Written by Mark Lawson (Britain's brainiest potato) The Number of the Dead was like being stuck inside vetran broadcaster for Globelink News; Henry Davenport's brain for an hour. This was actually the main reason I listened to the play, the write up reminded me of Henry, it got choice in the Radio Times and it starred Tim McInnerny (again) I would have preferred David Swift from Drop the Dead Donkey as for the first half hour it was pretty much that exact character! Snide little remarks inside his head about the extent of his young female cohost's knowledge of Istanbul being that it's where Turkish Delight comes from... and other Henry-isms made me smile at the memories of my favourite sitcom...
But the play took a turn for the dramatic in the last twenty minutes and wow, was it ever exciting! I'm not usually on the edge of my seat during a radio play- I'm usually playing solitaire- but I was all ears. Tim's on-air breakdown was not at all reminiscent of any of Henry's! Very serious suddenly and as usual I was moved by McInnerny's acting, I've been a fan of his radio work for fifteen years and I have all the scuffed old tapes to prove it!
Very rarely I find do these radio3 plays deliver, I listen to radio4 a lot, I'm not sure what the audience for radio3 is, snobs? Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard on just before Christmas was so bloody boring I nearly passed out- two hours long, stars Nick Le Prevost, what, with about three minutes of air-time?! Anyway, I found this one very entertaining and very well done.
Listen again on the BBC website for the next 6 days: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00h9xbz
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