Read Time: 2 Minutes
With classic British style of humour and absurdity, this science fiction comedy in a somewhat dystopian future of humankind was a lot of fun to listen to. After the oceans rose and flooded Britain, effectively turning it into an archipelago. London is completely underwater, the sky is choked with a soupy mess of chemicals, towering skyscrapers rise above it keeping the rich nice and safe while down at ground level, the zeros do what they can to make ends meet.
Napoleon Moon, a nepo baby, lives an indulgent life high up in one of those towers.
Cash is a zero living at ground level. She’s got a number of trumped-up charges against her.
After being told that if she helps Napoleon Moon the charges will go away, she readily agrees. Fortunately, Moon has just been forcibly ejected from his balcony and falls to earth, so finding him was the easy bit.
From there things get sillier and much worse for our heroes. Dodging robots programmed to hunt and kill billionaires, the futuristic and incompetent police force, Cash needs to clear Moon’s name so she can get her debts wiped and her named cleared.
The story was bonkers but well executed. A popular theme I seem to be seeing a lot of recently are future societies where people have been dumbed down substantially. Sort of Idiocracy in full effect, which is getting harder to disagree with sometimes, given how often people seem to be treating it as a manual rather than a caution.
I enjoyed the full-cast narration as a change of pace and the production was, of course, excellent being produced by the BBC. Most of the cast I didn’t recognise, though I suspect if I watched more British television I would. Katherine Parkinson was the only voice that was familiar, and only because of how much I’ve re-watched The IT Crowd. Paterson Joseph and Danielle Vitalis who voiced the main characters of Napoleon and Cash were easy to listen to.
I’m not sure if this was made as a podcast first or if it’s just broken into the classic six-episode style of many British television shows, but I mainly bring that up because in the full blurb it lists off the episodes, and throughout each new episode is announced with a small intro.
Rather short at around 3 1/2 hours, but that and the episodic style made it easy to fit between other things. Plus, it’s available for free if you have Audible Plus, so even though it’s short it won’t cost you a thing.