THE ALTERER
[RADIO-SCRIPT]
Two unlikely cops DI Bob Boxer and DC Shona Doberman probe an academics killing
spree. Comedy police drama with Finlay Welsh.
2009
The cops probe a link between the deaths in Glasgow and murders in an idyllic
village. Stars Finlay Welsh and Anita Vettesse.
Comedy police drama by Alastair Jessiman
FINLAY WELSH stars as D.I. Boxer in BOXER AND DOBERMAN for BBC Radio 7. He recorded
TEA AND SYMMETRY for BBC Radio.
All four episodes of the full-cast BBC Radio 4 comedy police drama written by Alastair Jessiman,
originally broadcast in March 2009.
A gloriously gritty Scottish police series featuring the duo of the grizzled Detective Inspector Bob
Boxer and his slightly less grizzled sidekick Detective Constable Shona Doberman. Join them in
these four episodes as they probe an academic killing spree, investigate a link between the
deaths in Glasgow and murders in an idyllic village, have their deepest childhood fears exploited
by a sadistic adversary and scrutinise a series of celebrity deaths. Taggart eat your heart out.
Finlay Welsh also starred in The Voyage of the Demeter.
d on 31 March 2009
Show Details
Traverse Theatre
Traverse Theatre and Òran Mór
Robert Forrest (scriptwriter), Finlay Welsh (idea for the play), Gavin Harding (Production Manager ), Douglas Irvine (Director), Claire Elliott, Renny
Robertson, Sarah Scarlett, Mark Sodergren, Andrew Steel (Production (Traverse) ), Patrick and Rita McGurn (design), Susannah Armitage (Trainee
Producer Òran Mór), David MacLennan (Producer Òran Mór)
Finlay Welsh (Walt/Dylan)
45mins
David Walters was a man who had everything. He was belovèd by his mother, had brains and looks and got the girl, Bella of Belle Isle.
We meet him seated on a park bench surrounded by dead leaves and with the sound of birdsong in the background at what turns out to
be the end of his life.
The character's monologue of poetic recitation and reflection, punctuated throughout with him popping pills and washing them down
with ‘a drop of gold' from his hip flask, becomes a dialogue with what he believes to be the ghost of Dylan Thomas.
Walt, as he came to be known, was a Maths teacher with a love of words, not just the sound of them, but the very shape of them. Now
blind, widowed and an alcoholic, he describes his loss of sight as "absence not darkness."
Maybe that's why his psyche has created what he describes as a very material ghost; one he can hear, sense and smell and describes as
a "boozy phantom" with whom he is sharing a nightmare?
It is an adult version of the child's imaginary friend who gets blamed for all the naughty things the child does. In Walt's case, it gets as
bad as nearly setting the kitchen on fire while making a big fry up. This poetic alter ego turns out to be a guardian angel who oversees
Walt's "good death" as he "meets" again his own belovèd Bella's "hazel of a gaze".
Finlay Welsh is an actor of wide experience and this was a moving an accomplished performance from him.
AFTERNOON PLAY (RADIO 4, LONDON—BBC)
[Tuesday—2:15-3:00 PM]
November 8, 2011 “The Alterer”
[BBC RADIO 4: “…Atmospheric drama set on the east coast of Scotland in
1791. A watchmaker pours all of his skill and knowledge into making a
machine that will alter time and create a different universe; one in which
he hopes his desperately ill daughter will be returned to him, fully
recovered…”]
SCRIPT: Finlay Welsh.
PERSONNEL: Kirsteen Cameron (producer).
CAST: Liam Brennan (Buchan), Finn den Hertog (William), Pauline Knowles
(Mary), Cal MacAninch (Smith).
EXTANT RECORDING