So, jury duty is over. I was on a very complex and troubling murder case. It was a fascinating and eye-opening experience. ..Ho hum… (This is something I may talk about at a later date when all the dust has settled – both on the events and on my mind- but for now I’ll leave it there…)
Am now working on series 3 of our BBC Radio 7 series Planet B (Here’s the wiki link for the show- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_B )
The first ep of this new series is being written by Dawn King – who has been a writer on Planet B since the first series. (Her Episode is delightfully dark with elements of slasher horror – all made Planetb-ified – of course!) Can’t wait to hear it realized – we record all the episodes in the first week of October.
Here’s a little teaser – There are some fun worlds in the episodes of Planet B this time round – including a Pirate episode…
This series is five eps long, and I’m writing the series finale – at the moment, tentatively called “The End of The Rogue” – but that may change. A lot of the Planet B episodes have an individual ‘genre’ feel -in the past we’ve had westerns, thrillers, Roman epics, space operas etc – usually with a ‘game playing’ element. But my episode in this series will be a little different… (that was another teaser, in case you missed it.)
Apart from this I’ve got a couple of ongoing secret projects (I use the word ‘secret’ here as a short cut for a long explanation as to why I can’t talk about these – reasons that are usually a little banal – so popping the word ‘Secret’ in here makes the whole thing feel a little more mysterious and glamorous… Although in this case these particular projects are in fact both mysterious and glamorous – so using the word ‘secret’ is completely appropriate. ;o) )
Two weeks til I start the BBC Writer’s Academy…
My Radio 4 afternoon play “The Rain Maker” starring the excellent actor Kenneth Cranham and the excellent actor Joe Dempsie was broadcast on Tuesday and is now available on the bbc iplayer – here it is: http://bbc.in/abCH0b
I also worked with Ken on “Vincent Price and the Horror of the English Blood beast” (which was about the relationship between film director Michael Reeves and his Star Vincent Price on the set of seminal Brit horror flick ‘the Witchfinder General.’) Ken is a special actor – he has worked with everyone, and was a great favourite of Joe Orton and Harold Pinter. I think he’s just brilliant – and always love to see him on screen or on the radio.
The producer James Robinson also blogged about the making of The Rain Maker (on location in a real forest) here: http://bbc.in/bLJqx3
We had an odd and interesting day in that forest – James forgets to mention that we were attacked by a wild giant chicken while eating our lunch. A chicken whose plumage looked like it had been designed by William Morris… (It is my humble guess that William Morris probably had the idea for the whole Arts and Crafts movement while being attacked by a giant chicken in a forest in Kent.)
Now off to prepare myself for the fact that my beloved West Ham are likely to be totally thrashed by Man Utd today… Unless there’s some kind of miracle.
And on that less than enigmatic note…
Matthew Broughton's Blog 