The Last Radio Drama Standing

In his latest radio drama for the BBC,  filmmaker Paul Watson attempts to bring his celebrated knack for TV documentary to the radio. “Last Family Standing” paints the portrait of the Truscott family, struggling to make ends meet in the aftermath of the second world war. The story opens with Watson interviewing the aging Dorothy Truscott, played by Janet Amsden with a perfect blend of feeble moxie. Though obviously quite grizzled, Dorothy can still rail against modern-day politicians as hard as ever. As she rants at Alistair Darling’s sad plans to dig out of the financial crisis on the audible television, she slowly unravels the story of her family’s hardships in the aftermath of the second world war. In Dorothy’s memory, we are introduced to her parents, Marjorie and Charles Truscott–played by a too young Jaqui sharp and a too melodramatic Jonathan Trafler. These characters spell out their story clumsily: they both worked hard in a munitions factory during the war, and gave one of their son’s lives to the British cause, yet there is  no work for them in the post war economy. This blatant central theme is minimally accentuated by the over-zealous plot developments: A black yank soldier charms Dorothy and leaves her pregnant, the family’s only surviving son is forced to make money through quasi illegal investing and Marjorie decides to turn tricks at the local pub in order to make ends meet. All the while the post-war depression to blame for these incidents,  a depression spawned by the big guys at Westminster not caring about the “little guy,” fat-cat bankers getting rich off the poor racial tensions, and bullying Yanks who dominate Britain culturally and politically. Sound familiar? Indeed, there are parallels to our current economic situation, and Paul Watson makes absolutely no attempt to make this connection subtle.