Shilling and Sixpence (September 2018)

He signed my flyer when I told him I had already got it 😂 Nice to see he was so passionate about it!

I thought Matthew was absolutely brilliant in this, he made me smile to myself on several occasions. 

I am in that hell with this audio, either that or my age is starting to tell or I am not able to comprehend and continiuity to the story telling it seems expansive to the point of becoming very ambigious. It is superb in every aspect, apart from I am finding I am losing the thread, of who is actually who, I don't get the concept of people not recalling people that they previously met and knew. I am on my fifth listen from the start, now with a notepad...

I love a cliffhanger too, BUT only if it's resolved.

This is why cliffhangers should not happen unless there is a certainty that they can be concluded, it's not fair on the audience. The cliffhanger at the end of season 2 of TIMELESS was nothing short of amazing, then it was cancelled. Had it remained like that it would have been an outrage. Thankfully fan reaction and protest forced a special conclusion movie. It's the same with all media, don't do it unless it can be resolved.

Personally l think there will be a second series. This sort of fills a gap of sorts. It’s got a sort of Jago and Litefoot as it’s got a pair of investigators and it’s got that classic tea time drama feel that also predominated the J&L stuff. But l will stand corrected.

I listened to this and enjoyed it overall. My main feeling, and this may be heresy on this forum, was that it didn't work especially well as audio drama and would have worked much better on stage or on TV. If it was a prestigious Sunday night period drama it would be getting BAFTA nominations.

what didn't work for me was the number of accents, which detracted from my enjoyment because it comes across as a device to unsuccessfully disguise the fact that there are only a small number of actors doubling or tripling up for all the parts. As has been pointed out above, it got confusing because it was unclear when we were listening to an actor doubling up or a character disguising themselves by adopting a different accent. This meant I was able to guess the final twist before it happened.

when a character disguises themselves as another character on TV there are lots of visual misdirections that can be employed to mislead the audience. On audio it is only the actor's voice and when it is a performer as ubiquitous in BF as Louise Jameson ... well, we've heard all the accents before (e.g. Belfast accent in the Time Vampire)and the twist just falls flat. BF would have been better employing an actor who had never appeared in a BF production before whose voice(s) we did not know.

this maybe comes across as a harsh review and it's not intended to be ... overall it was good an I will buy series 2 if it comes out, but this aspect of it just didn't work for me.

But I did love it in spite of that minor thing

It's not just you. I'm finally getting around to listening to this now (did episodes 1 & 2 yesterday, 3 & 4 this morning) and I am having an absolute hell of a time keeping track of what's going on.

For me, at least, the problem is twofold: it seems like there are just too many characters to keep track of, and a lot of them sound very similar to my ear.

It's a really well-produced set. I'll need to give this a relisten (or three) at some point and take notes as I go, but this first time through....