BBC’s commitment to radio drama puts CBC to shame
Canada’s once-proud legacy in tatters
Two years ago Britain’s BBC showcased Dr. Who star David Tennant in a controversial new play called Kafka — The Musical. Last year, it mounted a hugely popular serial version of Neil Gaiman’s Nevermore, with a star-studded cast headed by Benedict Cumberbatch, James McAvoy and Christopher Lee.
Coming soon are Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra starring Kenneth Branagh and the debut of a hitherto unproduced Dylan Thomas play.
Don’t assume, however, that any of this is TV fare. Quite the contrary — it reflects the continuing vibrancy of radio drama, the art form that Canada’s CBC killed off in 2012.
Radio drama is set to play an impressive role in the BBC’s First World War centenary plans. But in Canada, the shameful shutdown of CBC Radio’s hallowed Studio 212 marked the symbolic destruction of a tradition dating back to a golden era in the history of this country’s public broadcasting.
CBC Radio drama’s final gasp probably caused corporation penpushers no sleepless nights. It had suffered a slow and withering death brought about by years of indifference and neglect, not to mention a depressing lack of vision.
In Britain, however, radio drama is not viewed as a dispensable anachronism. Instead, it is prized. The BBC has hugely ambitious plans to mark the 100th anniversary of the First World War with two radio series that will be aired in segments over the actual time span of that conflict.
One project, titled Tommies, will focus on soldiers in a signals corps unit, and the first two years have already been sketched out, taking the group as far as the 1915 Battle of Loos, which marked the beginning of trench warfare and the first time the British used poison gas on the enemy. The second series, Homefront, tells fictional stories set against the background of the First World War, with each episode set an exact 100 years before the day it will air.
Spend any time in Britain and you become aware that radio drama remains a palpable presence — daily plays on Radio Four plus numerous drama specials. And some of this treasure house is available to Canadians through the BBC’s popular Drama of the Week podcast.
When BBC’s Gwyneth Williams spoke recently of the need to foster “a playground for artists and writers,” she could have been talking about CBC Radio — not as it is now but as it was in an era when it accepted its responsibility to make a meaningful contribution to Canada’s cultural life.
Instead, radio drama became more and more a neglected orphan, notwithstanding the cult audience it developed in its dying days for Afghanada, a swan-song series of sadly mixed quality. But prominent Canadians who knew what it once represented were not silent when the axe fell. Their numbers included writers Alice Munro, Ann-Marie MacDonald and Jane Urquhart, performers Gordon Pinsent, Seana McKenna and Louise Pitre, plus such wild cards as Toronto lawyer Clayton Ruby, former Stratford Festival boss Des McAnuff and former Mulroney government cabinet minister Flora MacDonald.
Many of us have been around long enough to remember past glories — outstanding dramas from the likes of W.O. Mitchell, Len Peterson and Joseph Schull, and in later years such worthy successors as James W. Nichol and Stewart Boston; the superb radio acting of people like John Drainie and Bud Knapp; the contribution of visionary producers like Andrew Allan and Esse W. Ljungh.
There was also the remarkable one-off achievement of Reuben Ship’s The Investigator, which made international waves with its scathing satirical portrait of infamous U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy.
Once, CBC Radio drama was a showcase for outstanding writers and actors, as well as a training ground for others testing their wings. It created a legacy diminished in later years as CBC decisionmakers succumbed not just to a lack of commitment but to a failure of imagination that now extends to too many areas of programming.
Radio shows like Ideas and Eleanor Wachtel’s superb Writers and Company are increasingly lonely outposts in this not-so-brave new world. Given the fate of radio drama, we should be anxious for their future.