Hello, this is Annika Strandhed speaking to you, and you alone, personally. I am being played by Nicola Walker, who studied English at New Hall, Cambridge, and she wants me to tell you all about George Orwell, played by Eric Blair, who wrote something called 1984, when he was on the Isle of Jura in the year, yes, you guessed it, 1948.
Nicola Walker's 'college mother' at New Hall was none other than comedian Sue Perkins, who clearly must have had a hand in the script for this one, even though it claims the co-writer was 'Nick Walker' - we assume played by Nicola Walker.
Sue Perkins is always played by Sue Perkins, and she knows a great deal about ice, and how very long it takes to make it. But this is only in quantities needed for a long G&T, in her case the G before the T definitely indicating volumetric proportion. She certainly does not seem to know that industrial-scale ice-making requires a bit more than a domestic chest freezer, nor that once made, it is very heavy. Very heavy indeed, and I would guess that the block of ice featured might have been close to half a tonne. Two reasons why it would not have been so easy to make it in a great hurry, and then shift it around on an impromptu basis, in the event that you have just decided to do a bit of spontaneous murdering.
And so we end up with this rambling script in which Monty Python meets The Goon Show, with echoes of the 'Fish Slapping Dance', and lots more of "He's fallen in the water!" Indeed the whole thing was run not by Orwell's 'Ministry of Fear', from '1984', but by the Ministry of Silly Walks.
Silly, silly, silly.
You can of course write a spoof cop show, which this kind of looks a bit like, but I don't think that was ever the intention. 3/10, and simply not good enough, Nick Walker and Sue Perkins.
"Oh look, he's fallen in the water again!"
George Orwell died of tuberculosis in 1950, aged just 46. So he never heard 'The Goon Show' on radio. Thankfully he never saw this, either.
