bowerman, Patience Tomlinson, Clare Calbraith, Duncan McInnes, Angela Bruce, David Warner, Susannah Harker.

Change, even in the art of the bluff, can be one that leaves a chill ready to descend down the spine, the sense that the transformation you are about to encounter is going to be too much to either bare, or which will leave you with feelings of disappointment wrapped up in the embrace of the immediate let down.

Sapphire And Steel: Second Sight. Audio Drama Review. full post

(415 words, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

Charlotte Pollard: Series Two. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: India Fisher, James Joyce, Rachel Atkins, Ben Crowe, Helen Goldwyn, Pippa Haywood, Karen Henson, Kieran Hodgson, Ashley Kumar, Glen McCreedy, Colin McFarlane, Deisre Mullins, Dan Starky, Gary Turner.

The world will pass us by in a whimper, the slow but steady decay of our species is assured at some point in the future, we may believe it is a flash that has taken our lives but nature is not that kind, and it will be, if anyone is left to observe such an ending, one bought upon our heads by our own arrogance; our need to prove  we are masters of our own destiny.

Charlotte Pollard: Series Two. Audio Drama Review. full post

(583 words, estimated 2:20 mins reading time)

Sapphire And Steel: The Mystery Of The Missing Hour. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: David Warner, Susannah Harker, Colin Baker, Sarah Douglas, Ian Hallard, Cate Debenham Taylor, Ian Brooker, Nigel Fairs.

To be self-ware is a hard act to give any type of justice to, it often ranks in the public’s eyes as on a level with conceited or pride, the self-examination of the artist’s interpretation of their own belief made real by placing them in a subject or character that undoubtedly represents them.

Sapphire And Steel: The Mystery Of The Missing Hour. Audio Drama Review. full post

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

Sapphire And Steel: Perfect Day. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: David Warner, Susannah Harker, Mark Gatiss, Victoria Carling, Philip McGough, Daniel Weyman, Matthew Steer, Caroline Morris.

Humanity has an unnerving ability to create havoc and pressure on itself that in the individual comes across, at best as anxiety, at worst domineering deflection, the trauma of a past event manifesting itself as control, of wanting supposedly the best for someone in your life but directing, supervising every minute detail of the event in question, that they are left on the point of mental suffocation, of supplicating their own desires for the safety of keeping quiet so as not to cause an argument.

Sapphire And Steel: Perfect Day. Audio Drama Review. full post

(503 words, estimated 2:01 mins reading time)

Sapphire And Steel: Cruel Immortality. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: David Warner, Susannah Harker, Muriel Pavlow, Daphne Oxenford, Ian Burford, Lois Baxter, Lucy Gaskell, Steve Kynman, Lisa Bowerman, Nigel Fairs.

Tied by the clock, humanity seems to be regulated to go from the cradle to the grave checking the clock, counting down the hours religiously, almost with devotion and loyal consistency, till we put up our feet and let the final hours swim past in smiles and surrounded by memories.

Sapphire And Steel: Cruel Immortality. Audio Drama Review. full post

(406 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

Sapphire And Steel: Water Like A Stone. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: David Warner, Susannah Harker, Lisa Bowerman, Nicholas Briggs, Lucy Gaskell, Susanne Proctor.

One of the great promises of any artistic production is that it can be described as timeless, that the emotion of the piece is found to be intense, that it goes beyond the sense of the abiding comfort and routine and finds a place where the balance between revolutionary and eternal are met with expectations fulfilled.

Sapphire And Steel: Water Like A Stone. Audio Drama Review. full post

(396 words, estimated 1:35 mins reading time)

Sapphire And Steel: The Surest Poison. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: David Warner, Susannah Harker, Richard Franklin, Tom Bevan, Eric MacLennan, Helen Goldwyn.

Time has a curious hold over humanity, other creatures may adhere to nature’s environmental clock, somehow bringing life to the world on a specific day such as when flying ants take to the skies or when salmon return to their spawning grounds. However, humanity is defined by how its spends each hour, every minute, the days and years in which it is alive and is judged for it, is derided if one single second is misused or wasted in the pursuit of the wrong career, not enough exercise, not reading enough, throwing a day away without having created art; the knives come out and the loudest condemnation is unavoidably proclaimed.

Sapphire And Steel: The Surest Poison. Audio Drama Review. full post

(502 words, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)