When not writing a sitcom set in a mortuary, I've been working on a true crime show set in one too! It's a new podcast from Whistledown for BBC Sounds called Mortem, in which mortician Carla Valentine examines a dead body found in unusual circumstances and interviews forensics experts to discover how and why they died - and how the killers were caught. If you ever wanted to understand the science of blood spatter, or how you can catch a criminal with pollen, this is the show for you. There'll be 3 cases and 9 episodes in all.

I was hired as the script editor for this podcast last year and it's been enormous fun working with producer Deborah Dudgeon and writer Nina Millns to mould these narratives into their final form. Whilst the cases have been reconstructed from numerous real crimes - in order to protect victims and their families, the names and circumstances depicted in this podcast are fictional - the show engages with real science and professionals to describe how cases of this kind are solved. It's got lots of gruesome detail and squishy sounds. It's fab.

You can download Mortem on iTunes, the BBC Sounds app, and wherever you get your podcasts. 

A couple of quick announcements as the year comes to an end!

Hot off the heels of Daughter of the Gods, my next Doctor Who for Big Finish Productions has been announced: Divine Intervention, one of the four tales in the new Stranded boxed set coming next year. This time it's with the Eighth Doctor himself, Paul McGann, as the TARDIS becomes stranded in a truly terrifying place: Britain in the year 2020. Also starring Nicola Walker, Hattie Morahan, Tom Price and Rebecca Root, this set of stories is released in July next year - find out more at the Big Finish site!

And as the Wooden Overcoats team continue working on our fourth and final season, we had a lovely end of year surprise - we've been listed as one of Time's "50 Best Podcasts to Listen to Right Now." 

This uniquely British comedy (think Fawlty Towers crossed with the British Office) from creator David K. Barnes centers on two competing funeral homes in a small village. The show, which has been airing since 2015, has managed to deepen its emotional resonance as the characters grow and change. And that’s saying something for a series that is narrated by a mouse.

We'll of course be back next year with a whole new season of adventures featuring historical pageants, angry mobs, school memories, and the truth about Eric Chapman! Hope to see you all there x

Outliers is a podcast from Historic Royal Palaces in association with Rusty Quill, which casts an eye on events from the perspective of those 'on the edges' of history. Each episode presents a brand new play, written for the podcast, which is professionally performed, scored and produced. I was glad to have contributed a play to their first season in 2017 - The King's Sister, about Henry VIII's fourth wife, Anne of Cleves - and was very pleased to be asked back to write for their second season with Mehmet and the Wild Boy.

I've long been fascinated by the King's Staircase murals at Kensington Palace, which depict the many courtiers of George I's entourage. They're a dynamic and varied lot, including doctors, painters and entertainers. One of them has drawn particular interest: Peter, the so called 'Wild Boy,' a feral child found in the forests of Germany and brought back to England to be kept as a pet. I wanted to write a play about him and chose to tell it from the perspective of another intriguing figure, Georg Ludwig Maximilian von Königstreu - better known to us as Mehmet, a Turkish valet of unusual station and importance.

The fascination and prejudice that both Peter and Mehmet would have encountered in 18th century England struck me as a potential window to tell an entertaining and sensitive story about them both, in which Mehmet finds himself embroiled in the attempts to make Peter sit still for long enough to be painted. The play has been masterfully performed by Atilla Akinci and directed by Alex Newall, and I hope we've done justice to the historical persons involved!

You can download Mehmet and the Wild Boy from your usual podcast apps, or listen to it here. Further info about the history of this play can be found direct from Historic Royal Palaces, and do check out the rest of the series! It's a fine selection of plays with plenty more on the way.

When two Doctors meet, you know there's trouble afoot...

My third adventure for Big Finish Productions has now been released! Doctor Who: Daughter of the Gods revisits a classic 1960s Dalek epic, when the TARDIS ends up colliding... with itself. The Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive on the planet Urbinia to find that the First Doctor has already been here for three months. The Daleks are invading and it'll take their combined wits to think of a solution. But there's an extra complication. The First Doctor is accompanied by his friend Katarina, a handmaiden from the ancient city of Troy. And there's no way she can possibly be here - because, as the Second Doctor knows, she died within a day of meeting him...

This one is a love letter to 1960s Doctor Who, combining two Doctors, four companions, and lots of Daleks. To be honest, the plot will probably make no sense to anyone but the most ardent anoraks but it was incredibly satisfying to write. Katarina, originally played on television by the late Adrienne Hill, only appeared in five episodes of the programme before her character was shockingly killed off: she was the first companion to die. Only one of her episodes still exists in the BBC Archives, so she really is a kind of unknown character, more famous for her status within the programme's history than for her actual personality. I placed that tension at the heart of this story, giving Katarina the time and exploration that she sadly never received onscreen, so that  at last she can stand at the centre of her own narrative.

Ajjaz Awad does a tremendous job as Katarina, and she's ably accompanied by three actors from that classic era: Peter Purves as Steven, Frazer Hines as Jamie, and Wendy Padbury as Zoe. Peter and Frazer also play the two Doctors respectively, in tribute to the late William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton. It's a story with plenty of twists, daring escapes, and an argument over breakfast about the Doctor's late night parties!

Daughter of the Gods is available on CD and download from Big Finish - and you can also read more about my approach to writing Doctor Who and other audio dramas in this interview for Downtime. It's a great site which has been especially supportive of my Who scripts so far, and I was really chuffed to be allowed the time to discuss science fiction, 'big ideas', comedy and how I approach writing for the series I grew up with!

Good Lord. Since our campaign launched exactly two weeks ago, we have received (at time of writing) just over £17,500 in donations from listeners helping us to raise money for the fourth and final season of Wooden Overcoats. This means that the team are now able to write, record, produce and release ten new episodes of our funereal sitcom, along with a Halloween Special exclusive to our backers. 

The generosity and excitement displayed by our listeners is incredible and I'm deeply grateful. The season is fully planned and myself and the other writers are getting to work on the scripts already. We're excited to take these characters on new adventures and give them a proper send-off.

The campaign is running for another eighteen days and though we've met our initial targets, donations are still super, super appreciated. I'd particularly love the resources to expand the later episodes of the season, so that we can say farewell to these characters in the best way we can. If you fancy chipping in some cash, take a look at the campaign and the rewards on offer. And we're still releasing our Funn Fragments: Autumn Cleaning by Ella Watts sees Antigone and Georgie dealing with decades of assorted junk, whilst Rudyard and Eric do battle over man's best friend in Rolo by Chris & Jen Sugden. We've two more still to come. You can download these on your favourite podcast provider, or listen to them on our AudioBoom page. 

Once again: thank you! Wooden Overcoats is coming back in 2020 and I couldn't be happier.

This morning, Wooden Overcoats launched its fundraising campaign for the show's fourth and final season. To my great astonishment and joy, at the time of writing we've already made nearly 40% of our total goal within less than 12 hours. Given that we're asking for £15,000 (with a total series budget of £25,000) this is pretty damn extraordinary. Those figures would undoubtedly look rather low for major production companies like the BBC, but we're doing what we can to make the show we love on an achievable budget, whilst ensuring that everyone gets paid. And frankly we're over the moon that we have a network of dedicated listeners who want us to make more!

Alongside the fundraiser, we're also releasing a new season of Funn Fragments, kindly sponsored by Historic Royal Palaces (whose own podcast, Outliers in association with Rusty Quill, is launching a second season in November). These are mini-episodes of the show starring Felix Trench, Beth Eyre, Ciara Baxendale and Tom Crowley, scripted by writers across the audio drama podcasting sphere. We've got Mac Rogers (Steal the Stars, The Message, LifeAfter), Sarah Shachat (Wolf 359, Zero Hours), Gabrielle Watts (Orphans) and Chris & Jen Sugden (Victoriocity), as well as our first Overcoats script written by Felix Trench himself. It was enormous fun to curate and script edit these little nuggets of new Wooden Overcoats, and the first - Eric's Pal by Felix Trench - is now available from wherever you get your podcasts.

On Sunday 15th September, Wooden Overcoats - my podcast sitcom about rival undertakers - performed at the London Podcast Festival to what must have been one of our largest and warmest audiences so far! And then, towards the end of the show, I had a certain announcement to make...

The sad news is that Wooden Overcoats is coming to an end, for numerous reasons (mainly logistical). It's been a truly life-changing experience for me: my first sitcom, my first experiences as a script editor, and really the first time my work has reached a wide audience. Our listeners are a dedicated bunch, writing in with warm messages of appreciation, artwork, and fanfiction. Wooden Overcoats could easily have been the tiniest pebble in the ocean but it's our listeners who ensured we've been able to carry on as long as we have. I'll always be grateful to them and I hope to go on to write many more shows of a similar vintage. 

Last Sunday, the Wooden Overcoats team went to Latitude Festival to perform on the brand new Listening Post stage, alongside other podcasts like Griefcast and Rule of Three. My very first visit to Latitude and I wish I could have been there longer. Lovely atmosphere, warm crowds, and lots of entertainment on offer.

In terms of celebrity encounters, I nearly bumped into Richard Curtis and I caught a glimpse of Mark Kermode eating his lunch. Powerful, blistering anecdotes, these.

Following the Underbelly Festival Southbank and Latitude, Wooden Overcoats will be scoring a festival hat trick by performing at the London Podcast Festival on Sunday 15th September. 

Last year, I had the great pleasure of seeing my very own Doctor Who story The Dalek Occupation of Winter released by Big Finish Productions. The reviews must have been good because they invited me back to take a second trip in the TARDIS - not just with one Doctor, but two! 

Daughter of the Gods will see the 2nd Doctor diverted from his flight path after an almighty collision in space. He and his companions Jamie and Zoe investigate the planet Urbinia, only to discover that the 1st Doctor is already on the scene with space pilot Steven and Trojan handmaiden Katarina. And it's going to take all their combined ingenuity to deal with the Dalek fleet approaching the planet...

It was great fun to play with so many characters from the Doctor Who toy box. Long time fans will be particularly excited to see the return of Katarina, a character we've not heard from since her tragically short stint in 1965. She was only in the show for five episodes before being killed off, and sadly Adrienne Hill who played her died in 1997. However, Adrienne's performance has been superbly recaptured by Ajjaz Awad, in a story that places Katarina firmly at its centre. She's joined by Who 60's stalwarts Peter Purves as Steven, Frazer Hines as Jamie, and Wendy Padbury as Zoe, with the first two Doctors lovingly performed by Peter and Frazer respectively, in tribute to the deceased William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton.

Doctor Who: Daughter of the Gods is released on CD and download in November. Head over to the Big Finish website to listen to a trailer and pre-order the story!

Monkey is a dark comedy about an organ grinder, his wife and their monkey. Based on memories of growing up near the sea - and in particular the miserable pebble beaches - I first wrote this play in 2015 for a couple of performances at the Drayton Arms in London. Now with a fresh rewrite, it's being staged for a week at the VAULT Festival '19, produced by TumbleDry Theatre and directed by John Rushton.

Playing Barbara the monkey between them are two Wooden Overcoats luminaries: Beth Eyre (Antigone Funn) and Season 3 writer Rosie Fletcher, who'll be providing Barbara's interior monologue. Playing her owners are Ben Bruckshaw (Der Rosenkavalier, Royal Opera House) as Marcus, and Kate Sketchley (The Lehman Trilogy, National Theatre) as Paula. You can find out more about the cast here.

You can catch Monkey at VAULT Festival's Network Theatre from Feb 13th-17th. Nab a ticket here!