I felt in touch with the modern world

Radio On was indeed a bleak moving picture but I did admire its monochrome despair. Listening to loads of Joy Division obviously pays off: I appreciated this film. No a good deal actually happens and even the anticipated elements of the thriller genre failed to materialise. Yes, the lead character, a London DJ, travels to down the old A4 to Bristol to investigate his brother’s unexpected death but, ultimately, we only witness the journey and a few fleeting and uneventful scenes where he looks through his sibling’s flat and meets his girlfriend. We get to watch plenty of old-fashioned pints (Double Diamond!) in old-fashioned pubs, fragments of conversations with strangers and other reasonably humdrum happenings. If one relishes characters dolefully gazing out of high rise windows onto damp city streets and plenty of mournful lying in unkempt beds in dank, dark apartments then this is the film for you; both activities feature heavily.

The soundtrack was peerless and I have been playing Kraftwerk’s Radio-Activity and The Man Machine today as a homage to Radio On and its post-punk, electronic ambience. The opening shots feature an exploration with a hand-held camera of the dead brother’s flat - he has expired in his bath and we fleetingly glimpse his corpse - to David Bowie’s Helden, the German version of Heroes. It works brilliantly and the inclusion of songs by Wreckless Eric, Ian Dury, Lene Lovich (yes, that song) and the aforementioned Kraftwerk all complement the images atmospherically.