Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Anthony Howell, Julian Wadham, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Geff Francis, Maggie Service, Derek Ezenagu, Robert Duncan, Jacqueline Boatswain, Geoffrey Breton, Jessica Martin, Nick Hendrix, Mark Goldthorp, Nicholas Briggs, Angus Wright.

The art of political assassination is one that still holds the weight of intrigue in the modern world, perhaps more so than at any point since the 1960s and the deaths of two of the Kennedy brothers, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King and countless others hit the headlines and stunned the world over.

To make an assassination look like a freak accident though, that truly is something for the spy-class, something that many films over the years have tried to capture but don’t even come close to fulfilling. It seems clumsy, it has all the artistry of a child’s drawing placed against a Turner of Van Gogh, you applaud the effort but deep down what is truly needed is a masterpiece.

In the second of the third volume of adventures for John Stead and Dr. David Keel, The Yellow Needle, the art of personal assassination presents itself, and whilst not in the same class as film such as the original The Day of The Jackal, nevertheless is a stunning hour of audio drama, the likes that Big Finish do so well when the right story presents itself and is adapted or written by a natural talent in the form of John Dorney.

What makes The Yellow Needle so realistic, even in today’s cynical world, is in the way it captures the thought of a once proud nation reasserting its own independence after colonial rule. It is a story that many in Africa, ravaged and stolen from for generations, can identify with. It is a story that resonates across boundaries and in the thought of assassination of a person who has changed his countries future, such as Sir Winston Wilberforce Lunghi, played by Geff Francis, is both repellent and dangerous.

John Dorney’s adaptation makes The Yellow Needle both current and paying homage to a dark past, a past which saw good men such as John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King taken from the world far too soon and by powers that operate in such evil.

Arguably one of the best stories in The Lost Episodes collection, The Yellow Needle begs to be listened to and asks the listener to contemplate a world in which the art of assassination is allowed to breed.  

The Yellow Needle is available to purchase as part of The Avengers: The Lost Episodes Volume 3 Box set from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.

Ian D. Hall