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Ectoplasm (radio show)

British radio series

Field	Value
show_name	Ectoplasm
format	Situation comedy
runtime	30 minutes
country	United Kingdom United Kingdom
language	English
home_station	BBC Radio 4
starring	Dan Freedman
Nick Romero
Sophie Aldred
Peter Donaldson
Owen Oakeshott
Colin Guthrie
writer	Dan Freedman
Nick Romero
producer	Helen Williams
first_aired	11 July 2000
last_aired	1 August 2000
num_series	1
num_episodes	4
audio_format	Stereophonic sound

Nick Romero Sophie Aldred Peter Donaldson Owen Oakeshott Colin Guthrie Nick Romero

Ectoplasm was a 2000 BBC Radio 4 comedy series written by and starring Dan Freedman and Nick Romero. Unlike the other radio work of Freedman and Romero, this series features single, coherent stories in each episode; certain motifs do, however, appear in all of the tales, e.g. Theremin's murder attempts.

Plot

The stories follow the adventures of Lord Zimbabwe (Romero), a "walker in the ether", or occult investigator; his friend and collaborator Doctor Lilac (Freedman), a German scientist who has invented various machines, including a time machine and a teleporter, and who breaks into megalomaniacal ravings at inopportune moments; Theremin (Peter Donaldson), Zimbabwe's butler, an abusive, murderous, incompetent servant who refuses to carry out any of Zimbabwe's instructions; and Schrödinger, a semi-corporeal cat that exists in a superposition of quantum states of life and death (cf Schrödinger's Cat), and is sexually attracted to women. Each adventure is initiated by a request by a different woman (all played by Sophie Aldred) for Lord Zimbabwe to help her.

Humour

As is characteristic of Freedman and Romero's work, much of the humour is derived from puns, although Theremin's abuse, Doctor Lilac's experiments (he is about to perform a bizarre experiment when Lord Zimbabwe first approaches him in each show; for example giving a woodlouse PMT) and interrupted diatribes, and Lord Zimbabwe's use of strange similes ("The secret to success, my dear Doctor, is like the aftermath of a Bombay banquet: one must keep going.") all contribute. Recurrent motifs include telephone calls from Sherlock Holmes seeking advice, and references to evil shape-changing pixie creatures (Agatha Christie's character Hercule Poirot appears in one episode; he blames all crimes on these pixie creatures.)

The influence of Douglas Adams's "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" can be detected, as in the doctor character, reminiscent of the HHGG psychiatrist.

Each show ends with Lord Zimbabwe saying "I think we handled that rather well," and Theremin answering "I couldn't agree less, sir."

Episode list

Episode	Title	First broadcast
1	The Curse of Tutancommon	11 July 2000
2	The Case of the Missing Lost Soul	18 July 2000
3	The Affair of the Baddie's Niece	25 July 2000
4	The Adventure of the Stupid, Ignorant Americans	1 August 2000

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

bbc-radio-comedy-programmes 2000-radio-programme-debuts bbc-radio-4-programmes

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