Radio 4, June 15 2018

Life isn’t a story – and certainly not in a time of war…

The final part of Martin Jameson’s Dangerous Visions serial takes events to a year after they began, with outside forces starting to take more of an interest in the very Disunited Kingdom and their influence having a direct effect on the lives of the Fletchers and their family. There’s heartbreak and tragedy resulting from the cascading effect of the war on our already crumbling infrastructure, and there’s dogged human resilience in all sorts of forms – from the doctors who won’t turn their backs on patients (but are still coldly realistic about the realities of life now) to the mother who won’t abandon the search for her daughters, no matter the odds against her.

A couple of characters that I never thought we’d hear from again make a reappearance, and to an extent you have to acknowledge the dramatic necessity of their return even if there’s a moment of “of all the gin joints in all the world” about it. But, as with the whole of this series, it’s sold by the uniformly excellent acting. Jeremy Swift, Maureen Beattie, Sam Barnard and Elinor Coleman (in two key roles across the serial) have given us three-dimensional characters whose strengths and weaknesses have been the central core of the story, but it’s not just the leads. There are plenty of smaller roles in this, and we’ve always feel that we’re briefly intersecting with their own stories that are continuing on another programme – a tribute not just to the actors but to Jonquil Panting’s direction and sound design.

There’s a degree of circularity about the final scenes but there isn’t a neat ending; it simply wouldn’t be appropriate and I’m glad Jameson and Panting didn’t go that route. There’s much more to learn and I hope that either as part of a future Dangerous Visions series, or extracted to become its own serial, that we find out what happens next…

Verdict: An appropriate and powerful end to this part of the Fletchers’ story. 9/10

Paul Simpson