Buried in the BBC’s annual report (and completely eclipsed by the top earners’ list) is the revelation that BBC radio made 4,550 hours of drama last year, more than five times as much as BBC1, BBC2 and BBC4 put together.
Remarkable though that total is, radio drama would be on the amber list if it were a bird. With so many people to pay, it is by far the most expensive genre to make, and has thus been whittled down remorselessly in financial cuts. On commercial radio and the World Service (apart from an annual broadcast of winning plays in an international competition), it has vanished. On Radio 4, the Friday Play has been axed and short stories have been reduced. Radio 2 ended its serialised readings in 2008.
So three cheers for Radio 2 reviving drama tomorrow — and, just as important, in prime time. Alone on a Wide Wide Sea is an adventure serial that takes a half-hour chunk out of Jeremy Vine’s show (which this week is being presented by Vanessa Feltz) every day from tomorrow until Thursday.
Adapted from Michael Morpurgo’s novel, it tells the story of two London orphan boys, Arthur and Marty, who are sent to the spider-infested Australian outback in 1947. Morpurgo, who narrates, says in his introduction that 100,000 British children were “forcibly banished” to the dominions between 1869 and 1970. This is quintessential Morpurgo, an unfolding of loss, hardship, dislocation, survival, undying hope and light at the end of the tunnel.
Toby Jones plays a brutal Christian fundamentalist, obsessed with chastising the children put to work on his farm, and Jason Donovan is the adult Arthur. The stirring story sweeps across the decades, with fine, melancholy folk music, though that does tend to slow the narrative pace.
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Radio 2 is a big, powerful network, delivering the biggest audience in Britain for the joint lowest cost (0.5p per hour per listener, compared with 1.3p for Radio 4 and 5.7p for Radio 3). It can afford to be bolder. Wide Wide Sea could signify a wider ambition for its daytime output.