Author: Ben

Performer, writer, educator, game designer, ginger.

Night Terrace season two announcement

Night Terrace Season Two is coming to a pair of ears near you on February 29!

It’s a date only a time traveller (or three) could love, so it seemed a fitting launch date for the second season of our award-winning sci-fi comedy audio series, starring Jackie Woodburne (Neighbours) and our own Petra Elliott and Ben McKenzie, plus a stellar guest cast including Andrew Hansen (The Chaser), Louise Jameson (Doctor Who, Eastenders), Lawrence Leung (Sucker), Jane Badler (V), Gary Russell (The Famous Five), Celia Pacquola (Utopia), Ian Smith (Neighbours) and many more!

We successfully crowdfunded the second season back in April last year, and our Kickstarter backers were able to get their ears on it just in time for Christmas. Now it’s everyone else’s turn! On release, season two will be available from both the Night Terrace web site at nightterrace.com, or via our page on the popular digital audio platform Bandcamp.

You can listen to the first trailer for Season Two below.

It’s Christmas time!

Time for a bit of a clean up around here! We’re no longer just about the podcast, and so we’re no longer just Splendid Chaps – we’re Splendid Chaps Productions. You can still listen to  our fiftieth anniversary Doctor Who podcast, but now you can also find out about our original sci-fi comedy series Night Terrace, and watch out for news of new projects coming from the Chaps, including a brand-new podcast, Pratchat, revisiting the works of Sir Terry Pratchett in 2016. And we’ve opened a Bandcamp store, where you can find all the stuff we’ve released for sale so far!

But Christmas is also a time to celebrate, so we thought we’d release something from the archives – one of the most popular cover songs from our year of Doctor Who back in 2013. So, from our Christmas special, please enjoy Petra Elliott and the Time Lads with their rendition of the unlikely Christmas single, “I’m Gonna Spend My Christmas with a Dalek”!

Ten Years a Who!

Surprise! It’s a new episode of Splendid Chaps!

This year – on the 26th of March – the modern era of Doctor Who had its tenth anniversary. We were hoping to put together a live show to celebrate this milestone, but alas that wasn’t to be. Instead, chaps Ben, John, Petra and Lee gathered on Sunday, April 12 – ten years and a bit since the original broadcast of The Unquiet Dead – to have a tea party with a few of our listeners and look back on the last ten years, driven by questions and comments from you! Plus there’s a musical surprise at the end…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:10:06 — 48.2MB)

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So join us for a cup of tea, a few special biscuits (thanks Claudia’s Mum!) and a chat about the Who of the last decade. We promise to stay mostly on topic…even though Night Terrace, our sci-fi audio comedy, had just won an award the night before – and the Kickstarter campaign for the second season is currently in its last days! So we might mention that once or twice.

Also we’re giving away a prize – thanks to our friends at BBC on DVD, we’re giving away a DVD of Matt Smith’s swansong Time of the Doctor, which also includes his previous Christmas specials A Christmas Carol, The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe and The Snowmen! Just put a comment in by the 23rd of May! We’ll pick a winner and announce it…somehow.

Doctor Who biscuits

Night Terrace: the new project from the Chaps!

Splendid Chaps may have ended…but the moment had been prepared for!

Night Terrace is an eight-part sci-fi comedy audio series, produced, written by and featuring the Splendid Chaps team! Jackie Woodburne (Neighbours) stars as Anastasia Black, a scientist who used to save the world – and whose quiet retirement is cut short when her house starts travelling through time and space. We’re crowdfunding Night Terrace on Kickstarter, and you can find out more by checking out the campaign, or by visiting the Night Terrace web site.

Night Terrace/Home

Surprise! Just when you thought you’d got rid of us, we thought we’d pop up and tell you all about our new project, Night Terrace! Our Kickstarter campaign is now underway and you can find it here! But rather than just spam your ears, Ben and John thought they should at least record a mini-episode since so many of you have sent lovely messages hoping we’d be back. Since Night Terrace revolves around a mysterious house, we decided to discuss the notion of “home” in Doctor Who in the traditional Splendid Chaps cafe, Penny Farthing in Northcote.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:22 — 15.4MB)

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Our new audio comedy series will follow the adventures of ex-world saving science adventurer Anastasia Black, played by Jackie Woodburne (Neighbours’ Susan Kennedy), as she tries to figure out why her house has started to travel through space and time – and how to get back home. It will also feature chaps Ben McKenzie as her sidekick Eddie, and Petra Elliott as the enigmatic “Sue”. The first series is written by John Richards, Lee Zachariah, Ben McKenzie and David Ashton, and you can find out more at nightterrace.com.

NIGHT TERRACE

What I Learned From Doctor Who

Well, here it is: the last released episode of Splendid Chaps. And what a suitable topic to go out on! John, Ben and Petra discuss what they’ve learned from Doctor Who over the years with guests comedian, actor and teacher Rob Lloyd (Who, Me.) and writer and editor Liz Barr (Chicks Unravel Time) in an episode recorded for the Stonnington Library Service’s [untitled] festival at Toorak/South Yarra Library on Saturday, November 16 2013. There were prizes, surprises, all the usual Splendid Stuff – and a wonderful spoken word performance from the one and only Emile Zoey Baker! (You can find her piece, “Dr Who’s Tom Baker is My Real Dad”, on her web site.)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:30 — 25.0MB)

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We’re not gonna see you again. Not like this. Not with this daft old podcast. And before we go, we just want to say you were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.

And you know what?

So were we!

The Other Splendid Chaps: The Companions

Time for a bit of time travel: on Tuesday, November 19 2013, as part of Melbourne City Library’s week-long Doctor Who Festival, Ben, John and Petra were joined by writer, director and podcaster Lucas Testro  and broadcaster, documentary maker and podcaster Marian Blythe to talk about those other splendid chaps: the companions! Plus a live musical performance of a lost Doctor Who classic tune by Emma Heeney.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:04:28 — 29.6MB)

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Splendid Chaps By Request

Six topics, one hour, four chaps. Yes, it’s our bonus “By Request” episode in which Ben, John, Petra and fourth chap David Ashton discuss topics requested by our Pozible backers! And we go back, back to our very beginning, to the place where we recorded our very first episode: Penny Farthing Espresso in Northcote, Melbourne.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:09:38 — 31.9MB)

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A big thanks to all our listeners, our live audiences throughout 2013, and of course tremendous thanks to all our Pozible supporters, without whom this episode and our live Sydney show would never have happened.

It’s not entirely goodbye, though; while this is our last recorded episode, there are a couple of extras from November we’ll be releasing in January and February next year. And you watch out for more info about our 2014 project, Night Terrace, in the coming months.

By the way, we recorded this on Christmas Eve, and look: Santa Capaldi visited us!

David Ashton, Petra Elliott and Ben McKenzie with presents from "Santa Capaldi" on Christmas Eve.
The Splendid Chaps are visited by Santa Capaldi on Christmas Eve, at the recording of Splendid Chaps by Request. Oddly, we never saw John and Santa Capaldi at the same time…

 

The Splendid Chaps Christmas Special

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night! Yes, it’s our last live (and lively) show, recorded on December 15th back where we started this mad journey, at the Bella Union in Melbourne. It’s also a Christmas party to bid a a fond farewell, and you’re invited – along with guests Thomas Caldwell, Lee Zachariah, Adam Richard, Janet A McLeod, Myke Bartlett, Alexandra Tynan, Fee Plumley and Dr Djoymi Baker. Plus there’s a Dalek, the magic of theatre, music from the Time Lads, songs sung by the chaps themselves…and perhaps even a Christmas miracle. It’s an emotional time, Christmas, and we’ll miss you all, so let’s go out with a bang!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:28:20 — 40.5MB)

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It’s not quite the end, though…watch out for our last new episode, Splendid Chaps By Request, on December 31, and we also have a couple of extras from November up our sleeve we’ll put out next year. Oh, and we might be working on a little something new…

The Not-So-Splendid Chaps: Monsters and Villains

We went to Sydney! Thanks to all our wonderful Pozible backers, on Saturday, November 30 the chaps travelled north to the Roxbury Hotel in Glebe to record this episode with guests Alice Fraser, Maddie Palmer and Steven “Bajo” O’Donnell, all about the villains and monsters of Doctor Who. Join us as we try to work out what the difference is between villain and monster, what various monsters represent, and which ones scare us the most and why. And of course we wrap it all up with a song: Keira Daley, backed by Alice, Peter Lead and Catriona Wimberley, cover a Doctor Who related track, 1980’s “(I Wanna Be) Doctor Who”, originally by Adelaide band Jackson Zumdish.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:31:39 — 42.0MB)

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A collage of images from our Sydney show
A collage of images from our Sydney show; photos by Carrie Hardie.