Critical Analysis Of Could Do Better — Last Day Tx BBC Radio 4 01st October 13:45
Could Do Better Last Day is an oral documentary, with the main emphasis on the character, a journalist Lucy Kellaway, who is changing career at 58 and documents her story to becoming a teacher, and training other people in their 50s to become a teacher.
In this Lucy is both the narrator and character, which works well because it is her story. The piece could have used someone else to narrate it, and have the clips of Lucy in the workplace, speaking to friends and colleagues, however having someone else narrate it would mean they were detached from it and talk about Lucy in the third person. With Lucy narrating the piece and being the character she can explain things from her personal point, which is important as it is her journey as a character which we are interested in.
There are other characters throughout the piece, there is a friend and fellow journalist from the Financial Times. Gideon Rachman whom she has a conversation with about how she thinks the job will be, and how he thinks it will be. There is conflict between them where she puts it to him that he isn’t being supportive as a friend. He puts it to her that he is as friend he is being ‘the voice of reason’ and raising the question to her ‘Why would you take a 95% pay cut to work five times as hard’, which creates a bit of tension. She talks to him about that the way he looks at her is ‘not encouraging’ His response is she is so ‘enthused’ and that he won’t put her off.
There is also conflict between her and another character, a Head Teacher who she has a conversation with, where the Head teacher is telling her ‘you have freedom in your current Financial Times job, freedom of when you turn up for work, intellectual freedom, which you won’t have in teaching.’
Theses are two areas of conflict that, make you want to know what the outcome of this is going to be. Is she going to find these issue on her journey?
An interesting part of this documentary is the temporality of the piece, in the introduction it starts with Lucy leaving the Financial Times, there’s narration to explain who she is, why she’s doing what is happening. There is then physical movement as she leaves the building and walks outside where we go from hearing conversation between her and ‘Martin’ in an space with echo, to hearing her speaking to someone with traffic noise and she is talking about ‘how weird it is, being somewhere so long, all her life and leaving that.’ This movement could also be used to signify that that is what this series is going to be about, is her journey to becoming a teacher. There is then more narration to explain key pieces of information, a clip of her on the Today Show talking about why she’s is embarking on the journey, more narration, to explain, what you don’t get from the interview, then ‘clips’ from her in her training.
In the main part of the piece, we are put, through sound into in what sounds like a small room, due the acoustics in the room, a lack of echo. There are people quietly talking. Through narration we know it is the 20th July 2017, which Lucy tells us is her last day at work, the starting point for the journey. There are clips of editor Lionel Barber talking about how ‘they love Lucy’. The narration from Lucy explains that colleagues look bemused about why she is leaving the Financial Times for ‘less time and money’. This then takes us into us to the first interview, which creates conflict between herself and a colleague, it also makes us want to know more information about why she is doing this. Through narration she explains how the journey started which gives you a sense of not only why she is doing what she is doing, but why it is important for teaching. There is another clip of Lucy talking to colleagues at the Financial Times on her last day remarking how ‘this has been my whole working life. So how I feel about today is practically unbearable.” This is important because in the same speech we hear more important background information about her, how her journey at the Financial Times started, and because this is recorded on her last day, the documentary is taking us back to the starting point for this journey the 20th July. More narration about conflict that has come to her via email, about doubts people have about what she is doing, and a conversation with the Head Teacher character, who thinks she may not be suited to being a teacher, set up a question which will want to make us listen on to further episodes, will she succeed?
At the end Lucy Narrates that she has spent over year ‘talking,, writing and worrying about becoming a teacher’ showing us, everything in this episode has been just over a year. We are then brought back to Lucy at the Financial Times, on the her ‘last day of my old life’. We hear in the clip of her at the Financial Times talking about ‘saying goodbye to Martin’ we hear a ‘beep ‘ as if she has swiped a card, which brings the whole piece write back to the beginning. This first episode has been starting on this day, taking important parts in the past year that have led her to this day, and now the journey begins from there.
If all the clips had been in a chronological order, or the journey narrated along with the clips, in the order they had happened, we would still have had a journey, it could still have worked, however it would have been easier to listen in the background and pay less attention to it. Where as changing between the date we start on the 20th July 2017, and reflecting over the past year, coming back to the 20th July, then relevant interviews, it makes you listen more and having everything in the order they happened would.
Music also creates movement throughout the episode, seguing into the next section of the piece. There is a jazzy piece of music that leads as out of the introduction and into the main part of the piece, which is ‘out of tune’ which could be linked to not everything is going well. There are various smooth musical interludes, which fade in and out as the subject matter and what she’s talking about changes, so this again creates movement.
Although not a topic I would normally think of listening to, I am intrigued to find out what happens and whether her journey is successful.
