Benedict Cumberbatch, James McAvoy and Natalie Dormer… the cast list of Radio 4's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's fantasy drama Neverwhere is the stuff of GG♥SF's dreams.
Throw in Christopher Lee, Tony Head, Bernard Cribbins and David Harewood and we would have been squealing with delight were we at the read-through. Which could have been embarrassing, but apparently we wouldn't have been the only ones.
“When I walked into the table read and a few of the other actors were there it was absolutely astonishing,” said the delightful Natalie Dormer at the launch. “We were astounded. You saw the cast looking around and it's amazing to see the likes of Benedict [Cumberbatch] and James [McAvoy] a little bit star-struck by Christopher Lee at the table.”
Adding to the excitement was the fact that the initial read-through was the only time the entire cast would be gathered together in one place.
“We were all so excited,” said Dormer. “It's a gift to have been able to sit down like that because it wasn't recorded chronologically speaking - it never can be, due to people's availability and so on - so to sit down with that cast and read with them was fantastic."
The six-part series tells the tale of Richard Mayhew, who is catapulted from his ordinary life into a subterranean world under the streets of London when he stops to help an injured girl.
So begins a curious and mysterious adventure deep beneath the streets of London, a London of shadows where the tube cry of 'Mind the Gap' takes on new meaning; for the inhabitants of this murky domain are those who have fallen through the gaps in society, the dispossessed, the homeless. Here Richard meets the Earl of Earl’s Court, Old Bailey and Hammersmith, faces a life-threatening ordeal at the hands of the Black Friars, comes face to face with Great Beast of London, and encounters an Angel. Called Islington.
Joining the mysterious girl named Door and her companions, the Marquis de Carabas and the bodyguard, Hunter, Richard embarks on an extraordinary quest to escape from the clutches of the fiendish assassins Croup and Vandemar and to discover who ordered them to murder her family. All the while trying to work out how to get back to his old life in London Above.
Three-and-a-half hours of some of the sexiest voices belonging to some of Britain's best-loved acting talent? Plus, of course, the brilliant storytelling of Mr Gaiman? This just made our must list for March.
Neverwhere begins with an hour-long episode on Saturday 16 March on Radio 4 and continues with five 30-minute instalments across the week from Monday 18 March on Radio 4 Extra. Head to the official BBC site for character profiles and cast interviews.
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