Benedict Cumberbatch (7 page)

A
s a counterpoint to his rising profile on television, Benedict Cumberbatch was highly sought-after in the world of radio drama and voiceover work. From the autumn of 2003, he became an increasingly familiar voice on BBC Radio 3 and 4, a working relationship that continues to this day. Over the next decade, he would participate in numerous serials, one-off plays (both adaptations and original work), plus book readings, narrations and one of the best-loved comedy series on the air.

Radio does not pay well, especially when compared to film and television, but nevertheless actors and writers express a strong commitment to working in the medium. Even in 2013, when Cumberbatch’s time was dominated by Hollywood work, he would contribute to plays and series for Radio 3 and 4.

Those who rarely listen to speech radio might assume that BBC Radio 4 is only the news and the everyday story of country folk,
The Archers
, which has been running daily for over 60 years. Yet there is a lot more to it than that: documentaries, discussions and features, book and poetry readings, and specialist programmes about books, films, the arts, science, food, finance and many others. In
entertainment
and comedy, the network has originated and nurtured numerous cult hits, which later transferred to television:
The Hitch-Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Have I Got News for You
(which also continues to this day on Radio 4 under the name
The News Quiz
),
Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge, Little Britain
and
The League of Gentlemen
. Plus, quite apart from
The Archers
, it broadcasts several hours of drama every week: a classic serial on Sundays, drama serials in the mornings as part of
Woman’s Hour
, and afternoon plays every day from Monday to Saturday.

For the most part, Cumberbatch’s radio work has consisted of single plays, serials and book readings. He first appeared on Radio 4 in September 2003 when he featured as Edmund in an adaptation of Jane Austen’s
Mansfield Park
, broadcast as a daily serial over two weeks as part of
Woman’s Hour
. Within a year, he was a regular voice on the network, as a performer in single dramas and serials, as a narrator of feature material, and as a reader of book adaptations both of fiction and non-fiction. His first lead role in a radio drama came in June 2004, shortly after the broadcast of
Hawking
on television. He was Captain Rob
Collins in
The Biggest Secret
, a play specially written by Mike Walker to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Normandy Landings, otherwise known as D-Day and broadcast on 5 June, the eve of the event. Collins is recovering in a hospital after being injured in a parachute drop, and is pleasantly surprised to be recalled for action.

From here on, Cumberbatch was all over the Radio 4 airwaves: reading books by Christopher Isherwood, Honoré de Balzac and Patrick O’Brian, reworkings of Homer’s
The Odyssey
, Paul Scott’s
The Raj Quartet
and Frederic Raphael’s adaptation of his own novel,
The Glittering Prizes
. He would play Dudley Moore in an original play about the
Beyond the Fringe
cast of Moore, Peter Cook, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller. He would assume the guise of the prodigious but self-destructive Romantic poet Thomas Chatterton, whose untimely death occurred in 1770 when he was still in his teens. Furthermore, he would give a first-class performance of the American T.S. Eliot in
Tom and Viv
, about the breakdown of his first marriage to Vivienne
Haigh-Wood
(Lia Williams).

Elsewhere in the radio schedules, he read from Franz Kafka’s nightmarish
Metamorphosis
(about a man who finds he has been transformed into a ‘monstrous vermin’), and from a newly written biography about Giacomo Casanova. But in his large body of work for radio, two projects have risen above everything else. One is a legal drama in which he stars as a character he has loved since childhood. The other is an original situation comedy.

The legal drama gave him the chance to be involved in the
world of Horace Rumpole, the barrister created by John Mortimer (another ex-Harrovian, incidentally). Rumpole, let’s remember, was the character who almost made Cumberbatch abandon acting for a career in law, until he realised he was obsessed by the man. In 2009, he teamed up with Timothy West to portray two ages of Rumpole. West would play a senior version, reflecting on his early days in the profession in the 1950s and 60s, while Cumberbatch would appear in the flashbacks as ‘Young Rumpole’. As of late 2013, seven of Mortimer’s Rumpole cases have been adapted most effectively by Richard Stoneman.

Despite showing a great deal of potential in his youth as a comedy performer, Cumberbatch has rarely tackled knockabout humour in his professional career, but
Cabin Pressure
, a Radio 4 sitcom first broadcast in 2008, has been a glorious, hilarious exception to the rule. Written by John Finnemore, previously a writer for
Dead Ringers
and David Mitchell and Robert Webb’s sketch shows,
Cabin Pressure
followed the misadventures of the staff of the most cash-strapped charter airline, which had only four staff and one aeroplane.

Cumberbatch starred as Captain Martin Crieff, a pilot who had taken seven attempts to gain his licence, and who had accepted responsibility on the condition that he came very cheap. The other three regular cast members were Stephanie Cole as the bossy founder of MJN Air, Carolyn Knapp-Shappey, Finnemore as Arthur (her air steward son, so dim that he was surprised the plane could fly without flapping its wings), and Roger Allam as First Officer
Douglas Richardson, a world-weary man perpetually seething with sarcasm.

Overseeing production of the show was David Tyler, a radio producer since 1985 but who, despite many years working on TV with the likes of Victoria Wood, Paul Merton, Steve Coogan and Eddie Izzard, has never abandoned radio comedy, and has produced numerous shows over the years for Jeremy Hardy, Armando Iannucci, Milton Jones and Marcus Brigstocke.
Cabin Pressure
, like most of Tyler’s output, was made through Pozzitive, an independent production company he had set up with another comedy producer, Geoff Posner.

John Finnemore had not written a sitcom series before, but he had conducted a great deal of research into the world of aviation, and realised that an aeroplane was the perfect setting for a comedy. The hierarchy of the staff led to plenty of rivalry. It was set in a confined space, and just flying a plane in the first place is a risky operation. The four primary characters – Carolyn, Martin, Douglas, Arthur – were all British archetypes: draconian, uptight, grumpy and
downright
idiotic. Other recurring or occasional passengers included the unreasonably demanding Mr Birling (Geoffrey Whitehead), plus a paranoid bassoonist, a snooty film actress (Helen Baxendale) and Carolyn’s sister Ruth (Alison Steadman), whose cameo goes some way to explaining why the siblings had not spoken in 15 years.

Like so much radio comedy,
Cabin Pressure
gradually gained popularity over the years, yet even after four series some Cumberbatch fans were unaware of its existence, not
just because it was a radio series, but because for some time, it was broadcast at 11.30 in the morning when the majority of people were at work. Fortunately, it reached a wider audience in the summer of 2010 when, just as
Sherlock
was premiering on television, it was repeated in the early evening comedy slot on Radio 4 at 6.30, bridging the gap between the six o’clock news and
The Archers
. Six-thirty is a good slot for a programme on Radio 4: people are heading home from work or making a meal and winding down. A good laugh always helps after a tough day.

Could
Cabin Pressure
have transferred to television? It would certainly have been nice for such a funny and
fast-paced
show to become better-known, although part of the joy of the series as a radio-only enterprise was that it was perfectly possible to go anywhere in the story without the need for building lavish sets or visiting far-flung locations. The episode titles reflected the wide geographical canvas for the series: each week’s episode was either given a title of a grand international destination (Abu Dhabi, Boston, Cremona etc.), or a more modest British one (Ipswich, Ottery St Mary, Wokingham).

As of 2013, Benedict Cumberbatch had made more
Cabin Pressure
than anything else on radio or television: 24 of its 25 half-hour episodes. By its third series in 2011, he was a big star, and not quite always available for recordings
anymore
, but he only missed one recording (when Tom Goodman-Hill deputised as Martin). Even for series four, he managed to squeeze it into his busy international filming schedule, and the six episodes had to be taped in London in
two marathon Sunday sessions. As the show was recorded in front of a live studio audience, there was a mad rush for tickets by this stage in the run, and wild cheering as well as respectful applause over the signature tune: the riotous overture to the opera
Ruslan and Ludmilla
, by the Russian composer Mikhail Glinka.

In November 2013, it was announced by BBC Radio that a 26th and final episode of
Cabin Pressure
would be recorded and broadcast in early 2014. The one-off special would end the series on a high, with its trademark mix of rich, vivid characters, surreal ideas and inspired jokes. All that, plus some delightful cast interplay.
Cabin Pressure
is already sorely missed, but at least it came to an end before the comedy grew stale.

He had shown his comedy credentials in
Cabin Pressure
, but Cumberbatch had become a star because of
Sherlock
. The combination of comedy and stardom meant it was only a matter of time before he got the call to do a panel show. In October 2010, he became the latest guest host for
Have I Got News for You
on BBC1. Although Angus Deayton had done a sterling job as chairman and scriptwriter on the show since its inception in 1990, from 2002, a different guest host chaired each show, from Bruce Forsyth and Charlotte Church, to Alexander Armstrong, Jo Brand and Kirsty Young, and countless others.

An apprehensive Cumberbatch had been a fan of
Have I Got News for You
since his teens. ‘My family and I used to make it a routine TV date to relish,’ he said, just before the recording. ‘Like a moth to the flame, I am terrified but
cannot resist.’ He was the first host of the 40th series, with regulars Paul Merton and Ian Hislop, and guests Victoria Coren and Jon Richardson. ‘From people I know who have done it before, it is really good fun, however heavy the laundry day may have to be the next morning.’

Suddenly, then, Cumberbatch was being asked to be himself (rather than play someone else) on television. It was a pleasant surprise. ‘With fame, you do get the most extraordinary perks and experiences, whether it’s chairing programmes or having a voice in the political field, because you happened to have a large audience who listened to you for three nights a year ago. It’s both beneficial and odd, the usual yin-yang thing. But by and large, good.’

By 2006, Cumberbatch’s voice work was spreading beyond radio to audiobooks and advertising voiceovers. He had the sort of voice you might recognise, even if you couldn’t yet quite put a name to it. In time, his voice would help to sell pet food, ice cream, insurance and cars. The live touring version of David Attenborough’s BBC series
The Blue Planet
would employ him as narrator, in which his commentary over action of dolphins, whales, tropical fish, penguins and polar bears would in turn be accompanied by a remarkable music score from the composer George Fenton. On television documentaries, he would read from William Golding’s diaries for an
Arena
special, commentate on footage of the southern Pacific Ocean, and narrate more of Stephen Hawking’s findings into the universe.

One of his most affecting contributions in voiceover work came in 2005 with a Channel 4 film about Rick Rescorla, the Cornish-born security boss at Morgan Stanley merchant bank in New York. In 2001, Rescorla had died in the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers, while helping to save over 2,000 lives. But he had been predicting for over a decade that the Towers could be vulnerable to a terrorist attack and had taken every effort to tighten security at the World Trade Center, as well as advising on improving evacuation routes.

In 2012, Cumberbatch was involved in two epic events as a reader. At the end of July, he read a short piece of prose in praise of London as ‘the beating heart of the nation’, as part of Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games. Two months later, he participated in a reading project about a gargantuan mammal. Launched as part of the Plymouth International Book Festival,
The Moby Dick Big Read
was an online reading marathon in which each of the 135 chapters of Herman Melville’s
Moby Dick
was read by a different person. As well as Cumberbatch, those taking part included Stephen Fry, Sir David Attenborough, Will Self, Neil Tennant, Rick Stein, Cerys Matthews and Simon Callow. The opening section was voiced by the actor Tilda Swinton.

Cumberbatch’s voice was also called upon for a new iPhone video game in 2011.
The Night Jar
had the ingenious twist of having no visual content. It placed the player on a spaceship in complete darkness, with the object of the game to reach safety by navigating via sound cues alone. Then in 2012, he became a recording artist of sorts: he performed a
six-minute long spoken word piece for a compilation album assembled by the band Friendly Fires. Part of the
Late Night Tales
series, it was a stew of styles which had influenced the group, from indie heroes like Stereolab and the Cocteau Twins to the more surprising inclusion of Olivia
Newton-John
. His track was a reading of ‘Flat of Angels’ by Simon Cleary. Cumberbatch was a fan of Friendly Fires, and the feeling was mutual. ‘He really got into subtleties in the text I didn’t realise were there,’ said Cleary. The piece was about the comedown of a house party, delivered in alternating voices. In 2013, he would contribute a second section of the tale to another
Late Night Tales
mix album, this time by the Norwegian electronic music duo Röyksopp.