TravelWise is a video drama produced for Key Stage 2 and 3 schoolchildren by Essex County Council in the year 2000. Across four short episodes, we witness a soap opera style drama play out involving families and neighbours living in a suburban street. This would then be followed up by a discussion in the classroom about the issues each episode raised around using transport wisely and protecting the environment.
So far, so blah, right? But the interesting thing about TravelWise is it’s choc-full of Doctor Who actors!
There’s a good reason for this; Mark Thompson, the drama’s writer/director, had worked in BBV and would go on to work with Big Finish, directing the first season of The Companion Chronicles. Tasked with this educational series, he set out enlisting any available Doctor Who actor he could find. And so, TravelWise stars Sarah Sutton as divorced mother Sharon, Nicholas Courtney as her dad Alistair (and yes, he is ex-army!), Nicola Bryant as snooty Laura, mother to a young son and daughter named Jamie and Zoe (geddit?), and Colin Baker as Jonathan, the junk food-eating, stressed-out owner of the business that Laura’s husband Paul (Bryan Lawrence) works at.
Also appearing is Genesis of the Daleks’ Nyder himself, Peter Miles, as Mr Reise, the eccentric neighbour everyone turns to for information and advice. Rounding out the adult cast are ex-EastEnders stars Judith Jacob and Anna “On the Buses” Karen as Laura’s best friend and irritating mother-in-law respectively (there’s also a brief appearance from another ex-EastEnder, Gary Hailes, as a cabbie), and Marcia Ashton as OAP environmentalist Angela, who enters into a semi-romantic relationship with Alistair. Meanwhile, Adam Webb, Ruby O’Byrne, Carey Crankson, Khylie Williams and Tonatha Davis-Belgrave play the young children and teenagers.
There’s even a credit for one James Buckley as one of several non-speaking “Children in the Playground”. Whilst I can’t be sure the future star of The Inbetweeners was a juvenile supporting artiste here, I nonetheless like to think that he is, as his guest appearance in Orphan 55 only strengthens the Who ties in this production.
Performance wise, all of the cast understand the assignment and play to the strengths of TravelWise as a soap opera style genre piece for a younger audience. Sarah Sutton is especially convincing in a mumsy kind of way as Sharon, so much so that it makes you wonder why one of the soaps never came calling at her door. She’s certainly very different to Nyssa, and it was nice to see her play opposite Nicholas Courtney again for the first time since Mawdryn Undead. Courtney’s role is the least stretching; as I say, he’s an ex-army type called Alistair, but it’s always fun to see Courtney’s charm on screen and his friendship with Angela is quite sweet.
The biggest difference in terms of characterisation from their familiar Who roles lies with Nicola Bryant’s Laura and Peter Miles’ Mr Reise. Bryant plays that archetypal soap opera character, the rather irritating snob. Being an educational piece, her character is often used to get the message across, as I shall highlight in some examples of dialogue later on. Bryant also provides that other familiar soap cliche: conflict within the home. Laura is shown to have a less than harmonious relationship with her mother-in-law Pam, played by Anna Karen. Their storyline sees Laura struggling to hold her tongue whilst Pam stays under her roof while her flat has work done on it. Being rather snooty, Laura disapproves of the more down-to-earth Pam.
As a character, Laura is redeemed by her relationship with best friend Marina (Judith Jacobs), who has, along with her daughter Antonia, recently moved into the neighbourhood from a more centralised, urban area because Antonia has developed asthma from all the car pollution in such a built up area. This is something that I recall soap operas doing rather well: showcasing a character with flaws, but also highlighting their more positive qualities in the eyes of another, more relatable character.
Peter Miles plays the eccentric Mr Reise. It’s the kind of role you might have expected Thompson to reserve for a former Doctor, such as Colin Baker, seeing as he’s there, after all. That he doesn’t choose to do this is interesting, and it does afford Miles the opportunity to play something more sweet and wholesome than his usual sci-fi villainy. Mr Reise is the neighbourhood sage, often called upon to give advice on environmental matters and the like, especially by the children. He also provides TravelWise with its humour, in the shape of his dotty, experimental recipes such as raspberry and chocolate tea, which the residents stoically endure for fear of causing him offence. In contrast, Colin Baker’s role as Paul’s executive-stressed employer is rather small, but very pivotal in terms of drama.
Made in the best traditions of BBC Schools drama, you can almost imagine the work books that pupils had to turn to at the end of each instalment, and that’s just as well; TravelWise ends on a shocking cliffhanger which, unlike Doctor Who each week, never gets resolved here. Presumably the teachers presenting this to their Key Stage 2 and 3 classes would tell their charges to go off and come up with their own episode 5.
It’s also full of enjoyably clunky dialogue that attempts to get the overall message across. This is evinced in Nicholas Courtney’s Alistair’s remark of “I must say though, the town centre’s marvellous for shopping in now that it’s all been pedestrianised” (I half expected to hear Alan Partridge pipe up with his hackles raised!), and the exchange between Nicola Bryant’s Laura, swallowing her prejudices and travelling by bus when her car breaks down, and her fellow passenger.
“What happened to your car?” she asks said passenger, who reveals that she doesn’t have one. “Really? I suppose they can be quite expensive”, snobby Laura replies to the young woman with some condescension. “Oh it’s not the cost, it’s just easier to use public transport,” the woman answers, before explaining about the limited car parking opportunities in her neighbourhood and how the onus is on bus driver to navigate the morning rush hour, which is easily done with bus lanes. “You just have to learn to adapt,” the young woman tells the unconvinced Laura. “Most towns can’t deal with cars”.
By episode four, it ought to come as no surprise that the residents have decided to operate a car share scheme, based on the pollution concerns raised by their children as well as problems with family finances. It’s therefore a further shame that there isn’t actually an episode 5, as this is the point you imagine TravelWise would really start to get going.
You can watch Travelwise on YouTube
