Moment of truth

I wonder how many people still listen to plays on radio now that there is so much competition for our attention from Twitter, YouTube and the hours taken up with Strictly Come Dancing. It’s not just that we’re being taken over by techie gadgetry so that there is less and less time to do anything else. (How many photos have you got trapped on your computer with no time to sort through their nameless numbers and download on to a memory stick, let alone buy the right paper to print them, etc., etc.?) It’s also very difficult to follow the action in a radio play and get involved in the drama if you’re tempted to text, flick on to Google or download those dratted photos midway through. When all you’ve got to go on is what you can hear, with no visual clues, a degree of single-minded concentration is required that is fast disappearing in our multitasking times.

But the play’s the thing that really makes the BBC licence worth paying (and we need to remember that the licence fee funds radio just as much as it does TV), as any true radio buff will tell you. When they’re good, and quite a few of them are really good, there’s no beating the way a play on radio can take over your mind, sparking the imagination at the same time as offering the consolation of insight into other people’s lives.

This week’s Saturday-night drama on Radio Three (produced by Jessica Dromgoole) hit the spot, drawing us in because of its vivid aural atmosphere. This was in part created by recording it on location in Hackney, so that it captured the buzz of inner-city life, the hubbub and chaos of sound, the clash of so many different people living ear-to-ear.