In association with a UK television station Playstation Portable brings you Dubplate drama via their Your PSP website, free of charge and ahead of the television broadcast.

Think Trainspotting. Think Eminem. Think wika wika and pirate radio stations. Now mix it together with Eastender seasoning and you've got Dubplate Drama. Not my cup of tea, but a well produced series none the less, read on to see why you might want to catch up on this drama series. 

Visit YourPSP.com and check their PSP Video Downloads pages. You'll find all the episodes of Dubplate Drama there. Use the Filter option at the top of the listing to list all the Dubplate downloads.

As long as you have already signed up for an account you can now select each episode and it will automatically download and transfer to your connected PSP. Each episode is about 35-40Mb in size and lasts around 5 minutes.

What's it About?

"Dubplate Drama is the world’s first viewer-led interactive drama,
following an MC in her bid to make it big."

If you have ever seen Eminem's film 8Mile, you'll know what to expect in Dubplate drama. Lot's of rapping, underground scenes and adolescent stress and strife. The series follows the intrigue of two rival pirate radio stations and a rising female star in the rapping scene. If you already know what a dubplate actually is, and enjoyed 8Mile - I have little doubt you will also enjoy this drama.

"Meet Dionne. She's a normal girl with a big talent and ambition to match it. Her first mission – to get her dubplate cut. The second – to get famous. It's a long road. She's gonna meet plenty of people who can help her make it. And plenty of people who are gonna try and hold her back. Her fate is in your hands. Get voting. It's Dubplate Drama."

The twist with this production is that at the end of each episode you the viewer gets to vote what happens next. The most popular vote decides how the next episode starts off.

Production

This show is aired on UK TV weekly so the production values are quite high. The character performances are very good. At times I genuinely did wonder if I was watching a fly on the wall documentary or a fictional series - so realistic were some of the performances.

One slightly annoying thing is that the PSP version seems to have been toned down. There are regular audio blips that seem to be there to remove foul language - while it does make some scenes a bit hard to take in, it is quite celeverly done.

More Reading

You can visit Channel Four's Dublplate microsite for lots more information.

Conclusion

For fans of that scene I'd say this is a must have weekly download. Whether or not anyone else enjoys it is really down to your taste for this area of interest. There's nothing wrong with the drama, performances or production so it's worth a look for the sake of a 35Mb download.

For the real fans there's even extra downloads with extra content to fill in between each episode, so nice bonus there.