BBC Radio Reviews
The Testament of Jesse Lamb
With the death toll from Maternal Death Syndrome rising daily and the world on the brink of disaster, teenager Jessie Lamb becomes convinced she must take action. Her act of heroism could save the human race, but will those closest to her offer their support? Jane Rogers dramatises her award-winning novel in five parts.
In the world of the future, or rather the near future, a case of biological terrorism has unleashed a genetically engineered virus, which has travelled the world. It remains dormant until triggered by pregnancy, whereupon it destroys the pregnant mother’s brain, and as they die, the child.
The Testament of Jesse Lamb
With the death toll from Maternal Death Syndrome rising daily and the world on the brink of disaster, teenager Jessie Lamb becomes convinced she must take action. Her act of heroism could save the human race, but will those closest to her offer their support? Jane Rogers dramatises her award-winning novel in five parts.
In the world of the future, or rather the near future, a case of biological terrorism has unleashed a genetically engineered virus, which has travelled the world. It remains dormant until triggered by pregnancy, whereupon it destroys the pregnant mother’s brain, and as they die, the child.
The only hope for the human race appears to be the sleeper program. This looks to take young women to be implanted with embryos collected before the virus was released upon the world, placed into an induced coma for the term of the pregnancy, kept alive artificially. For a vaccine has been developed, but it can only be used, on these embryos, before implantation, and cannot save the mother. The children born will, however, be immune.
This then is the moral dilemma of the heart of this story: if you are naturally selfish, the human race will become extinct, as infected human beings become old and die. The only hope lies in the sacrifice of young women. They must die to preserve the future; they must give their lives for their children to be born and survive.
Whereas in the First World War, it was the young men who went off to fight, and who were sacrificed to the war machine, here it is young women who must volunteer to give up their lives so that future generations may live.
This is portrayed in a narrative drama this is very gripping. While at the same time as a sleeper program is going ahead, society is breaking down and falling apart around it. Terrorists groups are attacking any biological research into the virus that uses animals, and it poses the question: which parents would like to see their children sacrificed so that future generations might live? I think that our generation is probably far more selfish in this respect than that of our forebears.
This then is the moral dilemma of the heart of this story: if you are naturally selfish, the human race will become extinct, as infected human beings become old and die. The only hope lies in the sacrifice of young women. They must die to preserve the future; they must give their lives for their children to be born and survive.
Whereas in the First World War, it was the young men who went off to fight, and who were sacrificed to the war machine, here it is young women who must volunteer to give up their lives so that future generations may live.
This is portrayed in a narrative drama this is very gripping. While at the same time as a sleeper program is going ahead, society is breaking down and falling apart around it. Terrorists groups are attacking any biological research into the virus that uses animals, and it poses the question: which parents would like to see their children sacrificed so that future generations might live? I think that our generation is probably far more selfish in this respect than that of our forebears.
The Road To Normandy
It is 75 years since the D-Day Landings, when Allied forces launched a combined naval, air and land assault on Nazi-occupied France. The Allied landings on the Normandy beaches marked the start of a long and costly campaign to liberate north-west Europe from German occupation.
In The Road To Normandy, Dave has, for 40 years, put behind him the fact that he landed on the Normandy beaches on D-Day. He doesn't remember his comrades with any special affection and has no wish to indulge in memories. But, in June 1984 he goes back to Normandy and faces the ghosts of the past - and one ghost in particular. One in a series of The Road To... plays by actor and writer Douglas Livingstone. Ronald Pickup is Dave, Brenda Blethyn plays Thelma, Mick Ford is Pete, Trevor Nichols as Simon and Douglas Livingstone is Bill. First broadcast on Radio 4 in 1985.
The Road to Normandy is a compelling drama which captures both the return of many veterans in 1985, which I myself remember being also noticeable for the presence of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher on the beaches and graveyards of Normandy. It also backtracks to the date itself and the sheer chaos and fear and courage of that time, as the band we follow come ashore on the beach, desperately make their way to the wall while fellow companions are cut down.
The sheer terror after a journey of sea-sickness, and the rush to get to safe ground to fight, is well captured in the narrative of this play, a time when "all hell broke loose".
At its heart is also a secret, the friend Pete who loses his mind through sheer terror and ends up shooting himself. This is part of the trauma of war, a secret that the protagonist Dave and his comrades keep from the reporter who is present in 1985 and also the Pete’s son who is there to honour his dead father for his bravery and for being a brave and courageous casualty of war. But as Dave's sergeant says, Pete was not a coward, he was just driven out of his mind by terror, and it could have been any one of them who had gone that way. By remaining silent, they honour the fact that he died in the conflict.
It is 75 years since the D-Day Landings, when Allied forces launched a combined naval, air and land assault on Nazi-occupied France. The Allied landings on the Normandy beaches marked the start of a long and costly campaign to liberate north-west Europe from German occupation.
In The Road To Normandy, Dave has, for 40 years, put behind him the fact that he landed on the Normandy beaches on D-Day. He doesn't remember his comrades with any special affection and has no wish to indulge in memories. But, in June 1984 he goes back to Normandy and faces the ghosts of the past - and one ghost in particular. One in a series of The Road To... plays by actor and writer Douglas Livingstone. Ronald Pickup is Dave, Brenda Blethyn plays Thelma, Mick Ford is Pete, Trevor Nichols as Simon and Douglas Livingstone is Bill. First broadcast on Radio 4 in 1985.
The Road to Normandy is a compelling drama which captures both the return of many veterans in 1985, which I myself remember being also noticeable for the presence of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher on the beaches and graveyards of Normandy. It also backtracks to the date itself and the sheer chaos and fear and courage of that time, as the band we follow come ashore on the beach, desperately make their way to the wall while fellow companions are cut down.
The sheer terror after a journey of sea-sickness, and the rush to get to safe ground to fight, is well captured in the narrative of this play, a time when "all hell broke loose".
At its heart is also a secret, the friend Pete who loses his mind through sheer terror and ends up shooting himself. This is part of the trauma of war, a secret that the protagonist Dave and his comrades keep from the reporter who is present in 1985 and also the Pete’s son who is there to honour his dead father for his bravery and for being a brave and courageous casualty of war. But as Dave's sergeant says, Pete was not a coward, he was just driven out of his mind by terror, and it could have been any one of them who had gone that way. By remaining silent, they honour the fact that he died in the conflict.
The sound effects bring the drama to life, and it is a compelling study of what it was like to experience of D-Day, and also to explain that why veterans gather to salute the dead, they are also disinclined to talk about the more harrowing experiences of that day.
It may have been first broadcast in 1985, but it has lost nothing of its power to bring the listener into the heart of the conflict, and glimpse the sadness of those who survived and lost friends, and who come to terms with the memories of that conflict.
As a recent JEP report shows, this was so true to fact:
"Gripped by fear as deafening bombs exploded and bullets tore past him, killing comrades left and right, Royal Marine Commando George Simms was one of the first on the beaches on D-Day."
"As the ramp dropped on his landing craft, the 20-year-old former butcher’s boy from Manchester gripped his rifle and jumped into the waist-deep sea water as “all hell broke lose” when the enemy opened fire on the beach ahead."
“I don’t honestly think there could ever be a day like that day on D-Day, when we were in action,” Mr Simms said.
“Fear. Fear. Absolute fear. There was nobody brave that day, nobody saying ‘Come on lets go and do it’.”
And yet they did it, even though they knew they might die, for a better future for all of us today.
https://jerseyeveningpost.com/news/uk-news/2019/06/03/there-was-nobody-brave-that-day--d-day-veteran-remembers-storming-the-beaches/
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