It starts with the end

Many of us may have been listening to more audio drama over this last year, as it has been marginally easier to continue creating and producing stories told purely via audio than visual media. From radio plays to podcasts, there seems to be more audio content that ever available, and never cease to be amazed by the versatile and resilient creatives responsible for bringing these stories to us.

There’s something that feels very clandestine about listening in on other people’s phone calls. In the first episode of Apple TV’s Calls, we meet Sara and Tim, who are doing the long distance thing on the opposite coastlines of the USA.

We’ve all experienced static, poor lines, dropped calls, which gives this a verisimilitude from the word go. The graphics that accompany this audio run like a real-time transcript of the calls, which give this 14-minute opener an undertone of a true-crime documentary, especially as various emergency services join the fray.

Camila is our third main protagonist this episode, and it soon becomes apparent that Tim has done A Bad Thing. That’s about to be the least of his problems, though. Is his girlfriend American or Scottish? Perhaps she’s relocated from Inverness to NYC, that’ll be it.

The drama escalates at lightning speed, with unexplainable intruders and attacks on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Who or what is attacking is unclear, as is the possible scale, all contributing to a disturbing sense of panic as the episode reaches its climax. We’re told these calls are all linked somehow, and I’m keen to see where they’re going to lead us.

Verdict: Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets The X-Files in this unsettling opener. Worth a listen, keep an open mind. 7/10

Claire Smith