DISCO

An update from the day job:

People don’t always notice Marnie Crawford, and when they do, they tend to underestimate her. She has a Masters in Social Sciences, and was so unobtrusive at university that “the tutor didn’t even know {she} was enrolled until [she} turned up to a viva.” From uni she went on to the police, where criminals duly failed to notice or underestimated her which – given her superior arrest record and solve rate – was extremely unwise.

With their own arrest record in steep decline, the Ministry of Defence has created a new unit within the Military Police. As an experiment they have chosen a civilian to lead it. Enter Marnie, with her expert knowledge of bias theory, a tendency to work out her thinking via voice notes, and an impressive collection of Sister Sledge recordings on vinyl.

DISCO (Radio 4, TX 2 -6 June 2025) takes a bias for each episode (Functional Fixedness; Anchoring Bias; Belief Perseverance; Hot Hand Fallacy and Hostile Intent Bias). Marnie’s knowledge often helps her, but sometimes it creates red herrings. And DISCO itself is something of a red herring. Granted, Marnie likes to escape from her own head into four-to-the-floor music, but the unit she has been asked to head up is called Defence: Serious Case Operations.

And of course, everyone refers to it as “DISCO”.

The series asks two questions. 1. Who killed Adam McTavish, tuba player in a military band? and 2. Who is Marnie sending her voice notes to?

Bryony Hannah is the voice throughout. And the writer is Nick Walker …

* * *

The sixth and last series of Annika Stranded was recorded in the early weeks of the first lockdown in 2020, with producer, sound engineer and coordinator tuning in remotely, and Nicola Walker performing from her newly-configured cupboard/home studio. Working with colleagues and ‘talent’ in three dimensions, in a real studio, is still much better, I think – and unquestionably more fun – but the remote MO has outlasted the pandemic to become an entirely reasonable way to make programmes. It is easy to forget how new and strange it was back then.

Annika has since moored her speedboat in Glasgow, in a reimagined Annikaverse for TV (Alibi/BBC). Her family dynamic is very different but – with Walkers Nick and Nicola still at its heart – the spirit of the original radio shows is never far away.

But this is not a post about Annika. Partly this is catch-up after six years of blog-silence, but principally it’s to remind you what a fine writer Nick is.

In 2021, we collaborated with him on a series of stories called Making Amends. Essentially, this was a La Ronde of human frailty, starting with an alcoholic who tracks down someone to apologise to, only to find that the person they sought was not at home because they were, in turn, seeking to make amends to someone else. Again, we recorded all five readers – Hermione Norris, Stuart McQuarrie, Tracy Wiles, Rosie Cavallero and Tony Gardner – remotely or semi-remotely.

But also, I’d like to remind you of the prodigious talent of Bryony Hannah. We first worked together about twelve years ago. Since then, I’ve tried to work with her as often as is reasonably possible. She has an extraordinary ability to find a character, a life, a backstory in even the most pared-down script.

Last year, thinking about a new Radio 4 slot – described by Nick as “Book at Bedtime without the book” – we asked Nick and Bryony to get together from the very outset. The result is DISCO. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed making it. If you want a sneak preview of what to expect, click here.

P.S. Sepsis Confidential: 2 will be available very soon.

Annika Speaks! (Reprise)

Do not mess with this detective [photo by Jeremy Osborne]

‘Vertigo’, the last story from the third season of Annika Stranded, goes out tomorrow at 7.45pm on BBC Radio 4. Thereafter you can catch the whole series on BBCiPlayer. In case you missed it when it first appeared on the Sweet Talk Productions Facebook page, below is a short interview with the voice of Annika, Nicola Walker.

How did you react when you read the scripts for the first series of Annika Stranded?

I fell in love with Annika immediately. She just jumped at me off the page! Straight away it was obvious that Nick [Walker] had created this woman who was fabulously complicated, funny and totally unique. And she’s ‘difficult’ in the most appealing way, I love difficult women.

In the bubble of the studio, the boundaries between where Nicola ends and Annika begins seem ever more blurred. In what ways do you identify with Annika Strandhed?

Annika is definitely my fantasy alter-ego! Her work and her private life are mashed up together and she’s never anything less than true to herself. She’s far bolder than me, far less concerned about other people’s opinions, I love that about her. And I love her attitude to the darker, difficult parts of her job and her life. I found similar traits in Stellan Skarsgard actually, he would greet a tricky filming day with a shoulder shrug, a smile and a murmur of “it is what it is, Nicola, it is what it is”.

Annika Stranded evolved out of Nick Walker’s love of ‘Scandi-crime’. In recent times as well as Annika you’ve been DCI Stuart in Unforgotten and Stevie in River. Do you enjoy crime fiction/crime drama as a ‘private citizen’, and if so, what?

When I watch tv crime drama now I’m always trying to suss the end, from the opening credits on, I’m shouting at the telly to the great annoyance of my family. I watched a lot of police documentaries for ‘Unforgotten’, like ’24 hours in police custody’, I’m now addicted to them. But I’ve always admired Gordon Burn’s work, both factual and fictional. And you have to go a long way to beat Joan Smith’s collection ‘Misogynies’, which contains one of the most brilliant and shocking essays on murder crime I’ve ever read.

What are the pleasures of working in radio compared to TV?

Radio is my favourite medium! You can be anyone, do anything and go anywhere. You are not confined by visuals – the possibilities are endless. I sit in the studio on one side of the glass running between three or four different mike stations often and the world is conjured up by three brilliant people on the other side of the glass. There are no physical limitations, we can cross oceans, climb mountains, visit the Reindeer Patrol and then be inside Annika’s head in an instant.

What are you working on now or will be working on soon?

I’m doing more audio drama at the moment, playing Liv Chenka in a new Big Finish Dr. Who story. There’s a Tango Christmas special coming on soon which, as you would expect from Sally Wainwright, is fabulously dark and funny. Then Unforgotten 2 goes out early next year, with Cassie and Sunny handling a completely new case.

After that I am crossing my fingers and toes that we find a way to do more Annika. I miss her already.

Annika Speaks!

You can find a short Q & A with Nicola Walker, the voice of Annika Stranded, about the series here on the Sweet Talk Productions Facebook Page.

Reindeer Police Are My Weakness: Annika Stranded – Series 3

Earlier this year, the last episodes of Swedish TV’s loose adaptation of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö‘s Beck introduced Steinar, a Norwegian detective, to Stockholm’s homicide division. Steinar (played by Kristofer Hivju) is a huge, hearty Viking of a man who, in the best traditions of TV detectives, breaks the rules if he has to. If you weren’t distracted by very occasional violence towards people who frankly had it coming, you might even say he was a mensch.

Steinar took a job in Stockholm to be nearer to his teenage daughter from a previous marriage, but before that he’d been a policeman in Oslo. I couldn’t help wondering if he’d ever crossed paths with Annika Strandhed. On balance, I thought probably not – I doubt the Oslo murder squad would have been big enough for both of them – but I did wonder whether Steinar did his early, hard yards with the Reindeer Police, for whom Annika, as we will hear in the third season of Annika Stranded, still has a weakness.

To avoid self-repetition, I checked back on posts for previous series (Annika Stranded and Motherhood Becomes Her …) I see – duly repeating myself – that I said: “For some in the UK the Scandinavian crime ‘bubble’ has already burst – ‘it isn’t great and actually it’s just boring’ – but this isn’t a view I share. For one thing, I don’t think it’s a bubble. [… ] Scandinavian crime drama has settled down to take its murky place in our everyday viewing culture, just as American crime has for decades.” A few years on, I still believe this. True, the first season of Forbrydelsen (The Killing) remains unchallenged as one of the finest things I’ve ever seen on TV, period. Beck, as it happens, while perfectly watchable, was nowhere near in the same league (and personally I think Radio 4’s adaptations of the original novels, The Martin Beck Killings, were much better.) But that said, we’re all still hoping that Saga Norén will slip into her leather trousers for a fourth series of The Bridge, and the recent offering from Iceland, Trapped, was right up there with the very best.

Meanwhile, on the wireless, Annika has maintained her status as Queen of the Boat Patrol and leading light of the Oslo Murder Squad. Like Steinar – and despite or because of her idiosyncratic approach to detective work, her problems with heights, confined spaces and her father – she remains a mensch. This is part of her enduring appeal.

So what to say about Annika Stranded (Series 3) which hasn’t been said about the two previous series? Writer Nick Walker and Nicola Walker as Annika are once more at the top of their games. Mikel, Annika’s forensic photographer, is just as put-upon and just as inaudible. Jon Calver has done another playful job with the sound design. First Aid Kit and Hildur Guðnadóttir still provide most of the music although, since Series 2, the Söderberg sisters have released a new album, some of which features in Series 3, and Hildur’s haunting cello has added a very dark layer to the atmosphere of Trapped.

What is slightly different about Series 3 is that circumstances conspire to take Annika further and further away from her comfort zone of crime on the Oslofjord. The first story, ‘False Signals’ takes place on the island of Ostøya – familiar enough – but the second, ‘Forty Words’, brings her to the naval base in Bergen, and echoes Nick’s earlier, non-Annika drama, Messages To A Submariner. In ‘Traffic’, Annika’s navigational abilities are challenged by spending a lot of time in the boot of a car. The final story, ‘Vertigo’, takes place in the mountains of the Trolltindene, and Annika’s young son Tor shows a flair for church restoration in the stave church at Borgund.

Existentially, the darker moments of Series 3 are perhaps the darkest yet. But they are, in Saul Bellow’s phrase, the dark backing of the mirror, which make Annika’s vitality shine all the brighter.

But unfortunately, Annika never quite starts a relationship with a member of the Reindeer Police …

‘False Signals’, the first of four stories in Annika Stranded (Series 3), is a Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4, starting Sunday, 20 November at 7.45 pm and thereafter on BBC iPlayer.

Photo Credits

1. Ostøya

photo credit: Espen Klem <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/23874626@N06/5966915563″>IMAG0568</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=“https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a>

2.Bergen

photo credit: IngolfBLN <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/58927646@N02/24777073882″>Fløibanen Bergen</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=“https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>

3.Trolltindene

photo credit: Dieter Gora <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/100571744@N07/14816339785″>Trolltindene</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=“https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>

4.Borgund

photo credit: gerdragon <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/77166813@N00/153603937″>Borgund Stave Church</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>

Motherhood Becomes Her … Sort Of: Annika Stranded Series 2

At the end of series one, Annika Strandhed – the queen of the Oslofjord – was going through the gears on her speedboat and promising her child-in-the-womb a lot of fun. Since then she’s given birth to a little boy, named Tor. And now, after an erratic spell of maternity leave, Detective Annika Strandhed of the Oslo Police is back on the case. And so, although he doesn’t know it yet, is little Tor.

I’ll leave you to judge if Annika is permanently altered by motherhood or suffering from temporary bewilderment and broken nights. Certainly, she’s less inclined to accuse a victim’s father than in the previous series, though whether this is because she’s worked through her own father-issues or put them on the back-burner (see bewilderment and broken nights) is anyone’s guess. What hasn’t changed is the brio with which she approaches her work. Annika’s sidekick, police photographer Mikel (who has become one of the great non-speaking radio characters, right up there with Pru Forrest from The Archers or Samantha from I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue) is even more put-upon and long-suffering than before. And, as with Eric Morecambe’s interpretation of Grieg’s Piano Concerto, Annika still tends to play out all the right notes of a case, but not necessarily in the right order.

Stranded in the studio - Nicola and Nick — Stranded in the studio – Nicola and Nick

Once again, Nick Walker has created not just a wonderful character but an entire precinct drama in three short stories/mini-plays. And as before Nicola Walker is at the top of her game, to the extent that I suspect that Annika might be playing Nicola, not the other way around.

You can find out how Annika juggles single motherhood and police work by listening to Into The Ice, the first episode of Annika Stranded [Series 2] on BBC Radio 4 at 7.45 pm (BST), Sunday 6 July. And if you’d like to hear a taster of what the three episodes have in store, click here.

geezerinhat

Just some random geezer …

Annika Strandhed