I just received the following tweet:

I clicked on the link to discover a lab lit drama was going to be aired on BBC 3 later today. The blurb sounds promising:

The Physicists

Samantha Bond stars as a psychiatrist in this classic European farce by Friedrich Dürrenmatt about three theoretical physicists who believe they are Einstein, Newton and Möbius. They are locked in a lunatic asylum and each gets tangled in vicious murders. Amidst all the jokes is a real relationship between a scientist who may or may not be mad and his nurse who wants to save him. The Physicists was first performed in 1962 at the height of the Cold War.

The serious subject behind the farce is what to do with the knowledge of weapons of mass destruction once let out of the genie’s bottle. Who controls that knowledge? Can scientists remain free, even in the free world?

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to watch this live. Some time ago I made the decision that if I were going to have time to write fiction, it was best not to own a television. Then BBC came out with the iPlayer, which undermined my resolution a little bit. (I do restrict myself to about 2-3 hours a week of watch-again TV on my iPad, but it’s not the cold-turkey ideal I’d like. But sometimes, I really just need to veg out.)

Still, I’m definitely going to make time for this one. Thanks for the tip-off, Kev!