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TNT’s Falling Skies returned for a much more action-orientated ten-episode third season. It started out with Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) now elected president, and concluded with betrayals, both alien and human.
In Syfy’s Defiance, set on Earth in the year 2046, humans and aliens were forced to co-exist after a long war. The show was developed consecutively as an interactive game.
After receiving a disturbing message from his future self, Alec (Erik Knudsen) soon teamed up again with Vancouver time-travel detective Kiera (Rachel Nichols) in the second season of Syfy’s complicated Continuum, where they investigated bodies being stolen from the morgue.
Fox’s Almost Human could almost have been an update of the 1976 show Holmes and Yo-Yo, as Karl Urban’s android-hating cop was teamed up with Michael Ealy’s blue-eyed synthetic partner in a Blade Runner-styled 2048. Co-executive producer J. J. Abrams’ refreshingly adult SF series was cancelled after just fourteen episodes.
Co-creator Joss Whedon’s much-anticipated movie spinoff series for ABC-TV, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., started off as a dull affair as agent Phil Coulson (the excellent Clark Gregg) apparently returned from the dead after being killed in Avengers Assemble to put a select team together to battle a secret organization known as Centipede and their reluctant super-soldier (J. August Richards). Even a crossover episode with Thor: The Dark World and guest appearances by Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury and Cobie Smulders’ Maria Hill couldn’t lift this show out of the doldrums.
In the first season finale of The CW’s Arrow, Oliver McQueen (Stephen Amell) failed to prevent Malcolm Merlyn’s (John Barrowman) earthquake machine from destroying The Glades, and Tommy (Colin Donnell) was killed as a result of his father’s insane plans. In Season Two, Moira Queen (Susanna Thompson) was put on trial for her part in Merlyn’s plot, we learned the origins of Black Canary (Caity Lotz) and The Flash (Grant Gustin), and there were references to various other characters in the DC Comics universe. If only the tedious flashbacks to Oliver’s time on the island hadn’t slowed the action down so much.
The first season of CBS-TV’s Elementary concluded with a twitchy Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) discovering that Moriarty was in fact Irene Adler (Natalie Dormer), the one woman he had truly loved. The opening episode of Season Two was set in London, as the detective and Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) encountered Holmes’ estranged brother Mycroft (Rhys Ifans) and an incompetent Gareth Lestrade (Sean Pertwee), who were both hiding their own secrets.
With writer Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) and detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) now a couple, the fifth season of ABC’s Castle passed its 100th episode and included Ring and Rear Window-inspired shows, as well as another featuring a possible “Bigfoot” killer. Even Wes Craven popped up as himself in an episode.
When a local author writing a book about two British B-movie stars of the 1960s was found dead with two puncture marks in her neck, an episode of ITV’s Midsomer Murders turned into a tribute to Hammer Films. It even managed to include cameos by two actors – Caroline Munro (as an evil Egyptian priestess) and John Carson – who had worked for the studio.
The fourth series of ITV’s Whitechapel found police detectives Joseph Chandler (Rupert Penry-Jones) and Ray Miles (Phil Davis) investigating a series of murders conducted in the manner of 17th-century “Witchfinder General” Matthew Hopkins, tracking down an apparent witch who flayed the faces off her victims, and investigating a gang of cannibalistic killers living in the sewers under London.
In the penultimate season of USA Network’s Psych, Shaun (James Roday) and Gus (Dulé Hill) became involved in a “found footage” hunt for a Bigfoot-type creature in the woods, and Juliet (Maggie Lawson) finally discovered that Shaun’s psychic powers were fake. Meanwhile, an episode in homage to the 1985 movie Clue guest-starred original stars Christopher Lloyd, Lesley Ann Warren and Martin Mull and was dedicated to the memory of Madeline Kahn. In America, viewers on the East and West coasts were able to vote on which ending they wanted to watch.
During the sixth season of Murdoch Mysteries, the 1890s Toronto detective (Yannick Bisson) encountered a suspect claiming to be the real Sherlock Holmes, a murder supposedly committed by a vengeful ghost, a man who may have been turned into a Haitian zombie and a woman apparently killed by a lake monster.
In the penultimate episode of the thirteenth season of CBS-TV’s CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, the death of a ghost-hunter was linked to the legend of a serial killer who murdered eight pre-teen boys, forcing Greg (Eric Szmanda) to use his own suppressed paragnostic powers. Meanwhile, Ozzy Osbourne guest-starred as himself in a two-part episode in which the team hunted for a serial killer inspired by Dante’s “Inferno”.
Guillermo del Toro created the terrific animated opening sequence for The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXIV, which featured numerous references to horror icons such as Cthulhu, Godzilla and the Universal Monsters, along with tributes to Ray Harryhausen, Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson. Other authors featured included Stephen King, H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe and Rod Serling. It was a shame that the rest of the episode didn’t live up to the titles.
Comedy Central’s Futurama finally ended its resurrected run with a Groundhog Day-style glitch on the day that Fry decided to propose to Leena.
An impassive therapist listened to “Mary Shelley” explain the plot of her novel Frankenstein and “Mrs Alfred Hitchcock” complain about her marriage in Jeremy Dyson’s not-very-funny Sky Arts comedy sketch series Playhouse Presents: Psychobitches. Iain Banks: Raw Spirit – A Review Show Special on BBC Scotland featured an exclusive interview that the late author gave to Kirsty Wark about facing up to the inevitability of death.
In C. S. Lewis: The Secret Lives and Loves on BBC4, biographer A. N. Wilson examined the children’s author’s colourful private life.
Actor David Hasselhoff looked at such films as The Shining, The Omen, Scream and Saw with the help of plenty of talking heads in the BBC’s The Hoff’s Best Horror Film Ever!
TNT’s “Star of the Month” for October was appropriately Vincent Price, with the channel screening House of Wax, The Mad Magician, House on Haunted Hill, The Bat, The Tingler, The Fall of the House of Usher, Pit and the Pendulum, Twice-Told Tales, Diary of a Madman, Tower of London, The Raven, The Haunted Palace, The Masque of the Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Conqueror Worm (aka Witchfinder General), The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Theatre of Blood and other movies featuring the actor, including his many nongenre roles.
As TNT fully embraced the Halloween month, other mini-seasons included “Zombie Attacks”, “Mad Doctors”, “Vampires”, “Spooky Houses”, “Bewitching Wives”, “Satan Worshippers”, “Maniac Criminals”, “Scary Sisters”, “Monsters Need Love Too”, “Christopher Lee Horror” and “Directed by Tod Browning”.
BBC Radio 4’s Friday Drama: Vincent Price and the Horror of the English Bloodbeast was Matthew Broughton’s hourlong drama about the making of the 1967 film Witchfinder General. Nickolas Grace played Price, Blake Ritson was director Michael Reeves and Kenneth Cranham portrayed producer Tony Tenser.
Paul Evans’ Afternoon Drama: Chapel of Souls, also on Radio 4, was about a ghostly meeting of pathways that led three lost souls to an ancient chapel that had to be reached before midnight. The play was recorded in the Shropshire hills of the Welsh Marches and featured special wildlife recordings by the BBC’s natural-history unit.
Listening to the Dead consisted of five separate dramas written by playwright Katie Hims about different generations of a family, each featuring the same ghost of a drowned teenage girl in a blue dress.
In Mike Walker’s The Edison Cylinders, a physicist (Clare McCarron) listened to some old Victorian wax cylinder recordings and discovered that they contained a malevolent message, while Michael Stewart’s supernatural comedy Dead Man’s Suit featured a loser whose life was transformed after he bought a bespoke suit in a charity shop.
Alastair Jessiman’s down-at-heel psychic detective Thomas Soutar (Robin Lain
g) was on the trail of a missing journalist in The Sensitive: Terma, and then he became involved with a celebrated actor while on holiday in The Sensitive: Black Island.
In Ed Hime’s radio mockumentary Obey the Wave, a cult SF writer (Justin Salinger) investigated the 1973 disappearance of the members of a religious movement, including his own parents.
A soundtrack ranging from Dvorak and Bernard Herrmann to Cumbrian folk music and David Bowie accompanied Sarah Hall and Dominic Power’s ninety-minute contemporary ghost story The Stranger’s Will on BBC Radio 3 in February.
Christopher Eccleston was Winston Smith and Tim Pigott-Smith portrayed O’Brien in Jonathan Holloway’s two-part dramatization of Nineteen Eighty-Four, broadcast as part of Radio 4’s “The Real George Orwell” strand early in the year.
Inspired by the works of J. G. Ballard, a week of programmes on BBC Radio in June on the themes of “Dangerous Visions” and “Very British Dystopias” included hourlong adaptations of the author’s The Drowned World and Concrete Island, along with a 1989 interview with Ballard himself.
As part of the first theme, Michael Symmons’ hourlong The Sleeper was about a teenage girl (Sarah Churm) with the ability to fall asleep in a futuristic Britain suffering from twenty-four hour wakefulness, while in Ed Harris’ Billions a man (Blake Ritson) discovered that his wife had been replaced by a near-perfect replica supplied by her insurance company.
Set in a future London divided into a crime-free North and a lawless South, a police detective (Justin Salinger) crossed the river to investigate the death of a teenager in Nick Perry’s London Bridge, and there were shades of Shirley Jackson in Michael Butt’s Death Duty, in which a weekly lottery system decided a sacrificial victim in a drought-stricken city.
Also in June, BBC Radio 4 broadcast an hourlong adaptation of Clive Barker’s short story “The Forbidden” (the inspiration for the Candyman movie series) starring Nadine Marshall.
Two months later, Joy Williamson adapted Agatha Christie’s classic old dark house mystery And Then There Were None into a ninety-minute drama.
In early October, Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime: Algernon Blackwood’s Ghost Stories presented fifteen-minute readings by Matthew Marsh of such unfamiliar stories as “Keeping His Promise”, “The Land of Green Ginger”, “The Transfer”, “The Man Who Lived Backwards” and “The Kit Bag”.
During the run-up to Hallowe’en, Edinburgh Haunts presented readings of three specially commissioned ghost stories, set in the Scottish city, while with Radio 4’s Pilgrim, Sebastian Baczkiewicz’s doomed immortal wanderer William Palmer (Paul Hilton) returned for eight more adventures during the year.
In Gerard Foster’s half-hour comedy Little Monster, a couple discovered that their new baby had horns, fangs and a tail.
Terry Pratchett’s Eric was a four-part adaptation on Radio 4 of the author’s Faustian “Discworld” novel that featured Mark Heap as the voice of minor wizard Rincewind.
Dirk Maggs’ production of Neil Gaiman’s 1996 novel Neverwhere, set in a parallel London Below, launched on Radio 4 in March and then continued over five consecutive nights on Radio 4 Extra. The all-star cast included James McAvoy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrew Sachs, Sophie Okonedo, Anthony Head, Bernard Cribbins, Johnny Vegas, Gaiman himself, and Christopher Lee as the Earl of Earl’s Court.
Meanwhile, Gaiman’s original novel was “temporarily removed” from a New Mexico high school library after complaints from a parent who objected to an “inappropriate” sex scene.
Although commercially available for a few years, five hourlong Doctor Who audio dramas, featuring Paul McGann’s Time Lord and Sheridan Smith as his companion Lucie Miller, made their radio debut on BBC Radio 4 Extra in January.
In the lead-up to the 50th anniversary, former script editor David Whitaker’s 1964 novel Doctor Who and the Daleks was read by original companion William Russell as narrator Ian Chesterton. It was followed by the actor’s readings of Jonathan Morris’ Doctor Who: Protect and Survive (with Sylvester McCoy), Eddie Robson’s Doctor Who: 1963: Fanfare for the Common Men (with Peter Davison) and Doctor Who: Human Resources (with Paul McGann), Andy Lane’s Doctor Who: A Thousand Tiny Wings (with McCoy again), Moris Farhi’s Doctor Who: Farewell Great Macedon, and Terrance Dicks’ The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
Presented by Russell Tovey, Who is the Doctor? on BBC Radio 2 was a ninety-minute celebration that explored the legacy and lasting appeal of the show through interviews and archive material.
However, Doctor Who was not the only person celebrating an anniversary, as 2013 also marked fifty years since the death of C. S. Lewis. Robin Brooks’ Afternoon Drama: Lewis and Tolkien – The Lost Road on Radio 4 explored the friendship between the two writers, while Brian Sibley’s The Northern Irish Man in C. S. Lewis over on Radio 4 Extra starred Geoffrey Palmer as the author of the “Narnia” series.
Through the Wardrobe presented readings of three short stories in tribute to Lewis.
Barnaby Edwards’ four-part adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera starred Anna Massey, Peter Guinness, James D’Arcy and Alexander Siddig.
Radio 4 Extra’s Haunted brought together half-hour readings of short stories by, amongst others, Rosemary Timperley, Wilkie Collins, Bram Stoker, H. G. Wells, John Keir Cross, Ray Bradbury, Agatha Christie, R. Chetwynd-Hayes and J. B. Priestley.
A Short History of Gothic included readings of Angela Carter’s “The Lady of the House of Love” and Laurell K. Hamilton’s “Those Who Seek Forgiveness”, and The Female Ghost offered a half-hour dramatization of “The Cold Embrace” by Mary Braddon.
A Night with a Vampire featured David Tennant reading extracts from Antoine Calmet’s Dead Persons in Hungary, Alexei Tolstoy’s “The Family of the Vourdalak”, Guy de Maupassant’s “The Horla”, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s “Luella Miller”, Théophile Gautier’s “Clarimonde”, Angela Carter’s “The Lady of the House of Love”, Fritz Leiber’s “The Girl With the Hungry Eyes”, Edith Wharton’s “Bewitched”, Richard Matheson’s “Drink My Red Blood” and Robert Swindell’s “A Lot of Mince Pies”.
Other short story readings on Radio 4 Extra were grouped under such series titles as Midnight Tales (all by Bram Stoker), Ghost Stories of E. Nesbit, Ghost Stories of Walter de la Mare, Weird Tales, A Short History of Vampires and Fear on Four. Summer Ghosts featured readings of three supernatural stories set in daylight.
Repeats of The Man in Black were introduced by Mark Gatiss, and Vincent Price introduced The Price of Fear. Christopher Lee read both Christopher Lee’s Fireside Chats (featuring stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Jerome K. Jerome, E. Nesbit, Ambrose Bierce and W. W. Jacobs) and The Ghost Stories of M. R. James.
Scottish horror was explored in The Darker Side of the Border with half-hour dramatizations of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Olalla” and James Hogg’s “Brownie of the Black Haggs”.
Four episodes of Blakes 7 – The Early Years featured Zoë Tapper, Jason Merrells and James Swallow.
Originally written for Doctor Who in the late 1960s, Aliens in the Mind finally became a six-part BBC radio drama in 1977. Re-broadcast by Radio 4 Extra in June, horror veterans Vincent Price and Peter Cushing co-starred as two respected medical investigators who discovered that a remote Scottish island was an experimental site for the creation of a race of telepathic mutants.
The radio station also revived Before the Screaming Begins, a three-part drama about a wedding anniversary celebration interrupted by an alien invasion starring Jennifer Piercy, James Laurenson and Patrick Troughton. Although the original master-tape had been lost following the initial broadcast in 1979, the show’s writer, Wally K. Daly, had made an off-air cassette recording at the time. It was followed by the three-part The Silent Scream and With a Whimper to the Grave, both also scripted and recorded by Daly.
In Arthur in the Underworld on Radio 4, journalist Horatio Clare looked at the life and work of Welsh author and mystic Arthur Machen, while Christopher Frayling investigated the consequences o
f the infamous 1938 radio broadcast in Archive on 4: Orson Welles and The War of the Worlds – Myth or Legend?, with the suggestion that it could have been inspired by a similar BBC production from 1926.
In an episode recorded at the British Film Institute, BBC Radio 3’s Night Waves: Sound of Cinema featured Matthew Sweet and guests discussing the classic 1961 horror movie The Innocents. In another episode, Sweet looked at music that evoked the sinister side of British rural life, including Paul Giovanni’s score for The Wicker Man (1973) and James Barnard’s score for Hammer’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), while in Between the Ears: Sound of Cinema: Return of the Monster from the Id, writer Ken Hollings celebrated the electronic score created by Louis and Bebe Barron for the 1956 SF film Forbidden Planet.
In the first episode of Radio 4’s The Reunion, presenter Sue MacGregor brought together five people who created and starred in the first series of Doctor Who fifty years earlier, including original director Waris Hussein and actors Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, Jeremy Young and Peter Purves.
When the global audience of World Book Club was asked to vote for the writer who they would most like to be interviewed for the first time, the overwhelming response was for Neil Gaiman. So in September, the BBC World Service broadcast an interview with the writer, based around his novel American Gods, with questions put to him by the listeners themselves.
Novelist Naomi Alderman investigated the attraction and influence of fanfic in Radio 4’s When Harry Potter Met Frodo: The Strange World of Fan Fiction.
With a libretto by Stephen King, music and songs by John Mellencamp and musical direction by T. Bone Burnett, Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, released in a boxed CD/DVD set by Concord Music Group, was the result of a creative collaboration that dated back to the mid-1990s.
A ghost story based on events that reportedly occurred at the haunted cottage owned by Mellencamp, the cast of singers included Elvis Costello, Kris Kristofferson, Rosanne Cash and Sheryl Crow, while Samantha Mathis, Matthew McConaughey and Meg Ryan were among the actors involved in the concept album.