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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Shocking & Awful, 18 Jun 2004
Originally transmitted on BBC Radio 4 within a real-time framework one weekend in 1995, this dramatisation of Len Deighton's novel still stands among the very best drama productions in the audio medium I've heard, almost ten years later.Though on the surface this play appears to deal with many elements familiar to those Britons who grew up watching films about our brave boys in the RAF, it is no Battle Of Britain-style flagwaver and quickly descends into the hellish futility and atrocity of the actions those courageous young men were called upon to perpetrate - and the appalling carnage frequently visited upon them in the act of doing so. Fortunately, this is an intensely humane story, a tragedy which displays compassion towards all parties. A lack of human drama would render the story somewhat souless but production is equally matched with excellent performances, surmounted by the Tom Baker's grave tones as a narrator who effortlessly makes the listener feel like a spectator. The interviews with real veterans interspersed through the drama only adds to its power. I'd recommend this drama on many levels, but I personally think its worth hearing just to demonstrate the dynamic potential of well-produced radio. The harrowing four minute autopsy of a seven-second blast of cannon fire is, in my mind at least, far more violent and affecting than anything achieved by cinema, and an extraordinary set-piece that shows just what radio can do in the theatre of the mind's eye. Crudely put, this play is a human drama which is at times like a cross between Saving Private Ryan and Memphis Belle. Being an airman has never seemed such an appalling prospect, and while I shall never comfortably look on a Halifax or Lancaster Bomber ever again, nor - I hope - will I forget what flying those machines often demanded of the young men appointed to visit the whirlwind upon German towns and cities.
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by Martin Davidson
by BBC Radio
by Len Deighton
by Len Deighton
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DVD ~ Richard Todd
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