DK: Equinox 1985 (DR Drama)

It was Inger who told me about the 'Equinox 1985' radio drama podcast, on our way up North on the train we had boarded early in the morning. I pressed play on the first episode, and though I initially felt it was all somewhat stiff and pretentious, I couldn't let go of the story again. A few days later, back in my kitchen in Copenhagen, I found myself exclaiming a muted albeit desperate scream when, listening to the last episode of Equinox, I suddenly sensed another human being's presence in the room. Luckily it was just my girlfriend who had come home from work.

Although the producer behind the podcast - the Danish Broadcasting Corporation - has referred to it as 'challenging the borders of fiction and reality', the fact is  that 'Equinox 1985' is pure fiction. But it holds true, however, that its narrative is unfolded as investigative journalism of the so-called 'true crime' genre, and if you feel so inclined you can lean back, close your eyes and pretend what you're hearing is true.

The show's fictional journalist, Tea, was a child when a group of students from her home town disappeared without a trace during their graduation 'tour de chambre' in 1985, and as an adult she is now trying to unravel what happened. She does so through interviews with parents and other survivors, and slowly weaves an explanation together over a calm suburbian soundscape of coffee cups clattering and birds whistling. The plot itself is a bit like Bjarne Reuters's '7.A' or the TV series 'Les Revenants', and has the same narrative quality of centering itself amidst a collective disaster. How so many people disappeared off the face of the earth from one moment to the next is puzzling - and almost as puzzling is the collective silence that has emerged in the wake of the disaster among relatives and survivors. This makes for a claustrophobic, paranoid and addictive podcast experience up until the last soundbite.

PS. Since I wrote this post, the podcast series has vanished from the face of the earth as tracelessly as its fictional group of students. I guess because the story of Equinox 1985 has been bought by Netflix, where a screen adaptation of Equinox can be watched as of December 2020.