Farewell, Great Macedon

An absolutely phenomenal historical story. It does almost everything right. It lets you experience a historical period, teaches you something new about that era and the people involved and makes it personal for both you and the characters involved.

It is surprisingly lengthy, but that length never feels padded. Alexander is well established and the cast interacts with their surroundings in interesting ways. It is just plain fun, and a very good example of how pure historical should be done.

It benefits from its audio roots. It can go up in scale without fluffing the story up. It also performed really well. Special props to John Dorney, who plays an impressively convincing Alexander. His speech at the end about Alexanders ambitions is phenomenal, and a true highlight for this season.

It’s funny, for as long as it is and how much I enjoyed it, I don’t really have much to say about it. Maybe that’s because it feels like it sets a standard. An incredibly solid base that future stories could take note from. That probably won’t be done, because the pure historical died out, and this story was recorded years later. Still, if the show ever decides to pick the historical back up, there would be way worse inspirations than this one.

The only nitpicks I have with it are minor. Barbara knows history, but stays quiet for quite a while, which doesn’t really make sense. Also the members of the conspiracy group have similar sounding names, and without each having a distinct voice actor, they kind of blend together. Still, these are minor and don’t really detract from the story. Which is a masterpiece.

Wow, what an audio. Sitting at one of Big Finish's longest audios this may seem like a daunting task but if you have a spare 4 hours I would wholeheartedly recommend you settle down and enjoy this magnificent audio.

Whilst I'm not the biggest fan of William Russell as 1 you can overlook his slightly weaker impersonation compared to Purves as it doesn't detract that much from the overall listening experience.

However, the standout performance from this audio has to be John Dorney as Alexander. How one man can be such a good writer and actor will never cease to amaze me but in this audio he gives the performance of his life. A performance that is filled with such nuance and depth. A performance that moved me to the verge of tears. I would say this is one of the best performances I've ever heard in an audio.

Overall, this is a fantastic audio if recommend to anyone.