One Five Seven Years: 4. Saul
Limelight
BBC
4.4 • 698 Ratings
🗓️ 23 September 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Imagine you could live for two lifetimes. Would you want to? How would it change you and those you love? What would you do with all those extra years? What second chances might you get? Would this be a blessing or a curse?
This world is an alternative version of our own. Except in this world, a minority of people are discovered to have Extended Life Syndrome (ELS). The condition might give an "Elser" two decades in their thirties, two in their forties, double the time in their fifties, and so on. Little is understood of the biological factors that govern ELS except that it affects a random selection of people. It is the ultimate lottery of genetics, crossing class, race, culture and gender.
And if a simple test existed to check your DNA for this double life, would you take it? Would you want to know?
Now think again. Would you?
Retired couple Elia and Mark are celebrating their pearl wedding anniversary when they discover one of them has ELS. The bond between them is tested as they deal with the fallout and face up to a momentous decision.
Written by Vanessa Montfort
Cast: Elia ….. Raquel Cassidy Mark ….. James Wilby Simon ….. Ben Crowe Anne ….. Clare Corbett Keith ….. Jonathan McGuinness Carol ….. Rosie Cavaliero Saul ….. Joel MacCormack
Other voices played by the cast
Sound Design ….. Adam Woodhams and Steve Bond Theme Music ….. Ioana Selaru and Axel Kacoutié
Academic Consultants ….. Tamas David-Barrett & James Fasham Executive Producer ….. Sara Davies
Series created by Marietta Kirkbride Directed and Produced by Nicolas Jackson
An Afonica production for BBC Radio 4
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:10.0 | When's the best time to find out if you've got it? |
| 0:13.1 | Should there be an age limit? |
| 0:15.6 | Should there be a maximum age you can know? |
| 0:18.9 | I suppose that depends. Depends on what? On what you decide once you do know. |
| 0:36.2 | That's my mother on the piano. She's good, right? |
| 0:40.3 | I listen to this sometimes when I'm thinking about her. |
| 0:43.3 | Mom always told me the present is the past plus one day. |
| 0:48.3 | I don't know, maybe that sounds better in Spanish. |
| 0:51.3 | I think she meant that the only thing that doesn't exist is the future. |
| 0:56.1 | But looking back through this album, |
| 0:58.5 | I can't help seeing the future right across all the photos. |
| 1:02.5 | Look at this one, where everyone sat around the dining table. |
| 1:06.5 | Weird to think that when it was taken, |
| 1:08.4 | I was just a vague idea in the mind of one of them. |
| 1:11.6 | The piano in the corner is closed. |
| 1:14.6 | No one will be playing it tonight. |
| 1:17.6 | Well, that was delicious as ever, Elyor. I don't know how you do it. |
| 1:21.6 | Yes. |
| 1:22.6 | On one side of the table is Keith, my dad's nephew. |
| 1:25.6 | Really good. Which makes him my cousin, I suppose. Keith always did look more like my dad's son than his own father's. Pretty where credit is due. Next to him is his wife, Anne, with a long red hair. There was something really different about the sauce. Yeah, I think it might have had fennel in it. Oh, secret ingredient. |
| 1:45.9 | Yeah, it really adds something fennel, isn't it? |
... |
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