BBC Sounds, June 5, 2022

Cleo and Shawna return to the Powell Estate…

Doris V. Sutherland’s contribution to the ongoing Redacted saga sees the series live up to the promise made by Juno Dawson that the final episodes would feature an epic chase sequence. It starts off almost mundanely, as Shawna and Cleo make their way to the Powell Estate – with Cleo sharing memories of a role model that she had growing up – with constant voice messages and texts arriving… but there’s something distinctly off about them. And then they reach a café and the Doctor’s warning at the end of the previous episode starts to make horrible sense.

Director Ella Watts works with David Thomas and Arlie Adlington to ensure their sound design does a lot of heavy lifting in this episode, ratcheting up the tension, and placing things in the audio field in a way that emphasises the girls’ serious problems. As with the best Doctor Who, you don’t need to see everything as an audience member (which, to be fair, is usually down to budgetary considerations even nowadays), but what you do see, or in this case hear, has to make its mark quickly… and this does.

We get the arrival of another key character from the TV show although their very presence on the Powell Estate in 2022 raises some intriguing questions that I’m hoping episode 9 will answer quickly before they become a distraction.

Verdict: A measured start leads to a familiar Doctor Who situation (particularly from the Troughton era) given a Redacted twist. 8/10

Paul Simpson