BBC Radio 4, March 9 2021 and on BBC Sounds

Dad doesn’t want to get up – and Bo and Ellie are worried about him…

The latest genre production from Radio 4 will hopefully get a warning before it – it does get quite graphic at times. It’s radio so we’re not talking the gore level of The Walking Dead (or even the forthcoming Gorgon from Elf Lyons), but at least some of the tropes that you might expect from a story about a Zombie Apocalypse are present and correct.

Katie Hims and Paul Elliott’s play is one of those that benefits from lack of knowledge beforehand, but it’s not a dramatization of a Walking Dead comic, or 28 Years Later. It’s done as realistically as possible – think a rabies outbreak but taken to the new extremes that zombies would involve. At the centre of it all are two little girls – terrific performances from Orla and Eliza Pearce – who are simply worried about their dad. Who has been asleep for three weeks. And then wakes up and has problems with memory and words.

Director Jessica Dromgoole ratchets up the tension with all of her cast giving it exactly the right amount of credibility – the description of this as a “persuasive horror story” is spot on. It feels like it could equally well be called Prelude to a Zombie Apocalypse, and I would certainly relish a return…

Verdict: A very well put together horror tale. 8/10

Paul Simpson