Radio Drama
Friday, March 28th, 2008I listened to a play on Radio 4 today, the first time for - well, more years than I can remember. It was Cavalry by Dan Rebellato, who just happens to be a BTG reader, which, to be honest, is the only reason I listened.
(As an aside, he’d sent me a notification it was on via Facebook. Up until very recently I’d steered well clear of social network websites but I was talked into joining and have not regretted it. It’s proving very useful - and I’ve been experiencing some real “blasts from the past”, which has been wonderful. But back to the subject at hand…)
I thoroughly enjoyed it and thought it was a very clever piece of writing, but that’s not why I brought it up here. It occurs to me that the BTG is ignoring a whole area of dramatic writing and performance. We cover live theatre, of course, and Philip reviews a lot of DVDs, many of which were originally TV programmes, but we (well, Philip actually: I’m sure his days are longer than those of the rest of us!) have only ever reviewed seven audio dramas and we don’t even have an index for them - which is something I’ll have to put right asap - but even they were on CD, not radio.
Perhaps we should attempt to extend our coverage. We aspire to be as complete a guide as possible, so it would make sense, but there are, inevitably, problems, primarily of time and personnel.
Should we? I’d appreciate some feedback on this.