THE CIPHER
The Parallax View
RELEASED OUT NOW!
309 minutes (10 episodes) | Podcast
Publisher BBC Sounds
Featuring a starry cast – including Anya Chalotra (The Witcher), Chance Perdomo (Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina) and George (“Oh my!”) Takei – together with slick sound production, gimmick-heavy scripting and on-trend pop culture references (“You once pulled a sickie so you could stay at home to write BTS fanfic”), this YA technothriller podcast almost manages to make a whole load of trusty SF tropes feel cutting edge.
When orphaned teen and chess prodigy Sabrina solves Parallax, a cryptic online puzzle that’s defeated millions of others globally, she finds herself enmeshed in a twisty-turny plot involving various opposing shady organisations and a serial killer who targets scientists. The fact that she accidentally bumps into a boy who’s also solved the puzzle, and is internet besties with yet another girl who’s almost cracked it ultimately turns out not to be quite the amazing coincidence it might have been…
Not that anything as mundane as chance encounters will worry you as the episodes go on and the revelations become exponentially more ludicrous – but in a fun way. This is B-movie sci-fi with a veneer of contemporary relevance, thanks to it referencing a whole load of buzz stories, myths and conspiracy theories that have caused tremors in the zeitgeist in recent years.
It does run on the spot at times, and may have benefitted from being a couple of episodes shorter. And the fact that nobody in it can be trusted is overplayed to the point of self-parody. But for the most part it’s a quirky, quickwitted and voguish techno-yarn.
Also now on BBC Sounds: The Battersea Poltergeist, an eight-part series about ’50s ghost-hunter Harold Chibbett.
The revelations become more ludicrous