BBC Radio Drama ‘Fair Game’

by Laura Lai/ Review

The BBC Radio Drama ‘Fair Game’ by Dave Simpson is a psychological drama of great technicality, particular the character arches. It is the story of Tom – an employee in a company and of Sue – a new employee in the same company.

From Sue’s first working days Tom is pressuring her into his unfair game, as they were both married. The first time they go out, Sue did it more from politeness as she was the new employee, but Tom was focused on assessing her happy marriage to her husband and with lies about his life and by inculcating some doubts in Sue’s mind, he was pursuing psychologically his goal. But Sue tells her husband about this evening. The climax of this story is a conference weekend. Tom arranges with another colleague to be alone with Sue the whole weekend. Sue realized she was set up and Tom’s wife, Helen, discovered that her husband was trying to cheat on her again. The end is surprising and moralizing.

The story of this drama must have been inspired from other such harassment stories at work place. I personally never understood how characters like Tom can be so confident that the other one is not noticing his psychological tricks. Although the beginning of Tom and Sue’s story may sound familiar to many women, the ending differs from case to case.

In this drama, Sue was honest with her husband, Michael, and Tom’s wife, Helen, was already considering the divorce. But the situations can be very different: Sue and Tom, for example, could be single, and Sue not liking Tom; or one of them married, etc. etc. Tom learned that not everybody is interested his unfair games. But do characters like Tom ever learn their lesson?