As if we haven’t got enough to listen to, does anyone have any other Audio Drama recommendations? I like The Scarifyers, from Bafflegab (I think this may have been a co-production with BF or they had something to do with it). Definitely one for Doctor Who fans as it stars Nicholas Courtney & Terry Molloy as a police detective & ghost story writer respectively. Set in the 1930s they are fun comedy mysteries. When Courtney sadly passed away David Warner joined Molloy for some more stories.
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I heard a couple in their very early days before BF started to sell them via their website.
I don’t think I knew they were on Spotify.
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I had no idea they were on Spotify or made by anyone other than Big Finish!
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This is a good one.
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The Juno Steel series by The Penumbra Podcast is very good. I like to describe it as “A hard-boiled detective does Scooby-Doo in cyberpunk Gotham City on Mars”, but it grows and evolves from there. (Just be sure you don’t accidentally skip The Angel of Brahma, the second to last story of season 1. It’s naming convention’s different on the podcast feed, so it’s easy to miss if you’re not looking for it)
The Minister of Chance is quite nice, and has quite a few Doctor Who alumni, as does it’s spiritual successor: The Light of September.
I also liked The Magnus Archives and The Left Right Game (both more of a horror vibe), and Audible’s adaptation of The Sandman is incredible. If we want to stretch the definition of Audio Drama a little and include rpg campaigns, then I also want to plug The Adventure Zone and The Game of Rassilon
My eldest is really into the podcast, Night Vale and they’re dragging me to a live show on Saturday which I think is going to creep me out big time.
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I’m so behind on it. I went to see it live a few years ago. Enjoy!
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Any idea on what to expect? Is it going to be super scary? My eldest says they’re braver now but they used to hate scary things. I took them to see the first Goosebumps film and we had to leave partway through!
It was more fun than scary. The format was like watching a live radio play rather than an fx heavy production. But not sure what this upcoming one will be like.
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Mistholme Museum is good, elements of mystery
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So we’re here at Night Vale - the Attic at the Hackney Empire. I have very little idea of what to expect…
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did you enjoy it?
I did actually. I obviously didn’t appreciate it the way the fans in the audience did, including my eldest, but I could see the appeal - basically a spooky, slightly weird comedy and it did make me chuckle a few times. I didn’t feel like I was tolerating it just for my kid. The opening music act went on a bit too long for my taste but all in all it was a good bit of live theatre.
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This adaptation by the lovely Toby Hadoke of Nigel Kneale’s lost tv play The Road is well worth your time. But avoid spoilers before listening.
Some good ones for fans of “Doctor Who” are probably ‘The Slide’ by Victor Pemberton and ‘Aliens in the Mind’ by Robert Holmes. Both of these should be fairly easy to track down, I think there are a couple uploads of both on YouTube. They’re both scrapped ‘Doctor Who’ ideas that the writers made into their own thing. Listeners may find ‘The Slide’ shares a lot of similarities with ‘Fury from the Deep’ as Pemberton reworked and recycled elements from the original story into his later ‘Doctor Who’ script. ‘The Slide," however leans much further into the horror of the conflict. I don’t know as much about the production history of ‘Aliens in the Mind’ but I believe it was rejected on the basis that it was deemed too dark a tale for 60s’ ‘Doctor Who.’ The audio drama it became stars Peter Cushing and Vincent Price as eccentric professors and it’s a treat to listen to them both read a Holmes story.
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I can’t believe I didn’t say this before, but the greatest radio sitcom of all time is Cabin Pressure by John Finnemore - this was like the gateway drug for me into audio drama and I cannot begin to explain how brilliant it is. If you like genuinely funny comedy, awesome character development, clever plots and goot writing, and a finale that will make you cry about an aeroplane, then Cabin Pressure is the one for you.
The entire Big Finish Sapphire and Steel series is now available for download after years of being unavailable. Instant purchase for me and fingers crossed the Tomorrow People might follow suit.
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audio drama is a huge passion of mine! I’ve acted in a couple, written for one production, and am creating my own. these are some modern ones i think Doctor Who fans would LOVE:
-We Fix Space Junk is a dark comedy about two women who owe a debt to a mega-corporation and must clean up junk in space.
-Wolf 359 is maybe my fav taken as a whole. what starts as a silly farce in space, turns into an emotional epic about redemption and a dysfunctional crew as they look for alien life.
-ars PARADOXICA is about a scientist whose experiment zaps her back to the Cold War. she works with other scientists and tries to get home.
-The Bright Sessions is great if you want a superhero story that’s really grounded. it starts as simple sessions between a therapist and her superpowered patients. the characters are beautifully written and it turns into quite the adventure.
if you’re more into the mystery box side of things: Marsfall and The Deca Tapes definitely stand out. the former is about the last surviving humans trying to make Mars their home. the latter is a mystery that’s better going in fresh. It’s the most spooky of these and is about 10 people locked in one space together and their recordings that were found. has stuck with me since the day i listened.
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Those sound really interesting! Wolf 359 has been on my radar for a while, but We Fix Space Junk has piqued my interest - do you know where the best place to listen is?
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