The Stage

Radio Review - Drama

Published Monday 4 April 2005 at 16:40 by Moira Petty

Crystallised in most of our memories since childhood as the final frontier separating pupil from teacher, the school staff room has the whiff of the inner sanctum about it. Little wonder that the education system has inspired writers for centuries. Few explorations of the subject have run as long as former teacher Jim Eldridge’s comedy drama for Radio 4 which celebrates its 100th edition in King Street Junior Revisited.

Whether deliberately or by happy accident, the fictional school itself is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding, giving a certain focus to the endeavours and grumbles from the staff room. Shouting from the rooftops that a celebration is due, only makes sense when there really is something to smile about. This first episode in the new six-part series was perfectly crafted, a mini-drama in itself, and delivered a smart lesson about the folly of first impressions and knee-jerk reactions. Fresh blood arrived in the shape of a new headmistress, played by Brigit Forsyth, with her own frosty stamp but, as she has shown in roles stretching back to The Likely Lads, follow the instructions and she defrosts a treat. As with any long-running series, original cast members provide continuity. Back again were Marlene Sidaway and Paul Copley like a pair of hardy perennials.

George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman novels have their genesis, of course, in the classroom as the character who grew up to be a blaggard, liar and bogus hero began life as the bully of Tom Brown’s Schooldays. The author himself provided the radio adaptation for Flash for Freedom in a glossy production staring Rhys Meredith as the younger Flashman and Joss Ackland - his gravelly tones crackling and splintering - as the older man narrating his adventures among the slave trade. It was full of cheating at cards, wrenching, vomiting and other laddish delights, along with the occasional quote in Latin from Horace and Pliny. Flashman continues to scale heights of political incorrectness that others only dream of. I’m not greatly bothered by that. I simply do not go for swashbuckling heros or anti-heros. But while it left me cold, I believe that those who like the genre will have lapped it up.

Two other classic dramatisations currently running were more to my taste. Having unburdened myself of my winter velvet bowler and summer boater on leaving school, I have no hat to take off to GK Chesterton’s Edwardian sleuth, former judge and self-proclaimed ‘noble lunatic’, Basil Grant, star of The Club of Queer Trades. But I metaphorically doff my hat to Basil’s brave assertion that “I never could believe in that man Sherlock Holmes”. Rather than dishing out the red herrings, these stories, adapted by Simon Littlefield, unveiled idiosyncratic characters and equally unlikely motives.

In this representation, Edwardian society seethed with secret organisations, including The Adventure and Romance Agency which wore mysterious plots around its members’ humdrum lives. David Warner played Basil with mystique and elegance, with good support from Geoffrey McGivern and Martin Freeman.

Meanwhile, George Eliot’s masterpiece Middlemarch has begun a substantial 20-part dramatisation by Judith Adams. The novel’s complex themes of social philosophy, emancipation and love have space to unravel and its many characters to reveal themselves at leisure. Getting Dorothea Brooke right is one of the keys to success and, so far, Caroline Martin has provided a sympathetic portrait of a woman who while a thinker and a humanist, can also be a bit of a killjoy.

Elsewhere, Tom Sharpe’s The Great Pursuit, a parody of literary life, has been serialised with smart-paced comic book appeal with John Guerrasio hilarious as an author acting out of character. Bert Coules dramatised Val McDermid’s A Distant Echo merging past and present with clarity and tension. Simon Farquhar’s Candy Floss Kisses, with Steven Geller and Frances Thorburn as teenage lovers, moved into darker territory as the boy’s dysfunctional family was revealed, to great effect.

Details:

King Street Junior Revisited - R4, from Friday, April 1

Flash for Freedom - R4, from Sunday, March 27

The Club of Queer Trades - R4, from Monday, April 4

Middlemarch - R4, from Monday, March 28

The Great Pursuit - R4, from Wednesday, March 16

The Distant Echo - R4, Saturday, March 26

Candy Floss Kisses - R4, Tuesday, March 29