Media 17/11/08

For this assignment, I have to make a list of drama slots that have been on previously. I then have to listen to one play and comment on it. The main radio stations I will be focusing on will be BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 7.

BBC drama slots.

BBC Radio 3.

Plays that are played weekly on BBC Radio Three.

14/09/2008 : Blue Wonder.
21/09/2008 : A Disappearing Number.
28/09/2008 : Season of Migration to the North.
05/10/2008 : Tulips in Winter.
12/10/2008 : The Duchess of Malfi.
19/10/2008 : Black Watch.
26/10/2008 : Caligari.
02/11/2008 : Free Thinking.
09/11/2008 : All Quiet on the Western Front.
16/11/2008 : Tamburlaine, Shadow of God.

BBC Radio 4.

The Afternoon Play (Daily).

10/11/2008 : Brief Lives.
11/11/2008 : The Singer.
12/11/2008 : Keep your Pantheon.
13/11/2008 : Quartet.
14/11/2008 :Operation Charlie.

BBC Radio 7.

BBC Radio 7’s play, ‘The world as we know it’. Episodes are as follows.

05/11/2008 : The End.
06/11/2008 : The End.
12/11/2008 : The Election.
13/11/2008 : The Election.

The Play.

The play that I have chosen to listen to is ‘The Singer’ on BBC Radio 4.

I found this play very hard to follow at first and had started to lose interest very quickly. In my opinion it took quite a while for it to get going. The scenes were too close together so you couldn’t tell the first from the next scene. Although as it went on, it began getting easier to understand. I think that the sound effects where very convincing. I liked the fact that in every scene they have used some sort of background effects rather than just have silence. For example: the scene is set in a living room of a house or flat of some sort and rather than just having silence, they have the BBC News on in the background which I’m presuming is on the telly. I thought that was quite clever.

I thought the acting was good but not brilliant. I’m not an actor but it sounds to me as if they were trying too hard and when you try too hard at something it doesn’t always turn out as you expect it to. The arguments, for example: They didn’t sound that realistic. Normally, with arguments, you would get shouting in most cases certainly with relationships and affairs which was partly what this play was about. If I could put the arguments into one word, I would say they were blunt, only because in my opinion the voices didn’t have enough power, they just got to a certain level and stopped at that level, almost as if they couldn’t get any louder or any stronger. In terms of accents I thought that was really good. The accents fit in with the storyline which is set in Manchester, so most of the actors have northern accents, whether that was acting or real I don’t know but it is good how they have taken that into consideration.

Over all, I thought the play was good. I don’t normally listen to radio plays that much mainly because I lose interest and then switch over to another station but this was interesting, once it got into it.