Saturday, December 5, 2020

BBC Lovecraft

So, thanks to Andrew Higgins for sharing the news that BBC Radio Four has been broadcasting adaptations of stories by H. P. Lovecraft. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06spb8w/episodes/downloads


They've adapted three stories so far under the general rubic 'The Lovecraft Investigation', each composed of eight to ten episodes:

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (November 2018, ten episodes)

The Whisperer in Darkness (November 2019, nine episodes)

The Shadow Over Innsmouth (November 2020, eight episodes, plus three bonus episodes)


 The set-up, from what I've listened to so far, is that our two main characters (editor Matthew Heawood and reporter Kennedy Fisher) investigate mysteries with sinister occult overtones. Their podcast, dubbed 'Mystery Machine', is made up of phone messages, audiotaped interviews, and bits of found footage. Purists shd note that the radio program freely adapts Lovecraft's stories, as well as recasting them into the modern era. Thus when Kennedy, one of our two heroes, goes looking for the site where the sinister Dr. Allen had carried out his experiments she finds not the ancestral Curwen Home but a derelict trailer park.

So far I've been enjoying these and I'm looking forward to hearing the rest. I'm curious what the next story adapted will be -- The Dunwich Horror, perhaps?

--John R.

--current reading: RIDERS ON PEGASUS (long poem, by Owen Barfield).



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