After a rather cheeky but polite request on Twitter by Gerry Paton, the creator of Bell's Persia to review his podcast, I thought I might do just that this afternoon, with the weather being so inclement.
Gerry Paton is an emerging writer, comedian and performer who is producing a podcast series titled, 'Bell's Persia' in which he tells the fantasy adventure story of a certain Geoffrey Bell MD and sets the story in the 1860s.
As a rather simplified overview of Paton's intent here, it seems he is attempting to bridge a gap between Around The World In 80 Days and The Carry On films, and falling a little short of both in the so doing. Allow me to extrapolate...
Paton voices the entire podcast himself, playing various characters along his journey, including his fiancee, and the tone of the series is very innuendo and double-entendre heavy (especially with sexual references). This in itself would be hilarious, since word-play, puns and language-based humour are indeed clever, humorous and in vogue. However, what lets this down somewhat is that much of the dialogue and the voices (accents) used, could easily be considered to be racist in our current climate, as well as some of the comments in today's societal terms being decidedly provocative. As long as the listener is prepared to accept that this is a tale set in the 1860s with the morals and moors of that time, then this shouldn't cause consternation.
I listened to the first in the series, epiosde 1; which takes our 'hero' from deepest darkest Cheshire, and a comfortable lifestyle with his fiancee, cross-country to Hell in Persia. This is his Odyssey (or him being Odd At Sea). It is a little slow, and takes a little while to 'catch on' but I do think the idea and the series have potential. If the pauses between sections are cut down, and the dialogue lifted slightly, it would create more of a sense of urgency and make it more easy to listen to. Perhaps if there are more sound effects too. I wouldn't want it to be an 'homage' to The Goon Show, but it does need to have that style of frenetic delivery for the jokes and overall milieu to truly land.
I am now left wondering what the title of the final epioside of this podacst will be. In the same flavour as the podcast, I'm betting, "Bell's End".
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 4/9/19
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