London Below. Richard Mayhew finds himself in a mysterious subterranean world
The first episode of BBC Radio 4’s Neverwhere, starring James McAvoy, Natalie Dormer, Benedict Cumberbatch, David Harewood, Sophie Okonedo, Anthony Stuart Head, Sir Christopher Lee, Bernard Cribbins, and oh, lots of people, went out today, which means you have 7 days left to listen to it, wherever you are. (It’s at the bottom of the page.)
(The next 5 episodes will go out over the next 5 days.) You can listen to NEVERWHERE anywhere in the world using a desktop/laptop computer.
If you are using a tablet or mobile device you can still listen but you’ll need a radio app like TuneIn Radio
Instead of the 12 days of Christmas, Radio 4 are doing the six nights of ‘Neverwhere’, which was a hit for BBC Radio 4 Extra and BBC Radio 4 this year. For the first time, every episode of the hugely popular series by Neil Gaiman will be on BBC Radio 4.
HURRAH!
1) YES you can listen to this anywhere in the world, for free, using the BBC iPlayer or a radio app that plays Radio 4 or Radio 4 shows.
2) YES Benedict Cumberbatch, James McAvoy, Natalie Dormer, Bernard Cribbins and Anthony Head are STILL IN IT. So is everyone else. Radio 4. Christmas week.
3) YES you can listen to it on Audible etc if you get too impatient waiting for Xmas. It’s also technically out on CD, but I cannot for the life of me see where you get it…
microfin asked: My father claims the line "violence was the last refuge of the incompetent" (from Neverwhere) belongs to Isaac Asimov. Was the reference intentional?
Absolutely. It’s a very famous Asimov quote (the “and empty threats the last sanctuary of the terminally inept” is mine). There a few hat tips to SF authors in Nevewhere, although my most favourite is the “The sky was the perfect untroubled blue of a television screen tuned to an empty channel”, which is a quote and commentary on the opening lines of William Gibson’s Neuromancer.
I imagine that soon, the Gibson reference must be interpreted in historical context, because e.g. my LCD-TV does not know static anymore, but shows a full, deep, perfect (0.0.255) blue when there’s no signal.
You must reread my Neverwhere version of the quote more carefully…
The parent who wants NEVERWHERE banned, wants it banned for this scene, and this scene alone. A scene too R-Rated for the parent to even describe on TV.
I’m posting it for anyone who is thinking that Neverwhere must be PRETTY HOT STUFF. This is your half-page of raunch.
For those of you going “whoa, I bet it gets even hotter after this…” it doesn’t. That was it. Some drunken adulterous jumper-fumbling and three fucks by two people on a bench we will never meet again. And then on with Richard’s story…
Peter Capaldi (the new Doctor) as the Angel Islington - Neverwhere - BBC (by BBCWorldwide)
I’m pleased the BBC have put this clip up. Four Minutes of Neverwhere… with lovely performances from Peter Capaldi, Laura Fraser, Paterson Joseph, Hywel Bennett and Clive Russell.
(Take a look at the BBC Radio 4 NEVERWHERE Radio Characters page to see who played whom earlier this year.)
Radio 4 dramatisation featuring stars James McAvoy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Christopher Lee and Homeland’s David Harewood
It’s coming out in the UK (and I think in other places). Release set for 5th of September. Now you can listen to it all you like.
Given the amount of love out there right now for all things NEVERWHERE, I thought I should point out that Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab have a Neverwhere line of scents. Smell like the Marquis de Carabas (A splash of bay rum, leather, dusty black wool, massoia bark, and opium residue), or like Door, or like a Floating Market (A cacophony of curious scents: copaiba balsam, petitgrain, citrus rind, sinicuichi accord, betel nut, wasabi root, coconut palm, and wattleseed layered atop innumerable strange herbs, spices, and woods.) or Night’s Bridge or one of twelve different magical wonderful scents.
Check it out at http://www.blackphoenixalchemylab.com/londonbelow.html
And the best bit of it is the scents benefit the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. This is a good thing.
Finished listening to the last episode of Neverwhere. The fact that there’s so much more potential story left open is made all the more maddening since Gaiman doesn’t write sequels. It was some act of god or a merciful turn of the universe that Anansi Boys and American Gods is set within the same universe, to say nothing of the fact that he did a novella with Shadow versus Grendel apparently just for the hell of it. Neverwhere’s what got me into Gaiman’s stuff to begin with, I’ve read it at least seven times, and now the radio play’s done and I feel bereft of the story all over again.
guys you don’t understand how much I need a Neverwhere sequel or spinoff it’s actually painful
I’m nearly finished with “How the Marquis Got His Coat Back”, for a Gardner Dozois anthology called ROGUES. It has de Carabas in it, along with the Shepherds of Shepherds Bush, the Mushroom People, and the Elephant…
It’s not that I don’t write sequels. It’s that I get distracted by things I’ve never done and don’t know how to do before I ever get to them.
Possibly the best Croup and Vandemar I’ve ever seen. Probably because it’s the first one I’ve seen that scared me.