Ah, Scandinoir. Full of beautiful scenery, horrific violence and soulful metaphors. Like "Even the snowman hates the snow. Fragments of his own body, falling from the sky. Like standing in a rain of cold flesh. It will, eventually, even for the jolly snowman, bum him out."
So begins "The Man Who Wasn't Dead", a spoof series which takes all of the usual tropes of grim murder and gives them a little bit of a comedic twist. This is a multi-part, centred around a murder so horrible that the body has been utterly disintegrated, as if it had never been there. Or has it?
The story follows the misadventures of that most important of crime tropes, a mismatched pair of investigators. Matthew Holness is Knut Angstrom, the least effective policeman on the force, with a traumatic past, a dead wife and a drinking problem (it's traditional). Mina Oblong (Nadia Kamil) is a daring young reporter from a buzzfeed equivalent, with a chip on a shoulder and a fire in her belly, as well as an expense account and lots of cat videos. They attempt to fight crime.
My favourite part of this however is Simon Kane's narration. (He's also currently on the radio in John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme.) His description of the action is impressively terrible, using metaphors and similes that either go nowhere, are tautological, or are beautifully poetic right up until the moment he goes back to correct all the factual inaccuracies in them. He's also the only one who even tries to do an accent.
The comedy is top notch, with some hilarous moments. The dialogue is snappy, and it's not afraid to play with absurdism to get a laugh, as well as leaning a fair bit on the fourth wall (does that metaphor work for radio?) A few moments of slightly lower humour than quite needed, but it's more hits than misses, with a nicely deadpan tone to Holness' craziness ("It's not a witness, it's a clue!"). And there's some nice linguistic whimsy. Definitely one I will listen to all of.
Highly recommended.
Tagged: Radio Comedy Cast Sitcom Crime and punishment