2019 audio drama, adapted in eight parts by Julian Simpson from the
story by H. P. Lovecraft.
This is the direct sequel to Simpson's productions of The Case
of Charles Dexter Ward and The Whisperer in Darkness; like those,
it's updated to the modern day and moved to a new setting, using the
original story more as framework than as source material.
And the amount of new material brought over from those productions is
substantial; there's some effort made to re-explain Ipku-Aya and the
other ideas that aren't from Lovecraft, but it'll make far more sense
if you have the earlier series more or less in your memory. (And if
you're familiar with Simpson's other radio plays too that certainly
won't hurt.)
These aren't the same people who casually looked into a disappearance
because it might be good fodder for their podcast, but nor are they
whole-hearted crusaders (and it's not at all clear that there's really
anything to be crusaded for). Compared with previous series, this
one feels as though there's rather more action and rather less drawing
together of diverse strangenesses (though the Comte de Saint-Germain
and the Roanoke colony turn up in the background); there's less of a
feeling of "oh wow" and "what fun" about the construction of the
mythos from disparate bits of weirdness. The "good" conspiracy that
started to show up last time is largely defanged here to raise the
stakes for the protagonists.
The ending… well, it does conclude the trilogy, though the possibility
of a follow-on still exists. From a narrative point of view I'd rather
have had a more straightforward conclusion; there's nothing to signify
that this really is the end of a series rather than the end of a
season.
But these are relatively minor quibbles, and the whole thing is highly
recommended.
The Shadow Over Innsmouth is available via the
BBC, as
are the earlier series. (If you don't have get_iplayer, you can
apparently download it via the BBC Sounds app.)
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