The Alchemists of Sound

In 1958 the BBC set up the Radiophonic Workshop in order to come up with a new type of sound for use in scores and special effects. Between this creation and its gradual death in 1995, the group came up electronic scores and noises that were used in cult classics such as Doctor Who, Blake's Seven, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as well as countless other programmes that have been forgotten with time.

Executive produced by Victor Lewis-Smith, this documentary was always going to have a sense of humour about it and indeed it does. In some ways it doesn't work (having a bloke hanging around behind every interview didn't work at all) but mostly it is helpful to the material that it isn't too serious or full of itself. This approach makes it easier to swallow as it is much more light entertainment with a documentary edge rather than the other way round. This was useful to me because really I'm only just in the target audience and I only remember a couple of the cult themes and the shows that the music was used on. Thus it didn't totally work for me because if you didn't totally recognise everything then some of it will have no meaning for you.

The history of people playing with tape and so on is not that fascinating if you think about so to the credit of the film it does do a good job of making it quite interesting and engaging. The contributions and use of archive footage is all good and well put together though. Of course it does help if you remember the sounds and the times because if not the film may be of limited appeal but it is done with sufficient fun to make it an entertaining watch even if you only have a passing awareness of the subject.