The Road

The Road is one of the lost television plays of Nigel Kneale. Originally filmed in 1963 for the BBC's First Night series no copies are known to exist thanks to the corporations trigger-happy delete and reuse policies.  With only the script to remind us of what was, The Road has long been a Holy Grail for Kneale fandom.  Whilst 'lost' recordings do still appear occasionally from the dim, dark recesses of production and distribution company vaults the chances of ever getting to see these missing shows are slim to say the least so it was with excited trepidation when, in 2018, news was received that a new version was in production with writer and comedian Toby Hadoke given the go-ahead by both the BBC and the Kneale estate to take a run at remodelling the script as a radio drama.  

Making only minor adjustments and assembling a small, strong cast Hadoke and director Charlotte Riches make a solid go of telling the story of a night in the woods in 1768 as amateur scientist Sir Timothy Hassall (Adrian Scarborough) and renowned philosopher Gideon Cobb (Mark Gatiss) along with Hassall's wife Lady Lavinia (Hattie Morahan - the daughter of the original lost play's director, Christopher Morahan), Cobb's educated slave Jethro (Colin McFarlane) and others investigate strange noises amongst the trees.

It's a convincing adaptation of a solid and fairly typical Kneale story that exists in that hinterland between horror and science fiction that he made his own and has similarities with his more famous works, The Stone Tape and Quatermass and the Pit.  As ever Kneale makes good use of his opportunities to comment on the vicissitudes of our times and his pessimistic outlook on the future.  The ending, whilst generally easy to anticipate, hits suitably hard and the whole thing is helped along by some uncovered, archive recordings from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop that had been used in the original play.

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