Senior Producer at BBC network Radio in Bristol. Documentary maker for Radio 4, previously producing programmes for File on 4 and BBC2. Former Deputy Editor of the New Statesman Magazine.This, I think, contributes a bit to the feel of the play. The early part in particular feels like it has an agenda: to show that statistics can be misapplied. The play then proceeds to do this in the way a documentary might. The only thing is, this isn't a documentary, it's a story. Once you feel this, you get bored with it. You know where it's going: Lambert's going to prove his guilt and we'll all be bowled over by how clever the maths is. This leaves the play feeling rather clumsily put together. Why, at the beginning, did Lambert gasp when he heard the recording of the girl's voice? And why did he get all flustered when they asked if he had a brother?
You'll follow the maths as he shows the real odds are more like ten to one but then it's as if the statistics fight back: Jonathan seems to be proving his own guilt. He seems such an average guy but, in statistics, another word for average is mean.I don't even know what that means really. Nevertheless, there's some nice original artwork in the Radio Times. There's an illustration of some handcuffed hands grabbing at a key stuck to a wall with statistical formulae scrawled on them. Having said that, the picture looks like it's been drawn by someone that hasn't heard the play at all, and doesn't really sum it up at all. But, hey, it's the thought that counts.
The sequel is never as good as the original. But why? Is it because the director, the actors and the cameraman suddenly get bad at their jobs? No, it's because most films are mediocre, and the great Oscar winning film is the exception. So, the sequel is more likely to be mediocre than it is to be another great movie.On average, the play fell into the mediocre (perhaps as with most films, most radio plays are as well). There was a wonderful twist halfway through and it had a real human element behind it. Unfortunately this felt drowned by a heavy-handed approach to statistics in the first part and then a lack of structure once we'd heard the twist. It was as if, once we'd had the twist, they sort of gave up and just let it trail off.
Monday 7th December 2009: | Zero Degrees of Separation |
Tuesday 8th December 2009: | Winter Storm |
Wednesday 9th December 2009: | One in A Million |
Thursday 10th December 2009: | Getting to Four Degrees |
Friday 10th December 2009: | Number 10 5/5 Immortality at Last |