b7-leads-1Adapted by Richard Kurti

Produced and directed by Andrew Mark Sewell

BBC Radio 4, 6-10 February 2017

A modernised take on five of Isaac Asimov’s key robot stories…

In much the same vein as their version of The Martian Chronicles, B7 Media have taken a classic piece of print SF from the middle of the last century and turned it into a highly enjoyable piece of audio drama. The adaptation is not slavish to the original – character names are altered, genders changed, and even the outcome of the tales sometimes reworked – but what comes across more than anything else is a reverence for the prescience of Isaac Asimov’s work.

The unusual structure – five thirteen or so minute tales which also have to work as one play – works to dramatist Richard Kurti’s favour, allowing Hermione Norris’ Stevie Byerley to encounter many different forms of robots in a comparatively short space of time without it feeling like she’s rushing from one extreme to the other. True, the telescoping of some of the tales does mean that some of Asimov’s ideas have to fall by the wayside (dropping a bag on someone’s head is rather less subtle than the means of identifying a failing robot originally envisaged), but by extending Stevie’s story across all five plays there’s a consistency to the story that would otherwise have been lacking if all Asimov’s different protagonists had appeared.

We have different fears of robotics in the second decade of the 21st century than perhaps were around in the 1940s and 1950s, and those are factored in to the drama and make the stories a little unpredictable even for those who know their Asimov inside out. There’s plenty of room for the philosophy underlying mankind’s relationship with robotics – particularly in the final instalment – and director Sewell allows this element of the drama to take centre stage when appropriate… while ensuring that he ramps up the tension in the more traditional sections. He has gathered a strong cast – Brendan Coyle becomes a good foil for Norris, with Nicholas Briggs providing both cute and dissembling robots across two episodes – while Alistair Lock’s soundscapes and Imran Ahmad’s score quickly conjure up the many different settings in the mind’s eye.

The drama is at its height in the fourth episode, Liar!, which sees Dianne Weller’s telepathic robot forced into an impossible situation – Norris, Coyle, Weller, Corinne Wicks and Michael Cochrane are all excellent in this, and the tweaks, shall we call them, to the original add an extra layer of complexity to an already fraught tale.

Verdict: A well-produced and occasionally surprising take on this classic tale. 9/10

Paul Simpson

I, Robot can be heard on iPlayer starting here