20th Century Vampire is a radio series written by Joe Turner for the BBC. It had one season, consisting of six half-hour episodes, and was reportedly first broadcast in 1993.

Eloise is a pale, young woman who is working at the check-out of her local Co-op (which she refers to as a “stagnant pond of despair”). She hates her job, and she is disenchanted with life in general. Much to Eloise’s chagrin, her annoying co-worker Wayne – a hapless, clueless, and strangely old-fashioned young man – is deeply fascinated by her. Eloise is also suffering from weird, violent nightmares; which may be contributing to her general sense of frustration, as may the fact that her 21st birthday is coming up soon.

This year, just as every year around her birthday, Aunt Lucretia shows up with presents and good wishes. I say “aunt”, but no-one actually knows who she is. But, as Eloise’s mother puts it, “she never forgets your birthday”, so apparently it would somehow be rude to not treat her like family.

Meanwhile, Wayne has been promoted from handling cardboard boxes to working at the meat-counter. Now, with his blood-splattered apron and the smell of meat clinging to his body, Eloise suddenly finds herself strangely attracted to him.

As you will have guessed by now, Eloise is a vampire. Or she will be one, once she turns 21. In fact, this is the reason why Lucretia, herself a vampire, has been keeping an eye on her all these years.

In the lore of this universe, vampires are not created but born. In the case of Eloise, she is a reincarnation of a vampire who has already been reincarnated twice before – hence the nightmares. As soon as she turns 21, Eloise will basically become a vampire trainee, as Lucretia will have to teach her all she needs to know. The problem is that Lucretia has never been in the role of teacher before, and Eloise has never been very good at learning. There is also the problem for Eloise how to balance her new life as a vampire with her job at the Co-op; and how to keep her social life continuing in a normal way.

20th Century Vampire has the same tone and feel like many of those other peculiar “comedydrama” series that you can find on BBC radio. They are constructed as if the comedy was not the prime reason for their existence, but as if they want to tell you a story that simply happens to be also funny.

It is possibly one of the effects of writing a show with this mindset that 20th Century Vampire’s humour is mostly fine to good as long as it is happening alongside a plot that is connected to Eloise’s struggles both in her civilian life as well as in her vampire life; but whenever plots or subplots are created with the sole aim of creating comedy, it all feels a bit empty.

It all feels a bit weird, as Eloise’s story is not all that dominant either. In fact, one often wonders if this story actually needed to be told. While the premise sounds interesting, very little that happens on this show really is (humour aside). The plots are not all that great, and there is also very little genuine conflict in the episodes – it all feels constructed.

As I said, the humour is for the most part fine, although some of it falls flat. The tone of the show is also generally on level with that of other radio comedydrama series from the BBC. But with Eloise’s habit of talking to herself or thinking aloud (unavoidable in the radio format) and her general tendency to moan and complain about her life, I repeatedly wondered if any of this would feel more genuine or more interesting if the show had been written by a woman.

The voice acting is very good. The core cast include Louise Lombard (Eloise), Joanna Kanska (Lucretia), William Ivory (Wayne), Jane Hazlegrove, and Fine Time Fontayne.

Most of the supporting characters are very well-written from a humour standpoint; although Aunt Lucretia’s eccentricities are too random and too much geared towards humour. This character is also the one saddled with most of the lame vampire jokes.

While there is no cliff-hanger in the strict sense of the word, this show simply stops. That is, the last episode ends just like any other episode would or could have ended. It leaves the listener as if it was ready to return the following week. This is something I am used to from BBC radio shows that have a sketch comedy or a comedy quiz show format; or from comedy series where the episodes a have a rather stand-alone character. But the comedydrama series usually have a season-wide arc and so they usually try to give you at least a mild sense of conclusion for each series. That is not the case here. Whether this is because they were banking on producing another series, I don’t know. But as I said, even shows that are doing another series (or at least planning to do so) are usually providing a mild sense of closure for each season.

As it stands, the show is just a bit bland. And I do not necessarily mean the humour (which is often not much to shout about either) but the plots themselves. If I had to rate this, it would be between 4.5 and 5.0 out of 10. This is not completely bad; but I simply can’t see any need for anyone to listen to this show. That being said, maybe a 21-year-old woman would get more out of this than I do?