People Who Knew Me, BBC Sounds
There are dramas that hook you in and keep you hooked.
People Who Knew Me was switched on in our driveway in Belfast and took me all the way to Dundalk and back last Saturday.
I’d have been happy to drive to Cork.
People Who Knew Me – written and directed by Daniella Isaacs from the book by Kim Hooper – tells the story of Connie Prynne, a single mother to a teenage daughter, Claire. They live in California and Connie has breast cancer.
Only we learn very quickly that she’s not Connie and it’s complicated.
So far, so like a good radio drama or a good book – you can't put it down or turn it off.
It’s gripping and well paced; it reels you in.
Connie is really Emily Morris and she is living a big fat lie.
She used 9/11 to fake her own death. She ran away from from husband, Drew, and from New York to California.
And then she had Claire – a surprise, but Drew's daughter – and all was fine until the cancer diagnosis which made her realise that if she didn't come clean, Claire would be on her own with no family.
Connie – brought to life by actress Rosamund Pike – is no angel.
She’s difficult and sparky and sharp, she lets the anger flood out of her, she lays bare her feelings – oh, that support group meeting...
But let’s go back to that moment when everything changed, when her husband said they could afford for just one of them to go to college – the other would have to get a job and then go to college later. That flick of a coin that robbed her of a chance that could have ended in a professorship.
She lost, she lost, she lost. She had to go off and be a grown-up first, getting a duff job while he played at his dream of being a chef.
And how resentment eats like acid. How her husband’s mother became too ill to care for herself and suddenly she’s a carer.
Her life is never as she imagined... and then along comes Gabe.
Pike is brilliant in the role of Connie. Hugh Laurie makes an appearance.
It’s a great listen – a rollercoaster of a story that keeps you hooked and wanting more until the end.
