The third season of my podcast sitcom Wooden Overcoats has come to an end with the hour long special episode, Putting the Funn in Funerals. I wrote the script in a feverish hurry at the end of November last year, desperately trying to pack everything in before we began recording the very next day. Several months on and the fully recorded, scored and produced episode is now available freely online! I still can't quite get my head around having my own sitcom, three seasons down, out there in the world.

Against a backdrop of a village in celebration, a private tragedy forces Georgie (Ciara Baxendale) to make a difficult decision... Fundamentally, it's a drama about saying goodbye and looking forward to the future. Having ended Season 2 in 2016 with an apocalyptic comedy about burying forty dead clowns, I wanted to ease off the throttle with the end of Season 3 and write a quieter and more reflective script that dealt sensitively with the death of a loved one. For once, there is little active conflict between characters, with the greatest battle raging within Georgie herself: not only the practical consideration of who should provide her grandmother's funeral - her friends at Funn Funerals, or the much more capable Eric Chapman - but also the many mixed emotions we all experience when somebody we love is no longer there. 

The online reaction to this episode has been overwhelming, with a real sense of community as listeners have come forward to tell their own stories of recent bereavements to my production team and to each other. It's been incredibly touching to see how invested our listeners have become in the denizens of Piffling Vale. Regulars Felix Trench, Beth Eyre, Tom Crowley and of course Ciara Baxendale have given their finest performances yet. The episode is also blessed with sterling supporting work from Andy Secombe and Sean Baker as the newly wedded Reverend Wavering and Mayor Desmond Desmond, and I was absolutely thrilled to have special guest star Julia Deakin in the studio to reprise Nana Crusoe in several key sequences. Whilst listeners will catch many other recognisable voices throughout this episode, I'd particularly like to single out Belinda Lang for her impeccable performance as our narrator, Madeleine, not just for this instalment but for every episode we've made so far. She infuses the words with such a naughty, gossipy twinkle and she's never been less than perfect. I'm so lucky to have her in this show. 

Will there be a Season 4? The team will be discussing that in the coming months - but for now we still have one episode left to release! Our Summer Special, Rudyard Ruins Summer, or, A Handful of Sand by myself and Alex Lynch, will be available on Thursday 21st June. This full length episode sees our main characters stranded on a desert island, and will be made freely available to all of our Kickstarter backers, whilst also being available to purchase online via the website (as is our 2016 Christmas Special).

You can find Wooden Overcoats on iTunes and AudioBoom - thank you for listening!

It's been a quiet few weeks of working on scripts I can't tell anyone about yet, but the third season of Wooden Overcoats, my sitcom about rival funeral directors, has been ticking along - and finishes next week! Here's an update on the last few episodes.

It was a lot of fun to return to my roots in amateur (student) theatre for this one, and to bring back one of my favourite guest characters from WO Season 2. The "love triangle" between Antigone, Marlene and Georgie (Ciara Baxendale) was one of the most rewarding things to write in this new season and it seems from online feedback that our listeners really went with it!

I'd planned to give my best John le Carre treatment to Piffling Vale when sketching out Season 2 in 2016 but owing to casting complications I'd had to drop the idea. That wasn't a problem this time round, so I was finally able to write the "Agatha Doyle Investigates..." script I'd always wanted! Mayor Desmond Desmond (Sean Baker), Reverend Wavering (Andy Secombe) and Lady Templar (Catriona Knox) are amongst the suspects in my latest attempt at penning a mystery story - can you guess whodunnit?

Written by Molly Beth Morossa (who gave us The Ghost of Piffling Vale in Season 2), this episode features one of my favourite ideas of the season: what if the eternally confident Eric Chapman got in way over his head? It's also the first time we've really tackled the subject of grief in a show nominally about funerals. A special shout out goes to Pip Gladwin and Holly Campbell who've played the vox populi Bill & Tanya since the first season, usually popping up for a few lines per episode. It's been a pleasure to bring them to the foreground this year, with The Sunshine Treatment giving them their most prominent scenes so far. Narrator of countless audiobooks David Thorpe gives a splendid performance as the stricken Mr Wimbledon, and I'm in this one too, if you like that kind of thing.

As ever you can find Wooden Overcoats on iTunes and AudioBoom and if you're not subscribed to the show already, do make sure to "tune in" next week for our season finale Putting the Funn in Funerals!