The History Podcast: The Lucan Obsession (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
Uncanny – Halloween: Trilogy of Terror (BBC Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
Extrasensory (Apple TV+) | Apple podcasts
The Lucan Obsession is a snackable 10-part Radio 4 version of a gory cold-case thriller. It has the familiar ingredients of a true crime show: a young woman brutally killed; weird, contested details that don’t quite add up; a main suspect who was never caught; conflicting theories as to what might have happened. But, crucially, no confession, no nailed-on “solve”. And, this being the UK, there’s a spicy extra element: the upper classes.
The Lucan Obsession is, of course, about Lord “Lucky” Lucan, the Anglo-Irish aristocrat and gambler John Bingham, who disappeared on 8 November 1974. It’s also about the murder of his children’s nanny, Sandra Rivett, and the attempted killing of his wife, Veronica. But really, it’s about him, the swishy-moustachioed cad with an RP accent and murder on his mind. Before I listened, I’d forgotten Rivett and Lady Lucan’s names. I suspect I’m not alone.
Still, the series does its level best to give both women their due. Lady Lucan, in particular, has a personality here, and it’s a complicated one. Born Veronica Duncan, she was an acerbic social climber who pretended to be truly posh (“She felt superior to people because of her title, which she’d acquired by marriage,” says James Fox, a journalist who interviewed her at the time). She disliked her husband, though wasn’t above chucking a glass of wine over a woman she deemed to be flirting with him. Veronica lived with depression and ran away from psychiatrists; she turned on people. “You know what we do to foxes?” she said in an answerphone message to Fox. “We break their neck and we break their backs.” Brrr.
Our host is smart historian Alex von Tunzelmann. She is excellent here, with a perfectly modulated script and some great interviews. She goes through Lucan’s final chequebook (“the last few stubs, there’s nothing written at all”), and gets Fox to play the tapes of his interview with Veronica. Von Tunzelmann also trots into a bunker in the garden of Algy Cluff, one of many Lucan chums who might have hidden him. She talks to Mandy Parks, a babysitter for some of these friends – and possibly the last person to see Lucan before he disappeared. Throughout, she’s polite but probing, even with the interviewees who proffer information in that gnomic, no-vowels manner of the truly grand. It’s all thoroughly enjoyable. Neither salacious nor worthy, The Lucan Obsession hits the sweet spot in between.
Halloween may be over, but how about some scary stories? Danny “Uncanny” Robins, king of the unexplained, spent the whole of October on a Halloween countdown, bringing out a one-minute “spooky scare” every day. This just meant he read out a listener’s email about something weird that once happened, with accompanying sound effects. But there’s also the Trilogy of Terror, a longer, three-episode Halloween special in which he has an invitee: the comedian and Observer columnist Stewart Lee.
I expected this to be a three-part story, but once again the episodes are, made up of short tales sent in by Uncanny listeners. Lee is used as a “witness” who states, flatly, at the start of the first episode, that he doesn’t believe in ghosts – even though he does have his own very moving ghost story about his mother. Throughout the show, Lee provides excellent cheer, wondering what the heaviest object a poltergeist has ever chucked could be, and telling a story where a family’s rent was reduced due to spooky activity.
Listeners’ tales feature a ghostly lady in a red dress; Black Shuck, the glowing-eyed dog of folklore; and a young woman who experienced being turned into a second world war soldier. Also, and this made me do a real-life LOL, a listener’s very specific nightmare, which turns out to be shared with, of all people, Rick Astley. (Lee does an Astley voice, which made me laugh even harder.)
For more spookiness, try Extrasensory, a slickly produced documentary about a strange true story that seems designed for Uncanny. In 1957, in Hexham, north-east England, three children are walking to church when a speeding car on the wrong side of the road smashes into them and kills all three: a boy, Anthony, and two sisters, Joanna and Jacqueline. The father of the two girls, milkman John Pollock, becomes convinced that they will be reincarnated. He predicts that his wife will give birth to twins, who will be the girls’ new forms. And, yep, about a year later, his wife does exactly this (even though the midwives had only heard one heartbeat).
Will Sharpe of White Lotus fame presents, excellently, and is joined by Lauren, who’s the great-niece of Pollock, but didn’t know the story. She discovers the facts at the same time as we do – a nice touch. A slightly dodgy scientist makes an appearance and there are spooky details galore. The new twins, Gillian and Jennifer, share strangely similar characteristics to the dead girls; they recognise places they’ve never been. Still, this is an eerie, rather than petrifying listen, and it doesn’t quite sustain the stately pace. These days, we need things perhaps a little more scary, and certainly to move more rapidly.
