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Grand Designs of the 3rd Kind is a Radio 4 play from Toby Hadoke (The Dad Who Fell To Earth) which I meant to review at the time of airing and centres around a couple who’ve moved into a new place, yet have an extremely odd builder.
Hal (Jonjo O’Neill) is a former tree surgeon, who’s in a wheelchair following an accident on the job. He and his wife, Penny (Krissi Bohn), are experienceing the pain and necessary evil of builders, as we all have to from time to time, in what is possibly a haunted house, or maybe Hal’s just overthinking things?
Meanwhile, building project manager Mr Hobbs and his wife having hushed conversations – are they having an affair, or just discussing lots of building stuff without annoying him?
Plus, should he be concerned that some other very weird things are going on? Well, without spoiling them, with the ‘3rd kind’ in the title, as it’s a play on Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, you’d expect some sort of alien interaction in there.
With welcome support from former Doctors‘ nurse Danielle Henry, as Hal’s physio nurse Donna, the best in the cast has to be Arthur Bostrom, as Hobbs, best known as Officer Crabtree in Allo Allo (“Good moaning!”), as he gets across his building words (another word beginnin with B?) whilst attempting to ‘get down wiv da kids’ with lines like “You feel me?” and “Cowabunga!” all in an overly posh accent, as well as saying things like “Many hands make the lights work” instead of the phrase, “Many hands make light work”, to show when a team is busy, so he’s echoing his former Crabtree character a little there, as you’d want him to.
Oh, and don’t forget the mention of ‘throbbing machinery‘!
As you’ll learn from the play, if the builders had been reviewing this, they’d have got things sorted out far sooner than myself. However, you’ve still got a few days to listen to it, so get a move on as it’s very engaging, and there’s a good few laughs in there.
Grand Designs of the 3rd Kind is available on the BBC iPlayer until Wednesday.
Score: 7/10
Director: Charlotte Riches
Writer: Toby Hadoke
Cast:
Hal: Jonjo O’Neill
Penny: Krissi Bohn
Mr Hobbs: Arthur Bostrom
Donna: Danielle Henry
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.