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Red Moon: Watchmen meets Taken?

A Watchmen Spy Thriller

Cold War Espionage and A Watchmen Spy Story

A spy thriller wrapped up in an alternate history conspiracy that has a lot of build up, but not the payoff needed to stick the landing. Eddie Sloper is your typical gumshoe who gets in way over his head, but like Liam Neeson in “Taken” he has a set of skills that keep him alive. They aren’t, by any means, a nightmare for the antagonists, who seem to be everywhere and know everything.

Placed in a cold war era alternate history, the setting is like “Watchmen” for both obvious (Cold War era) and less obvious reasons. Where the famous graphic novel by Alan Moore dissected the super hero genre, this tries to do the same with the spy genre. That may be giving the Wireless Theatre Company in the UK too much credit, as the first episode is paced slowly and is easy forgettable. The montage of news reports leading up to a Soviet-controlled moon is a McGuffin and its own micro story. It wastes no time getting to the plot, but it’s not clear how they connect. The tone is played straight and the cliche sounding announcer of an old time radio show does not make an appearance.

A Swampy Middle, Fast Pacing and Confusing Plot Points

By episode 4, the plot begins to spin its wheels as more clues are uncovered without overtly informing the audience of the clues’ importance. It being the middle of the 6-episode story, it suffers from a swampy middle that even after listening to the whole thing multiple times, you aren’t sure what it contributes to the overall story. Based on episodes 2 and 3, this feels like more of the same.

After the arguable filler, the story regains traction and combines the holocaust, space race and arms race into one giant through line of circumstance and secret history guile. After that mild reveal, the story starts back up with a plot line that seemingly comes out of nowhere. By far the biggest complaint is misunderstanding important plot points and character motivations that shift between episodes. There’s a sense of the plot moving too fast while the pace doesn’t match the speed with which the plot is going.

If there wasn’t so much mental energy spent on trying to decipher the story, the production quality would be easier to comment on. As with all Wireless Theatre Company productions, the sound design is great and worthy of a spot on BBC Radio 4. Unfortunately the story has more in common with the Watchmen movie than the comic book. At least in terms of memorability or lack thereof.

7/10

Next Time

Night of the Orchid

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