Category Archives: Audio Drama/Radio Plays

Doctor Who, Wirrn Isle. Big Finish 158. Audio Drama Review.

Originally published by L.S. Media. March 28th 2012.

L.S. Media Rating * * * *

Cast: Colin Baker, Lisa Greenwood, Tim Bentinck, Jenny Funnell, Tessa Nicholson, Rikki Lawton, Dan Starkey, Helen Goldwyn, Glynn Sweet.

There must be something about the Wirrn that can give dedicated listeners of Doctor Who delicious and nerve wracking nightmares. Add in the almost lonely, desolate feel that you get in William Gallagher’s script for Wirrn Isle and the creeping music that overlays the action and the play becomes a near pinnacle of Colin Baker’s time as the Doctor.

Doctor Who, Wirrn Isle. Big Finish 158. Audio Drama Review. full post

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

Doctor Who, The Wrath of the Iceni. Big Finish Audio Play. 1. 03. Audio Drama Review.

Originally published by L.S. Media. March 27th 2012.

L. S. Media Rating * * * *

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Ella Kenion, Nia Roberts, Michael Rouse, Daniel Hawksford.

The latest Tom Baker/Big Finish story, The Wrath of the Iceni, finally sees the savage Leela meet her match in the form of Boudica, the legendary warrior Queen of the Iceni.  If this story is anything to go by, both the Doctor and Leela may have met their physical equal in the form of a woman who has gone down in history as a mixture of a heroine and a woman driven mad by revenge.

Doctor Who, The Wrath of the Iceni. Big Finish Audio Play. 1. 03. Audio Drama Review. full post

(544 words, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

Doctor Who, The Renaissance Man. Big Finish Audio Play. 1.02. Audio Drama Review.

Originally published by L.S. Media. February 25th 2012.

L.S. Media Rating ****

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Ian McNeice, Gareth Armstrong, Anthony Howell, Daisy Ashford, Laura Molyneux, John Dorney.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. In the world of Doctor Who it can lead to downright murder! The second of Big Finish’s new Tom Baker stories, The Renaissance Man, shows with a certain delightful irony that just because you may think you know everything, doesn’t mean you have experienced it and of course there is always just that little bit more to know, even if it’s on the relative value of cow parsley.

Doctor Who, The Renaissance Man. Big Finish Audio Play. 1.02. Audio Drama Review. full post

(632 words, estimated 2:32 mins reading time)

Doctor Who, Destination: Nerva. Big Finish Audio Play 1.01. Audio Drama Review.

Originally published by L.S. Media. January 24th 2012.

L.S. Media Rating * * *

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Raquel Cassidy, Tim Bentinck, Sam Graham, Tilly Gaunt, Kim Wall, Tim Treloar.

Destination: Nerva is the brand new Doctor Who audio from Big Finish that requires a fanfare so loud and devastatingly proud as it finally brings the much loved and much missed Tom Baker back into the realm of original adventures. However, it also requires a discretion, the will to give this new series a chance to grow and for Mr. Baker to find his feet at Big Finish whilst immersing himself back as one of the premier Doctor incarnations.

Doctor Who, Destination: Nerva. Big Finish Audio Play 1.01. Audio Drama Review. full post

(677 words, estimated 2:42 mins reading time)

All Change At Llanfair PG. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Siw Hughes, Angharad Phillips, Lisa Zahra, Richard Elfyn, Sion Pritchard, Luke Bailey, Kellie-Gwen Morgan, Maria Claudia Perrone. 

It’s the little things that mean the most, and when those moments are taken from us, we can understandably be upset at the loss, it strikes at the very fabric of our being, our sense of self becomes doubted, and eats away at what can remember of those whose memory we came to immortalise.

All Change At Llanfair PG. Audio Drama Review. full post

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

Cabin Pressure. B.B.C. Radio Four. Series Four Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Benedict Cumberpatch, Roger Allam, Stephanie Cole, John Finnemore.

The B.B.C. has always given comedy shows that gain a good following on the radio a big leg up to television when the time was right, the crossover a seamless and natural curve in the life of decent shows that grow up to big favourites on the small screen. From the days of Hancock’s Half Hour , the B.B.C. has nurtured the radio comedy like a gleaming talented child. It is a bit surprising to find that even after four series of the hilarious and cleverly written B.B.C. Four Extra programme Cabin Pressure, it still doesn’t seem to be any closer to getting the nod to transfer over.

Cabin Pressure. B.B.C. Radio Four. Series Four Review. full post

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

Casino Royale. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Toby Stephens, Hugh Bonneville, Josh Stamberg, Matthew Wolf, John Standing, Lloyd Owen, Darren Richardson, Anne Mathias, Andre Sogliuzzo, Moira Quirk, Henrie Lubatti, Alan Shearman, Martin Jarvis.

The cinematic release in 2006 of Casino Royale is arguably one of the most dramatic of adaptions from any of Ian Fleming’s considerable list of tales that focus on the life of the British spy, James Bond. To capture that intensity in a radio drama could be considered a tough ask for the writer, for the director, and the consummate cast at his disposal.

Casino Royale. Audio Drama Review. full post

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

The Fever. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Cate Blanchett.

To perform a monologue of over a certain length takes a huge amount of skill on behalf of the actor, whose voice must convey every emotion, and reveal every secret, and that of the writer, is an act of artistry that few can convey with a complete and utter resounding of detail in which the audience can feel the trust of the performance as being exposed as a confession, a sense of the sacred divine in human form.

The Fever. Audio Drama Review. full post

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

An Inspector Calls On Moscow. Radio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Rory Kinnear, Karen Ascoe, Nigel Anthony, Paul Hilton, Richard Attlee, Trevor Littledale, Samantha Hughes, Inna Metlina, Olegs Ohotins.

There can be little doubt that J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls is one of the most enduring, important, and defining plays of the 20th Century. Conceived and written at a time when the fire that consumed the world and destroyed what little pretence that we projected to having a society being for the benefit of all, and was shakily losing ground to the horrors unearthed on foreign fields; and yet one that might not have seen the light of day in post war Britain because of Winston Churchill’s umbrage and offence to the writer’s socialist beliefs.


An Inspector Calls On Moscow. Radio Drama Review. full post

(573 words, estimated 2:18 mins reading time)

The Film. Radio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Henry Goodman, Jeremy Swift, Geoffrey Streatfeild, Fenella Woolgar, Hamilton Berstock.

It was not until Channel 4 had the sense of duty that had been denied Sidney Bernstein, Alfred Hitchcock, Richard Crossman, and a whole platoon of film makers that made their way to various concentration camps as liberation from the Nazi terror that had engulfed Europe, then perhaps only a select few would have ever been privy to the immense documentary collaboration that became known at the time as German Concentration Camps Factual Survey , but which perhaps had even greater impact when released in the chilling 2015 release as Night Will Fall.

The Film. Radio Drama Review. full post

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