Sci-fi drama: Nigel Kneale's 'The Road'

Mark Gatiss stats in a remake of this reverse ghost story.

• contains mild spoilers

If you only listen to one audio drama in your life, let it be Nigel Kneale's ‘The Road’.

I know that’s an extremely bold statement. But truly, ‘The Road’ is clever, terrifying and lingers in the memory. It's a slow burner, certainly. But the listener is rewarded with one of the cruelest left-field twists you may ever encounter.

In 1768, servant girl Tetsy reluctantly gives a blood-chilling account of strange, unearthly sounds in the woods near the village in which she lives. Her story attracts the interest of amateur ghost hunter, Sir Timothy Hassell (played by Adrian Scarborough). He leads the primitive ghost hunt that forms the core of this unsettling play.

Set in a period of history when advances in science challenged the established orthodoxy of the Church, itself supplanting Paganist religions, the character of Hassell represents the past and all of its purported naivety. His superstitions and pseudo-science are mocked by everyone, including his, wife Lady Lavinia (Hattie Morahan) who considers him a self-indulgent fool.

Gideon Cobb (Mark Gatiss) is an opinionated, waspish fellow. His charming veneer almost seduces Lady Lavinia. Though intellectually gifted, he is nieve, over-optimistic about the progressions emergent science will bring to the underprivileged, and frequently uses his status and superior intelligence to pull rank, without once noticing the inherent irony or his own gross hypocrisy. Being a gifted craftsman, Nigel Kneale offers the listener a heavy dose of schadenfreude, as by the conclusion of this play, Cobb finds himself thoroughly disarmed by events as they rapidly escalate out of control.