Doing for conservation what The Archers did for farming
Imagine a cross between Detectorists and The Archers, but set on a wetland nature reserve, and you’ll come somewhere close to Song of the Reed (Wednesday, Radio 4). If you’re thinking that sounds like peak Radio 4, you wouldn’t be too far wrong. But there’s a political edge here, too.
Mark Rylance and Sophie Okonedo star in this drama series consisting of four episodes, one in each season. Last week was the second episode, timed for the autumn equinox, following the first one in midsummer. The story is that the fragile ecosystem of the fictional Fleggwick wetland nature reserve in Norfolk is under threat financially following the death of its owner, whose daughter, Liv (Okonedo), is desperate to protect it. But the site warden, Ian (Rylance), who has kept the place going all but single-handedly for 40 years, is suspicious of trendy conservation initiatives and “them cowboys at Wildscapes” or any other forward-thinking eco organisation who might want to take over the site and rescue it from financial ruin.
What’s to be done? One possibility is finding a bioindicator species that can prove the quality of Fleggwick’s natural environment and qualify it for special funding. The team settle on the incredibly rare little whirlpool ramshorn snail, a freshwater mollusc that someone once spotted at Fleggwick in 2016. The search for the snail begins, but other dramas unfold. Times are changing. Helicopters circle overhead, employees consider their future job prospects, biodiversity is dwindling, the pandemic is squeezing visitor numbers and uncertainty in the Middle East filters through to by means of an Iraqi immigrant, Sadegh.
The writer, Steve Waters, has said he pitched the drama to the BBC with the aim to “do for conservation what The Archers did for farming”. This is definitely a drama on a mission. Real and expertly informed ecological and conservation issues are the heartbeat of the story (the little whirlpool ramshorn snail, for instance, is indeed a rare and endangered species).
All of which is to say that this is a drama with nuances and contemporary resonances far beyond the average. There are plenty of ideas jostling together, including original, slightly new-age music and interludes of original and borderline spiritual nature poetry. And the whole thing is recorded at RSPB Strumpshaw Fen, with real volunteers from the reserve providing background hubbub as they count species in the biodiversity survey and huddle around a plate of crisps and sandwiches.
Sometimes there were just too many threads and it was hard to follow, but the beauty of the production swept everything along with an immersive natural soundscape of the salty winds, soft rain, whispering reedbeds and butterfly-rich meadows of Strumpshaw Fen, masterfully gathered by producer Boz Temple-morris and sound recordist Alisdair Mcgregor.
Though for all its originality, Waters’s original pitch was right: it is very similar to The Archers. I’m pretty sure that at least one of Fleggwick employees Tam or Kay is distantly related to a Grundy, and even Okonedo, a versatile radio actress, seemed to be channelling capable Debbie Aldridge to an extent that was almost spooky. Rylance, however, was in a class of his own, somehow making you completely forget that he’s Mark Rylance; at one point I was sure he must be one of the real RSPB volunteers, so convincing was his portrayal of a dedicated conservation worker who cares more about nature than just about anything else.
But if you thought that a rural conversation drama set on a nature reserve was Radio 4 at its most Radio 4, get a load of The Hidden History of the Window (Radio 4, Tuesday), in which Cardiff University academic Rachel Hurdley traced the history of the window in British architecture, from the arrow slits of Chepstow Castle, through the magnificent stained glass of Gloucester Cathedral and all the way to modernday department stores with sparkling Christmas displays.
The most interesting bits of Hurdley’s programme were when she veered away from history and tentatively started to consider more broadly what windows mean to us: how we communicated and connected with one another through rainbows and messages in our windows during the national lockdowns, for example. And Simon Armitage, the poet laureate, popped up to share his own affection for windows as a source of poetic inspiration. Through windows, he said, “you are allowed access to another world, without actually being in it”. This documentary was subtly illuminating and informative; a well-framed new view on the world.