Easter must be a good candidate for the story most often told. Every week, if not every day, in churches across the world the events of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Day are recalled. It's one of the most dramatic stories there is, moving from death and defeat to life and hope. But for those who might hear it in church it perhaps becomes too familiar, whereas those who don't may not know it at all. Given the centrality of Easter in our cultural history that seems a shame.
So at CTVC we started thinking about telling the story in a different way – as a fictional documentary set in the 21st century for our Things Unseen podcast strand, which is aimed at people who believe there's more to life than the material world.
We asked the writer Nick Warburton to come up with a contemporary story that reflected the themes of Easter – a story actors would then use as the basis for a series of non-scripted interviews, each speaking as one of the characters in the story. Nick's experience with radio drama and dealing with religious themes made him the obvious choice, and in fact I'd made a sequence of monologues on the same theme for BBC Radio only a few years ago.
His story, Oliver Park – The Easter Riots, is set in the fictional town of West Trent. The town park has become host to a camp for refugees, which has now grown to include some homeless, immigrants who've recently lost their jobs, and a few splinter protest groups. A vigilante group, City Watch, has been established in response, and with a march planned by the camp supporters, tensions are high.
Into this situation comes Carl Franklin, with a small group of followers including Charlie Hammond, and a radical but peaceful message. An infiltrator leads them into an ambush by City Watch, and while Carl's supporters flee, he remains, with devastating consequences. The cycle of violence seems set to continue, but extraordinary events the following day take things in a new direction.
For me, the most remarkable moment of the whole process came when I first talked to the cast over the phone. We'd given them a chance to digest the story and their part in it, and went ahead with the usual process of calling contributors up ahead of the recorded interview. As they dropped into their roles I was suddenly talking to the people who'd been at the centre of events very like those in the Gospels. From the tense and evasive police inspector to the slippery mole who betrayed Carl Franklin, the conversations were a revelation, and at times quite moving.
I shouldn't have been surprised at this, really. I'd worked with Joe Sims before, so I was thrilled that he wasn't so tied up being the plumber Nige Carter in Broadchurch to be available for Oliver Park. Over the phone he became the impetuous Charlie Hammond so thoroughly I found myself defending our decisions about how we were telling this fictional story. ('You're not talking to him? What kind of radio programme is this?') And when it came to the recording he was in tears when talking about what happened to Carl.
We hope people will find the finished drama equally moving. It's released at www.thingsunseen.co.uk in two parts, on Good Friday and Easter Day, or you can hear the whole thing on Premier Christian Radio on Good Friday at 5pm.
Paul Arnold is a producer and studio manager at CTVC, having previously worked for BBC Radio 4 and 4 extra. He is an accredited worship leader at Christchurch Methodist and URC church, Hitchin, for which he writes songs and plays the saxophone.
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