Haunted | iTunes
The Inspection Chamber | BBC/Amazon Alexa
A Culture of Encounter (BBC Radio 4) | iPlayer
“Do ghosts exist? If not, why do we see them?” Haunted is a four-week-old podcast that has the personality and self-assurance of a show that’s been running for years. Presented by Danny Robins, it takes an in-depth look at ghosts, ghouls and things that go bump in the night. Unlike most of us, it doesn’t take one of the two opposite stances – essentially “bah, humbug” or “pass me the Ouija board” – but instead examines each real-life tale on its non-life merits, wondering why the people in it are seeing something that, according to all logic, simply isn’t there.
Part of the podcast’s joy is Robins himself, whose exuberant presentation style borders on mad camp. (So much more enjoyable than those podcasters who read from their script in a manner that suggests that presenting is somehow beneath them.) Robins’s script is excellent too; he has a lovely turn of phrase and has clearly been thinking about ghosts for quite a while. He wonders about “presence and absence in grief – if the lines have become blurred”. If we are sure that someone we love is present, even though that person has died, are we actually experiencing a heightened form of absence, rather than presence?
The music is nicely spooky, and Robins’s interviewing is sensitive. In the most recent podcast, Death Is Not the End, he talks to a friend whose mum has died and gets from him the most wonderfully moving description of his mother’s body after death. I was in bits. It was a vivid visual experience; pictures conjured up by words in my ear. I can see her now, even though I never did. Like… a ghost.
The BBC is merrily forging its way into new digital landscapes, bashing away with its podcasting efforts and coming up with new ways to make its drama more exciting. In the spirit of the latter, it recently offered The Inspection Chamber, an “interactive” drama that you can try out if you have a speaker that’s compatible with Amazon’s voice-activated Alexa service. We’ve just got one, so I gave it a go. After a good 10 minutes of Alexa telling me that The Inspection Chamber was not in my music library, I realised that I had to say: “Alexa, launch The Inspection Chamber,” rather than: “Alexa, play The Inspection Chamber”, and we were off. And, as is the way of these things, the drama was… not very good.
The conceit is that the room where you are listening is actually an Inspection Chamber for some unidentified scary government or corporation. You, the “being”, are being examined so your details can be put into a database called Dave (Database of Animals, Vegetables and Everything else), which has a bland, US, robot female voice. There are two human inspectors, Kaye and Josef, and you interact with them and Dave by answering questions. Sadly, as you might expect, the answers you give don’t always register. Josef asked: “What are the two days, other than Tuesday and Thursday, that begin with T?” I replied: “Today and tomorrow” – but that didn’t seem to click, and I was told off for not answering. Plus, Dave seemed a bit touchy (I told her I was bored, and the programme switched off). But even if it worked perfectly, I’m not sure this kind of drama is for me. I don’t want to be forced to chat to my music speaker; surely the point of great audio, whether drama or fact, is that it does its job while you’re getting on with other stuff.
Just space to mention Douglas Alexander’s A Culture of Encounter, an interesting and sensitive programme on how we cluster together according to type. Nothing new there, you might think. But Alexander explained how this is leading to strange separate monocultures, such as the entire city of Oxford, a place where no one without money can afford to live. Fascinating, and a bit sad.
