Category Archives: Radio

Piper Alpha, on Radio 4

On July 6, 1988, just before 10 pm, a gas explosion aboard the North Sea oil Rig Piper Alpha ignited a fire that became an inferno fueled by oil and gas pumped by two other rigs upstream in the production line. One hundred and sixty seven men died, including two from a rescue boat, almost before those outside the rig took measure of the catastrophe. Only 59 men survived, some of whom did so by jumping into the sea from heights of up to 175 feet.

Members of my family were living in Scotland at the time of the disaster; they spoke of the profound collective shock. I arrived in Leeds in time to follow Lord Cullen’s inquiry. Last July, 20 years after the disaster, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a riveting, damning, impeccably constructed documentary drama based upon the testimonies and findings of the inquiry. This week, the play is being repeated on BBC Radio 4.

It begins with the explosion of the gas line and ends 90 minutes later as the accommodation block, where most of the remaining men had been trapped, falls into the sea. A narrator – the only female voice in the production that needfully consists entirely of male voices – is the voice of the chorus, providing technical detail and essential context, as the play overlays dialogue from the inquest upon by-the-minute dramatization of the experiences of several men who survived as well as key exchanges between the operators of the other rigs, the crews of pilot and rescue boats, and executives and rescue organizations on shore. And it works, without a moment of confusion and a wasted word. Though I have no doubt that there are controversies and arguments about what exactly happened when and where, and simplification is inevitable; it is, after all, a dramatization. Compelling as a tragedy, for we all know the end. Fascinating as an examination of systems failure, communications failure, unheeded warnings and flawed human decision-making in an information void. (Not only oil and gas, but communications flowed through Piper Alpha, and very shortly after the first explosion, the communications centre was destroyed and the upstream rigs ceased to have any communications with Piper, each other, or the head office on shore. All they had was a mayday, a horizon lit up with fire and explosions. Disbelief, and a miscue by a pressure-guage, led to an hour-long delay in shutting down the flow of fuel to the fire.) And impressive in the way it weaves together narrative, multi-viewpoint action, reflection and analysis.

The acting is very fine, from the subtle shadings of compassion and force in Lord Cullen’s portrayal, through the strain and chagrin of the managers and executives facing his questions, to the actors portraying the men themselves, both within the inferno and as they recollect what they did, saw, and survived. Even the sound-effects, superb and intermittedly frightening, merely augmented the impact of voices and dialogue. The play is available until next Saturday afternoon (GMT).

Voices on the BBC

I don’t know whether I agree with the boy who expressed a preference for radio “because the picture are better”, but the voices surely are. I’ve been delighting in the match of reader and text in the 1989 version of Mary Wesley’s The Camomile Lawn [link to page at the Guardian] over on BBC7, read by Sian Phillips, with full round tones and fine control of inflection and character. My only regret is that it’s an abridged version; the pacing at times seems a touch forced and the nuance lost.

In complete contrast of voice and subject, I’ve been tuning into “Old Harry’s Game”, also on BBC7, and wishing that I could accurately place Andy Hamilton’s accent, because I’m sure there’s a joke that I could be getting, if I could decode English accents. Hamilton, as writer and lead, plays Satan, the Prince of Darkness, etc, etc, in a clear, slightly nasal tenor, as a cocky young executive type who’s not quite as clever as he thinks he is. While he tries to solve the overcrowding problem in Hell by promoting virtue to humankind, there’s a newcomer down below with an eye on his job.

I missed mentioning “That Man Attlee” when it was on, but I’m sure it will come around again. It is one of Robin Glendenning’s political-historical plays, and I don’t mention it for the voice as much as for the writing, and in particular for the characterization of Attlee, the “little grey man” who was leader of the Labour party when it won its unexpected landslide victory in 1945. The play depicts the attempt of some of his ambitious colleagues to oust him from the leadership, and Attlee’s quietly expert re-channeling of those energies to best serve the Party’s vision. The play uses the same narrative frame as Glendenning’s play about Winston Churchill, “Playing for Time”, and I don’t think quite as effectively, but when the confrontation comes, it is riveting.

Don't diss my trash, darn't!

Through obscure channels, doing research for TSP (like every other writer on the planet, I too have The Secret Project), I came upon Break of Day in the Trenches, the weblog of Esther MacCallum Stewart, who does research on, among other things, the First World War and popular culture. She also teaches SF. In her March 2005 archive page, she has a letter to Women’s Hour (BBC) in response to a program on women in SF which dealt with the subject superficially and by embracing all the stereotypes about both SF and female SF readers.

Which brought to mind my reaction to a recent BBC7 offering, the futuristic thriller Cold Blood. There was nothing original in the plot, but I could live with that. I followed along fine until we came to the “scientific” explosition. The homicidal villain of the piece was a scientist who found a cure for leukemia and pretty much everything else in the biology of the icefish (see left). In the best pulp tradition he self-administered his elixir and began turning into a human-icefish chimera, developing extreme cold tolerance and a tendency to rip out his coworker’s throats. He needed the iron from their blood because his was losing its hemoglobin. Icefish have none: oxygen dissolves better in cold water than warm, so they can survive in very cold water. Now, so I could accept psychosis (though that is probably even worse misrepresented in popular fiction than are genetics and genetic engineering) – say, toxic effects of his elixir. I could accept aplastic anemia or severe red blood dyscrasia or hemoglobin gene expression being turned off by insertion of a bioengineered vector – again toxic effects. But throw in cold adaptation sufficient for long-distance travel across the Antarctic at night PLUS a miracle cure for everything and the suspenders on my belief go pop-sproing! I can’t imagine history being presented, even as escapist entertainment, with such gross absurdities. (Though I am not an historian, and I do not know what torments historians suffer.) Why should SF!!

SF on the BBC

BBC7 has just started replaying Stephen Moore’s reading of John Wyndham’s second published novel The Kraken Wakes. Since it had been many years since I read it, I had forgotten much of it when I heard it on BBC7, and there was quite a different pace taking it in as 16 half-hour installments with no persisting sense of what comes next , compared to the 90 minute radio drama version of The Crysalids. Stephen Moore had a gravelly, sombre delivery, appropriate for a novel that starts with the hero and his wife watching icebergs drift and calve up the Thames and discussing title and epigraph for a memoir that may never be published. A couple of weeks ago there was a three-part reading of CL Moore’s Shambleau, which once I got past the reader’s ersatz American accent, the “seduction” scene was almost unbearably suspenseful.

Classic politics

The BBC Classic Serial is broadcasting 3 plays based upon Suetonius’ Lives of the Cesars. The first 2 are currently available on their website. The first covers a clandestine meeting between Gaius Julius Cesar, Governer of Gaul, Cicero and Cato, in which they attempt to hash out their differences to let Cesar return to Rome without either being arrested or invading; also present, and inadvertantly key, are Cesar’s daughter Julia, married to another, absent factor in the equation, the general Pompey, and Tulia, Cicero’s daughter (Julia and Tulia may be historically accurate names, but they’re too close for hearing; it’s a credit to the actresses who played them that from the start there was no confusing the personalities of the high strung Tulia and the forceful Julia who inadvertantly brings about the final schism between Cato and Julius).

The second play takes place after Cesar’s assassination and concerns the survival and rise to power of Cesar’s adopted son, Octavian (later Augustus), 19 years old at his adopted father’s death. Two characters appear of whom I’d formed a strong impression from other works of literature – Livia, Augustus’ wife (can anyone forget Sian Phillips in I, Claudius), and Mark Anthony. Only this is not Shakesphere’s noble Mark Anthony, but a foul-mouthed brute of a Roman general. The BBC attaches a warning of “strong language” – Roman politicians are not delicate in their insults. The latter play reminded me a little of the recent film Elizabeth in the shape of the growth of a young person who, though innately noble, is a survivor more than he is an idealist, and when he finds himself forced to sacrifice principle, uses that sacrifice without apology to his advantage; in the case of the Octavian play, Octavian, who found war repugnant, builds an ordered society in which violence finds its release in the carnage of the arena. A note of warning: if you want to hear the first of these, listen before Saturday, as only two plays are available at one time, and each new play bumps the earlier of the 2 from the site.