On the Terrace

By Splendid Chaps ProductionsComedy TV & Film Arts After Shows Performing Arts

On the Terrace episodes

November 14, 2019On the Terrace: It’s Jackie Woodburne!
In this very special On the Terrace, Night Terrace and Neighbours star Jackie Woodburne joins host Vaya Pashos and Night Terrace co-star Ben McKenzie to talk about being Anastasia Black and Susan Kennedy, audio as a medium and how good the food was during recording. (No, seriously.) Plus a few snippets also from co-star Petra Elliott, reporting from off the terrace!
As we post this there’s just one week left for the Night Terrace season three Kickstarter campaign. Backing the campaign not only means you can get the full third season at a discount price, but also means that we’ll actually get to make it! Plus of course there are plenty of other exciting rewards you could pick, including some exclusive bonus content. And even if you don’t pledge money to the campaign, sharing the link with anyone you think might be interested helps us out a bunch, too. The campaign ends on November 21, 2019.
Night Terrace season three is available to pre-order by pledging to our Kickstarter campaign. The first two seasons will be repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra in 2020 (dates TBC). You can listen to the very first episode, “Moving House”, via the campaign or at nightterrace.com. If you’re considering buying the first two series, please do so via our crowdfunding campaign! Find Vaya on Neighbuzz at neighbuzzpod.com.
Show Notes
It was indeed Isaac Asimov who described science fiction as a “flavour” that could be applied to any genre, The Caves of Steel – the first of his Elijah Bailey detective novels – being his proof of concept, so to speak.
Neighbours is available on Amazon Prime Video – just not in Australia, where you can find it – and spin-off web series Erinsborough High – on 10play. (We enjoyed seeing Jackie’s name as one of the only three cast listed in the Prime Video description!)
Schitt’s Creek is a Canadian sit-com created by Eugene Levy and his son Daniel. It stars Levy senior and Catherine O’Hara as a video store magnate and former soap star who lose their wealth and have only one asset left with which to rebuild it: the small town of Schitt’s Creek. In Australia it’s available via Netflix.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a Prime Video period sitcom created by Amy Sherman-Palladino. It stars Rachel Brosnahan as Miriam “Midge” Maisel, a 1950s housewife whose wannabe comedian husband leaves her for his secretary. She discovers she has a knack for stand-up, and embarks on a comedy career of her own while working a day job in a department store.
The Good Place is an NBC fantasy comedy television series created by Michael Schur of Brooklyn 99 and Parks & Recreation fame. Kirsten Bell stars as Eleanor Shellstrop, a recently deceased young woman from Arizona, who finds herself in “the Good Place”, an afterlife paradise…and quickly realises she’s not supposed to be there. It’s available in Australia via Netflix. You can find its companion podcast, The Good Place The Podcast in major podcast directories and online here. (It’s full of spoilers, so you may want to delay listening to it until you’ve watched at least the first two seasons.)
36 min
October 14, 2019On the Terrace: Dreamy Neighbours
It’s the end – for now! – but the moment has Vaya Pashos and Night Terrace co-producer Ben McKenzie talking about the series two finale, “Home Again” by John Richards. You’ll also hear a little from co-stars Petra Elliott and Jackie Woodburne!
After the explosion at the end of last episode, Anastasia awakes in a perfect neighbourhood full of old friends, while on the radio Sue reports on the perfect weather and announces the longest-running number one in history, “I Had a Dream” by Eddie Jones. Anastasia and her neighbours live lives of effortless achievement and bliss, succeeding at everything from baking to mechanics to margarine sculpture…but is something amiss? And even if it is – does Anastasia care? Who would willingly give up such an existence?
Vaya and Ben talk us through Night Terrace’s take on that most wonderful of tropes, the personal paradise. Unravel what’s going on and enjoy the return of guest stars Andrew Hansen, Lawrence Leung and Jane Badler, plus go behind the scenes with Petra Elliott and Jackie Woodburne and get the skinny on the origins of Eddie’s catchy number one hit, “I Had a Dream”!
We’d love to hear what you thought of “Home Again” – let us know via Twitter (use the hashtag #NightTerrace) or leave us a comment on Facebook.
Episode eight of Night Terrace series two, “Home Again”, is available on BBC Radio 4 Extra for 30 days after broadcast. You can listen to the very first episode, “Moving House”, and purchase both series and a variety of Night Terrace extras via nightterrace.com or the Splendid Chaps Bandcamp store. Find Vaya on Neighbuzz at neighbuzzpod.com.
Show Notes
“Marry Happy” is Petra’s parody of Pharrell Williams’ song “Happy”, made to express her support for marriage equality in Australia and encourage others to do the same. She released it in 2015, years before the plebiscite that would eventually see marriage laws changed in Australia. The original Facebook video post has had over 20,000 views, and you can also find it on YouTube.
As mentioned in episode four, Lawrence Leung played the supporting role of Dr Elvis Kwan on Australian medical dramedy Offspring.
The “blue box” is the often-mentioned container for all of Susan and Karl Kennedy’s sex toys. It’s seldom scene on screen, but you can get a glimpse of it in this episode of The Neighbourshood, a Neighbours behind the scenes web series, from 2016.
The Good Place is Michael Shur’s sit-com about Eleanor Shellstrop, a woman who finds herself in “the Good Place” after she dies but soon realises there’s a mix-up and she isn’t supposed to be there. It’s on NBC in the US, and Netflix most other places.
In Norse mythology Bifröst is the bridge between Asgard, home of the gods, and Midgard, the mortal realm (i.e. Earth).
The live episode Situational Awareness is available on our Buy page or via our Bandcamp store.
Our FAQ includes info on giving Night Terrace as a gift.
Futurama is Matt Groening’s sci-fi comedy, co-created with David X Cohen, which ran for seven seasons across three networks between 1999 and 2013. “The Sting” is the twelfth episode of season four.
The trope of a character being presented with their own personal paradise is named the “Lotus Eater Machine” by the All the Tropes wiki.
Farscape ran for four seasons from 1999 to 2003, followed by two-part telemovie The Peacekeeper Wars, which tied up some of the loose ends from the series. “A Human Reaction” is the sixteenth episode of the first season. All episodes of Farscape were made available on Amazon Prime on the show’s twentieth anniversary in 2019.
The 1985 Alice in Wonderland was also a two-part television film. As well as Ringo Starr is featured Sammy Davis Jr, Scott Baio, Roddy McDowell, Carol Channing, Pat Morita and Lloyd Bridges, among many others.
You can find Pratchat at pratchatpodcast.com.
38 min
October 07, 2019On the Terrace: Greying History
Host Vaya Pashos and Night Terrace co-producer Ben McKenzie talk us through episode seven, “The Retirement of Horatio Gray”, written by Lee Zachariah, with a little help from “off the Terrace” correspondents David Ashton, Petra Elliot and guest star Andrew Hansen!
Eddie has escaped the Gauls, but the terrace house he’s entered isn’t quite the one he expected… He’s ended up with Horatio Gray, the DEPARTMENT’s ex-gadget man who has been flying through the history of the Earth like a human wrecking ball – including changing his own past so that he also never started time travelling! Can Eddie cope with someone more prone to paradoxes than he is? How will they escape the might of the Spanish Armada? And will Eddie ever see Anastasia and Sue again?
Vaya and Ben try to make sense of the impossible history of Horatio Gray, while also admiring the work of guest stars Andrew Hansen and Stephen Hall. You’ll also find some behind the scenes audio, an alternate version of Sir Francis Drake, and all the usual nonsense from Vaya and Ben.
We’d love to hear what you thought of “The Retirement of Horatio Gray” – let us know via Twitter (use the hashtag #NightTerrace) or leave us a comment on Facebook.
Episode seven of Night Terrace series two, “The Retirement of Horatio Gray”, is available on BBC Radio 4 Extra for 30 days after broadcast. You can listen to the very first episode, “Moving House”, and purchase both series and a variety of Night Terrace extras via nightterrace.com or the Splendid Chaps Bandcamp store. Find Vaya on Neighbuzz at neighbuzzpod.com.
Show Notes
The Block is a Channel Nine home renovation reality television show. Couples (or other teams of two) compete to make the most profit by renovating and selling at auction an apartment in the same block. In 2018, for it’s fourteenth season, the show’s producers bought the Gatwick Hotel in St Kilda, forcing it to cease operating as a boarding house – considered something of a refuge for people in trouble since the 1950s. There’s a great audio documentary about the building and its long history.
The bootstrap paradox – more often these days referred to as a “causal loop” – is explained by the Twelfth Doctor in the opening sequence of the Doctor Who episode “After the Flood”. It’s available on YouTube.
Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen, was a German nobleman who lived in the 18th century and fought for the Russians against the Turks. His exaggerated tales of his service earned him some notoriety, leading to the publication of various (much older) tall tales as Baron Munchausen’s Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, by Rudolf Erich Raspe. “Pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps” doesn’t actually come from the book, in which – as in the film – the Baron only lifts himself up by his own hair. The phrase has been around since at least the 19th century, though, first as an example of an impossible task, then as a metaphor for aiding yourself in a task.
The English cricket team were, rather humiliatingly, defeated 5-0 in the 2013–14 Ashes series of test matches against Australia. They also failed to make it into the final knockout stage of the 2015 Word Cup. So the joke was spot on in 2015 when it was written. More recently, England has recovered – they entered the 2019 World Cup as favourites, and narrowly won the final against New Zealand in what is considered one the best games of cricket in recent history. Still, Eddie hasn’t seen any cricket since 2014, so let’s not judge him too harshly.
Hook turns – in which a car pulls into a lane at the side of an intersection and then turns across the traffic – are most often used by bicycles in many parts of the world. Melbourne is one of the few places where specific intersections are marked where cars must use them.
While there’s not quite consensus on how planets form, it is true that rocky planets like Earth are thought to condense from matter spinning around newly forming suns. It’s not necessary for something to specifically form the initial core, but it would certainly fit in with the “core accretion model”.
David Ashton is, indeed, a wizard.
Blink, written by Steven Moffat, is the tenth episode of the third series of Doctor Who. The protagonist Sally Sparrow (played by Carey Mulligan) is caught up in an attack by living statues known as “Weeping Angels”. It’s available pretty widely.
The Blow Parade was a five-part music rockumentary series written by and starring Chris Taylor and Andrew Hansen, and originally broadcast on Australian youth radio station triple j in 2010. It was also released as an album with the full musical tracks featured in the episodes, and won the ARIA Award for Best Comedy Release. Most of the web sites for it are now gone, but at the time of writing all five original episodes were available in the Special section of the double j web site.
War on Waste ran for two seasons on ABC television in 2017 and 2018. Inspired by the 2015 BBC series Hugh’s War on Waste, which was followed up in 2019 with War on Plastic with Anita and Hugh. The Australian series is available on ABC iView.
32 min
September 30, 2019On the Terrace: Immortal Haggis
Host Vaya Pashos and Night Terrace co-producer Ben McKenzie are back to talk about episode six, “The Edification of Anastasia Black”, written by Lee Zachariah and starring Jackie Woodburne, Petra Elliott, Emily Taheny, Celia Pacquola and Laura Hughes…but not Ben McKenzie!
Anastasia and Sue have escaped the Gauls, but they can’t take off yet – Eddie isn’t in the house! Clues point to a mystery from Anastasia’s days back in the DEPARTMENT, but before their investigation gets very far they are whisked away to a distant planet where a human scout ship is threatened by an alien blob. How did they get here? Where’s Eddie? And what do the Cosmic Immortals have to do with it? It’s a brain-bending adventure in destiny…
Vaya and Ben discuss everything from Star Trek to Xanadu to My Little Pony as they talk about the story, cast and recording of this space epic. Plus some insight from sound designer David Ashton, and a couple of clips from behind the scenes of the making of this episode.
We’d love to hear what you thought of “Ancient History” – let us know via Twitter (use the hashtag #NightTerrace) or leave us a comment on Facebook.
Episode six of Night Terrace series two, “The Edification of Anastasia Black”, is available on BBC Radio 4 Extra for 30 days after broadcast. You can listen to the very first episode, “Moving House”, and purchase both series and a variety of Night Terrace extras via nightterrace.com or the Splendid Chaps Bandcamp store. Find Vaya on Neighbuzz at neighbuzzpod.com.
Show Notes
Pluto was famously “demoted” in status from planet to “dwarf planet” in 2006 after the discovery of Eris, an asteroid bigger than Pluto, prompted astronomers to formally define the term “planet”. “Planetoid” is not a defined scientific term, but is generally synonymous with “minor planet”, a broad definition that includes dwarf planets and asteroids.
Lynx – known in the US and some other countries as “Axe” – is a Unilever-owned brand of male grooming products best known for its deodorants, shower gels and unsubtly sexist advertising. There have been many different scents over the years, but “Africa”, introduced in 1995, is the most popular. It’s known as “Kilo” in the US and “Native” in Brazil. Other less-than-sensitive scent names have included “Oriental”, “Inca” (or “Aztec”) and “Voodoo”.
“Cooee” – sometimes spelled “coo-ee” or “cooey” – comes from the Dharug language group of the area now known as Sydney. Dialects of Dharug are spoken by Darug and Eora people, though the language was classified as extinct and has had to be reconstructed in the twenty-first century. English contains several words derived from Dharug, including corroboree, dingo, koala, wallaby, wombat and boomerang.
Ben was pretty on the mark with his guess as how many companions have sprained or twisted their ankle in Doctor Who; if we restrict ourselves to the television show, it seems to be about six.
The Anarchist Guild Social Committee was a live comedy group who put on monthly performances of all-new sketches in 2009, with a smaller number of special event shows in 2010 and a few reunions since. Hosted by Nick Caddaye, it starred Courtney Hocking, Dave Bushell, Tegan Higginbotham, Richard McKenzie, Celia Pacquola and Andrew McClelland, with Ben McKenzie (and later Kelly Fastuca) as more or less company players, filling in gaps where needed.
Celia Pacquola’s breakout acting roles for television were in the political satire sit-com Utopia and dark comedy Laid, both for the ABC.
Laura Hughes has a long list of writing and acting credits both in Australia and the US, including Open Slather, a 2015 sketch comedy show for The Comedy Channel on Australia’s Foxtel pay-television service. Aside from Laura the cast also featured Emily Taheny and Ben Gerrard, who starred in John Richards’ sit-com Outland.
The Detour is a sit-com created by Samantha Bee and star Jason Jones which follows a family as they drive from New York state to Florida. Each subsequent season sees the family moving on in one way or another. Laura Hughes appears in two episodes as a character named, er…”Laura”.
Preacher, based on the comics by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, follows Jesse Custer, a Texan preacher with a shady past who is possessed by a being who lets him command anyone who hears his voice. He goes on a search for God with his ex-partner Tulip and vampire Cassidy. The fourth and final season was shot in and around Melbourne, Victoria.
Star Trek has a long history of seemingly omnipotent aliens with god-like powers that goes way back before Q. A prime example is Apollo in the original 1967 Star Trek episode “Who Mourns for Adonais?”. Lee sent this clip to Laura and Celia to demonstrate what we were sending up.
The late screenwriter Blake Snyder wrote a series of books titled Save the Cat! in which he gave advice on adding personal stakes to stories, and identified examples in various films. The title is primarily a reference to Jonesy, the cat in the film Alien. Snyder is also famous for the “beat sheet”, a specific structure for breaking down a three-act story into smaller parts.
Rosehaven is an ABC sit-com written by and starring Celia Pacquola and Luke McGregor. It follows Daniel (McGregor) as he returns to his rural Tasmanian hometown of Rosehaven to run the family real estate business, aided by his best friend Emma (Pacquola), who turns up unannounced having fled her honeymoon. It’s run for three seasons from 2016 to 2019, and is available via SundanceTV in the US.
Wine is a four-episode web series co-created by Emily Taheny and Jess Harris, and published on Facebook.
Q, as played by John de Lancie, appears in many episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but the ones Ben mentioned are Hide and Q (where he gives Will Riker the power of the Q), Q Who (Q flings the Enterprise across the universe) and Déjà Q (Q loses his powers). Q later appears in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, as well as spin-off comics, novels and videogames.
Discord is a “dragon horse” character in the cartoon series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Voiced by de Lancie, Discord has reality-bending powers and a penchant for mischief that are rather reminiscent of Q. The “interesting” fan-base Ben mentions are “bronies”, a community of adult (and mostly male) fans of My Little Pony which convened on the message board web site 4chan. Most of them just enjoy , but some exhibit the kind of demanding and entitled fan behaviour seen in fandoms of adult shows.
34 min
September 23, 2019On the Terrace: Unpronounceable Sacrifice
Vaya Pashos and Night Terrace co-star and writer Ben McKenzie talk about his episode “Ancient History”!
After disobeying Anastasia’s orders one too many times, Eddie is in the doghouse – or at least, the pantry – while Anastasia and Sue try to enjoy the peace and quiet of the woods where they’ve landed. But Eddie soon gets them caught up in iron age politics among a violent people they know nothing about. How do you avoid changing history when you don’t know how it’s supposed to go? Can Sue out-enigma a druid? And is it really all Eddie’s fault? The housemate’s frayed tempers come to a head…
Vaya and Ben talk all things Asterix, enthuse about this episode’s guest stars Adam Samuel, Dave Callan and Brianna Williams, compare Anastasia Black to Principal Susan Kennedy, avoid mentioning the accents too much and explain why time travel never really makes sense. Plus Ben reveals some exciting news about our impending season three Kickstarter campaign!
We’d love to hear what you thought of “Ancient History” – let us know via Twitter (use the hashtag #NightTerrace) or leave us a comment on Facebook.
Episode five of Night Terrace series two, “Ancient History”, is available on BBC Radio 4 Extra for 30 days after broadcast. You can listen to the very first episode, “Moving House”, and purchase both series and a variety of Night Terrace extras via nightterrace.com or the Splendid Chaps Bandcamp store. Find Vaya on Neighbuzz at neighbuzzpod.com.
Show Notes
The Adventures of Asterix is a hugely popular series of French comic books created by writer René Goscinny and illustrator Albert Uderzo. Set in 50 BCE, it follows the brave and shrewd Gaulish hero Asterix and his best friend, the oafish Obelix. Their village is the last to resist the Roman occupation, thanks to the magic potion brewed by their druid Getafix which gives them superhuman strength. As well as the series of 37 books there have been more than a dozen animated and live-action feature films, video games and even a theme park, Parc Astérix near Paris.
When Ben says we don’t know much about the Gauls, he’s talking specifically about pre-Roman Gaul. By the time this story is set, the first century BCE, Gaul was the centre of La Tène culture for around four centuries. The major Roman literary source for them is Julius Caesar’s “On the Gallic Wars”. Archaeology has learned a fair bit about them: they were led politically by druids and bards, and worked bronze iron and gold. While many sources reinforce the idea of druids sacrificing people, it should be noted that some historians argue the earliest reports may have been Roman propaganda, repeated by later authors who had no other information.
Mackenzie Hargreaves, played by Georgie Stone, is the first transgender character on Neighbours, and only the second transgender character to be played by a transgender actor on Australian television. Georgie will also star as Mackenzie in the upcoming Neighbours spin-off web series, Erinsborough High.
Brianna Williams is an actor, comedian and improviser (most often with The Big Hoo-Haa). She’s the longest-running host on The Bachelor Unpacked, Channel Ten’s after-show for The Bachelor, Bachelor in Paradise and The Bachelorette. She’s also very funny on Twitter @willsybee.
Dave Callan is an Irish stand-up comedian well-known in Australia, originally for his regular appearances on the talk shows Rove and Rover Live, and as a DJ for Australian youth radio station triple j.
“From Aussie battler to icon of democracy — the history of the sausage sizzle” by Mike Williams was originally an episode of the ABC podcast The History Listen, hosted by Dr Rebecca Huntley. You can find the podcast episode here, or read the article version at ABC News.
To hunt down the best sausages next election day, visit democracysausage.org.
High school work experience is common in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Ireland, as well as Australia. In the US, unpaid internships fill much the same role, though there are many problems with that system.
The Mackenzie story arc on Neighbours comes to the fore in episode 8193. You can stream it via 10play in Australia, or via my5 in the UK.
The Doctor Who episode “The Eaters of Light“ is the tenth episode of season ten. Rona Munro was the first person to write for both the original and new series of Doctor Who. The episode is available on Netflix in most regions.
Asterix in Britain is the English title of Astérix chez les Bretons, the 1986 French animated film adapting the Asterix album of the same name.
35 min
September 16, 2019On the Terrace: Alternate Realty
Host Vaya Pashos and Night Terrace producer and co-star Ben McKenzie discuss “Things That Go Bump in the Night Terrace” by David Ashton – who joins in as a special “off the Terrace” correspondent!
The house refuses to land, stuck in the void outside space and time, leaving the housemates stranded without water, power, or excuses to get away from Eddie’s terrible ghost stories. It also seems to be disintegrating, and there’s a creepy voice coming from…somewhere. Is the house haunted? And how will they make tea without running water?
Vaya and Ben run us through the spooky goings on in Night Terrace’s first ghost story, joining the dots back to season one, explaining some of the very Australian 1980s references, and talking about guest star Lawrence Leung. Plus David Ashton fills us in on his inspirations for the episode, some of his sound design secrets, and why Schrodinger’s cat is always good for a laugh.
We’d love to hear what you thought of “Things That Go Bump in the Night Terrace” – let us know via Twitter (use the hashtag #NightTerrace) or leave us a comment on Facebook.
Episode four of Night Terrace series two, “Things That Go Bump in the Night Terrace”, is available on BBC Radio 4 Extra for 30 days after broadcast. You can listen to the very first episode, “Moving House”, and purchase both series and a variety of Night Terrace extras via nightterrace.com or the Splendid Chaps Bandcamp store. Find Vaya on Neighbuzz at neighbuzzpod.com.
Show Notes
The “Life. Be in it.” campaign started in Victoria in 1975 before going national across Australia in 1977. Federal funding only lasted until 1981, but the program ran independently for a while and has been revived a few times. It still exists, though it seems to have gone quiet; you can find out more at lifebeinit.org.
We previously explained quantum foam in “Breaking Free“, the episode accompanying the final episode of Night Terrace series one, “Home”.
Lawrence Leung is a well-known Melbourne-based comedian, actor and writer. As well as performing live comedy across Australia and round the world, Lawrence has written and starred in the television series Lawrence Leung’s Choose Your Own Adventure, Lawrence Leung’s Unbelievable, and Maximum Choppage. He also appears as Dr. Elvis Kwan in the Australian comedy-drama Offspring.
We previously talked about Harold Holt in “Heading Back“, the On the Terrace episode discussing series one episode two, “Starship Australis”. There’s actually only one swimming pool named after him – the Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Centre in Glen Iris, Melbourne – but honestly, one is probably too many.
Tim Tams are chocolate-covered malted biscuits with chocolate cream in the middle (though there have been many variations and flavours), made by the Australian company Arnott’s Biscuits (now owned by the American private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts). Created by Ian Norris in 1964, Tim Tams were named by company owner Ross Arnott after “Tim Tam”, the winning horse in the 1958 Kentucky Derby. It remains one of the most popular biscuits in Australia, and is well-remembered for a 1990 television campaign in which pre-fame Cate Blanchett finds a genie and wishes for “a packet of Tim Tams that never runs out”.
John Barrowman is an American actor best known for playing time traveller and immortal Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who and its spin-off Torchwood. Perhaps the easiest way to understand the “Tim Tam slam” is to watch him do his first one.
Pratchat is a monthly Terry Pratchett book club podcast hosted by our own Ben McKenzie and writer Elizabeth Flux. They plan to read and discuss every one of Pratchett’s books, including not just his famous Discworld series, but also his lesser known ones. That includes 1989’s The Unadulterated Cat, a guide book to “real cats”. You can find out more about the book in episode 22 of Pratchat, “The Cat in the Prat“.
David mentioned the Night Terrace live episode, “Situational Awareness“; this was a stretch goal from our season two Kickstarter, an extra-long episode recorded live in front of an audience at the Union House Theatre at Melbourne University.
Breaking Bad is a drama series following Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a chemistry teacher who learns he has cancer and uses his scientific know-how to make meth to cover his medical bills, spiralling ever deeper into a life of crime and violence. The episode “4 Days Out” is from season two.
We previously told you how glorious Jane Badler is in our episode “Breaking Free“.
We’re pretty sure you know what Friends is, but just in case, it was a long-running 1990s American sit-com about six friends living in New York. The episode discussed by Vaya is the second of season three, “The One Where No-one’s Ready“, first broadcast on September 26, 1996. It should be readily available online. It’s the only episode of Friends which takes place in real time.
We briefly mentioned Ghostwatch in “Killing Time“, the On the Terrace episode discussing “Time of Death”. It’s pretty hard to get a hold of but well worth it if you can track it down – try not to read too much about it beforehand!
One Foot in the Grave is a 1990s BBC sit-com starring Richard Wilson as Victor Meldrew, an unlucky security guard forced into early retirement. His attempts to keep himself occupied and out of trouble always lead to complications. The episode mentioned by Ben is “The Trial“, the fifth episode of series four. It’s the only episode in which Victor’s wife Margaret (Annette Crosbie) does not appear, but there are other bottle episodes which do feature her, including one entirely set in their bed as the two suffer insomnia.
33 min
September 09, 2019On the Terrace: Convoluted Verbiage
Host Vaya Pashos is once again joined by Night Terrace producer and co-star Ben McKenzie as they delve into the labyrinthine schemes of episode three, “A Verb of Nouns” by John Richards.
The house appears in a seemingly green and pleasant land – but almost immediate Eddie is kidnapped! Looking for help, Anastasia and Sue discover a web of infuriating intrigue and perilous plotting, where everyone lives in fear of a tyrannical Queen – and also seem to be planning her downfall. Even weirder, there’s something about Anastasia that seems to enthrall the palace Scribe – and a new mystery lies in wait for them all in the heart of the palace…
Vaya and Ben talk about the ideas behind “A Verb of Nouns”, which lovingly parodies everything from rubbish Doctor Who monsters to A Game of Thrones and The Prisoner of Zenda. They also reveal a few secrets from the production and get excited about the regular and guest cast, because that’s what after shows are all about, dammit! Plus you won’t want to miss the Night Terrace news revealed at the end of the episode!
We’d love to hear what you thought of “A Verb of Nouns” – let us know via Twitter (use the hashtag #NightTerrace) or leave us a comment on Facebook.
Episode three of Night Terrace series two, “A Verb of Nouns”, is available on BBC Radio 4 Extra for 30 days after broadcast. You can listen to the very first episode, “Moving House”, and purchase both series and a variety of Night Terrace extras via nightterrace.com or the Splendid Chaps Bandcamp store. Find Vaya on Neighbuzz at neighbuzzpod.com.
Show Notes
“Be alert but not alarmed” was the slogan of a fairly blatantly scaremongering Australian government anti-terrorism awareness campaign, asking
Game of Thrones author George R R Martin has said that he was directly influenced by the historical Wars of the Roses, between the Houses of Lancaster and York.
“Saint Kylie” is, of course, a reference to Kylie. You know who she is.
Auckland is one of the biggest cities in the north island of New Zealand.
“The Red Wedding” is a famous sequence in Game of Thrones and the novels on which its based, in which…well…let’s just say it goes about as badly as a wedding can possibly go.
“Stan” is a slang term used, appropriately enough, as both a verb and a noun to mean a fan who goes to extreme lengths for the object of their obsession. It is often used pejoratively, but loyal fans on the Internet have adopted it. The term comes from Eminem’s song “Stan” about an obsessive fan named…er…Stan.
The Susan Kennedy amnesia storyline is from the 2002 season of Neighbours. Susan slips on some spilt milk, bangs her head, falls unconscious, and when she wakes up thinks it’s the morning after her sixteenth birthday in 1972. It…was not a hit with fans. We parodied this storyline in a brief clip filmed for our second season Kickstarter video.
The clip of Aggedor comes from his second appearance, in 1976’s The Monster of Peladon. You can find the whole scene on YouTube, as well as a similar scene from the earlier story The Curse of Peladon, in which the Doctor first hypnotises the beast by singing a Venusian lullaby.
As well as Audrey the dog and Dahl the galah, Karl has also owned a ceramic pig and, according to one account, an axolotl – which he gave away after it “spooked” him. Neighbours is weird. The ceramic pig storyline was so ridiculous it’s become the preferred term at Neighbuzz for stupid C-storylines! You can hear about it way back on episode 9 of Neighbuzz, “Who the Heck is Lenny?”, which you can find in Overcast or Spotify.
The Smurfs are tiny blue creatures created by Belgian cartoonist Peyo. There were originally exactly 100 of them and each has a name describing their personality; Brainy is an insufferable know-it-all who consistently irritates the other Smurfs to the point of being physically thrown out of their village. Vanity Smurf is obsessed with his own appearance. They are hunted by Gagamel, an evil but poor wizard who believes they are the secret ingredient required to turn lead into gold.
George Ivanoff has written more than 100 books, mostly for middle grade and younger readers. His latest is The Australia Survival Guide. The You Choose series, in which the reader makes decisions and follows different paths through the story, includes thirteen books. You can find out more on George’s web site.
The “like listening into a mirror” joke was, in fact, written by Lee Zachariah.
T-Bag was a British children’s adventure series which ran for nine series over seven years on ITV. The title character was a scheming witch who gained her magical powers from a special tea, and was thwarted by a resourceful young girl who had to travel between realms collecting special magical objects. Both the protagonist and the witch changed actors and characters over the years, but the one constant was T-Shirt, T-Bag’s servant and apprentice.
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is available internationally on Netflix, and is a prequel to Jim Henson’s 1982 fantasy film. Both use puppets to portray all the characters and creatures of the world of Thra, in the “Age of Wonder”.
You can find out more about the Rex Factor podcast at its web site. The podcast is currently on a break, but they’re making animated episodes now too!
The episode of the Sordid Details podcast mentioned by Vaya is “Perfect Leg Muscles”, featuring guest Danielle Henderson.
31 min
September 02, 2019On the Terrace: Implausible Denial
In this episode of On the Terrace, host Vaya Pashos discusses series two episode “Full Steam” with writer and Night Terrace co-star and producer Ben McKenzie.
Night Terrace lands in the cargo hold of a steam ship…in space! What’s more, the crew have death rays and a clockwork- and steam-powered robot as a first officer – all of which should be impossible. Anastasia and Sue investigate the mystery, drawing on their DEPARTMENT know-how, while Eddie, feeling left out, tours the ship with acting chaplain Rosh. But with everyone including the Captain acting suspiciously, can they discover the truth? Well of course they can. It just might be more than they can handle…
Vaya and Ben talk about writing, casting and recording this episode, the influences that led to its creation, Dave Ashton’s audio wizardry, and working with brilliant guest stars comedian and superstar DJ Andrew McClelland, and television star Ming-Zhu Hii (The Ex-PM, Mad As Hell).
We’d love to hear what you thought of Full Steam – let us know via Twitter (use the hashtag #NightTerrace) or leave us a comment on Facebook.
Episode two of Night Terrace series two, “Full Steam”, is available on BBC Radio 4 Extra for 30 days after broadcast. You can listen to the very first episode, “Moving House”, and purchase both series and a variety of Night Terrace extras via nightterrace.com or the Splendid Chaps Bandcamp store. Find Vaya on Neighbuzz at neighbuzzpod.com.
Show Notes
Street Fighter is a highly successful series of fighting video games from Japanese company Capcom, in which characters from around the world fight in an international martial arts tournament. A live-action film, Street Fighter, was filmed in Queensland and released in 1994 starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Kylie Minogue and Raúl Juliá. It did pretty well at the box office, but like most adaptations of video games was not a hit with critics or fans of the game.
“Impostor syndrome” is the feeling about oneself that despite all evidence to the contrary, you’re not competent or successful and could be found out as an “impostor” at any moment. It can be a source of anxiety, stress and depression.
Castle stars Nathan Fillion as Richard Castle, a crime novelist who kills off a popular character and – after being brought in for questioning when a criminal copies a murder from one of his books – decides to base a new character on Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic). It ran for eight seasons from 2009 to 2016.
Shane “Pufferfish” Rebecchi is the oldest of the three Rebecchi brothers (the others being Stonefish and Toadfish). He was originally the black sheep of the family, and the cause of most of them leaving Ramsey Street in shame after a spate of burglaries and a subsequent prison escape. When he first appeared in 1995 he was played by Greg O’Meara, but in 2017 returned as a regular character played by Nicholas Coghlan. The new Pufferfish is reformed, having served his sentence and moved for a time to Bourke, where he met his now-wife Deepika. He really did invent a “urine-to-water generator”, which sounds more like a water recycling device to us.
We previously talked about Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell in episode two of On the Terrace, which guest-starred long-time Micallef co-conspirator Francis Greenslade. Ten series have been produced between 2012 and 2019; keep an eye out for more Mad as Hell cast members later this season. Ming-Zhu previously worked with Micallef on his sit-com The Ex-PM.
A “post-scarcity” economy is one like that depicted in Star Trek, where the basic necessities of life can be created easily and without much human labour, making things like food, housing and water exceedingly cheap or free.
The corrections to clocks aboard GPS and other satellites is complicated, because while they run slower thanks to the speed at which they move, they also run faster because they are further away from Earth’s centre of gravity. In practice they run around 40 microseconds fast every day, which is way more than the level of accuracy needed for GPS, so they’re constantly correcting for these effects.
Primer was released in 2004, and is almost entirely the work of independent film-maker Shane Carruth. The Wikipedia article for the film is a good start if you need help understanding the time travel within.
The Time Traveler’s Wife was the debut novel from Audrey Niffenegger, published in 2003. The film adaptation was released in 2009 and starred Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana. A television series is coming to HBO, written by ex-Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic was first published in 1999, the creation of writer Alan Moore and artist Kevin O’Neill. The 2003 film version starring Sean Connery as Alan Quartermain was…not well received.
38 min
August 26, 2019On the Terrace: Persuasive Archery
On the Terrace is back! Join host Vaya Pashos and writer, star and producer of Night Terrace, Ben McKenzie, as we kick off with a chat about the series two opener, “Sense & Susceptibility”!
Anastasia Black is still travelling through time and space in her house “Night Terrace”, accompanied by hapless idiot Eddie Jones and new housemate Sue, who once spied on them for the DEPARTMENT. They’re free of surveillance now – but their adventures have stalled, as the house can’t seem to land anywhere except 1955 London. The answer to why seems hidden in the most unlikely of places: a studio deep inside BBC Broadcasting House…
Vaya and Ben talk about making a second series, Australian accents, meeting Jackie Woodburne, The Archers and more – including this episode’s stellar guest cast, which includes Colette Mann (Neighbours), Gary Russell (The Famous Five), Ian Smith (Neighbours), Louise Jameson (Doctor Who) and John Clarke (Clarke & Dawe, The Games).
Got questions about Night Terrace? Send them in via Twitter, Facebook or email!
Episode one of Night Terrace series two, “Sense & Susceptibility”, is available on BBC Radio 4 Extra for 30 days after broadcast. You can also listen to the very first episode, “Moving House”, and purchase the rest of the series, via nightterrace.com or the Splendid Chaps Bandcamp store. Find Vaya on Neighbuzz at neighbuzzpod.com.
Show Notes
The TV Week Logie Awards, aka “the Logies”, have been running since 1959. The categories are a mix of “Most Popular” awards voted on by the public (originally by the readers of TV Week magazine), and “Most Outstanding” awards voted by a jury of TV industry peers.
You can find the Logies episodes of Neighbuzz here.
The live-recorded special episode of Night Terrace, Situational Awareness, is available at nightterrace.com and on Bandcamp.
Harold Bishop, as played by Ian Smith, was a beloved, fussy, uptight do-gooder character on Neighbours who first appeared in 1987. In 1991 he vanished, supposedly dead, after disappearing from a clifftop on holiday with his wife Madge. He returned five years later with amnesia, having been rescued by a passing fishing trawler. He recovered his memories, but later had a stroke and underwent an extreme personality change. Harold left again in 2009, but returned again in 2011 and 2015.
The Archers is also available via podcast! You can find it here, in BBC Sounds, or just search for The Archers in your favourite podcast directory.
Gary Russell did indeed play Dick in The Famous Five.
The audio of Louise Jameson doing variations on “have you seen the cows” is from her original recording session at Big Finish Studios.
You can find the full “have I the right?” speech from Genesis of the Daleks on YouTube.
Clog dancing is a real thing. We can’t vouch for Eddie’s authenticity.
John Clarke was a very well-known face and voice in both Australia and New Zealand. He’s best known in Australia for his character Fred Dagg, and the long-running Clark & Dawe series of satirical sketches with John Dawe, while UK listeners may have seen his sit-com The Games, about the (fictional) bureaucracy behind preparations for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. He is also fondly remembered for his comedy character Fed Dagg. He passed away in 2017.
Body Melt (1993) features many stars of Australian television, including Andrew Daddo, Gerard Kennedy, William McInnes and – in one of her earliest screen roles – Lisa McCune. It’s a bit hard to find, but worth a watch if you’re a fan of early Peter Jackson films.
Strictly Ballroom (1992) is pretty easy to find, and stars Paul Mercurio, Tara Morice and Bill Hunter, the latter of whom was a mandatory presence in every Australian feature film of the 1990s.
ATA Girl (2018) is available from Big Finish Productions, and was a finalist for “Best Podcast or Online Audio Drama” of the BBC Audio Drama Awards in 2019. You can listen to a free excerpt here.
38 min
June 10, 2019On the Terrace: Breaking Free
We’ve reached the end of series one of Night Terrace! In this last episode for season one of On the Terrace, host Vaya Pashos talks to John Richards (head writer, producer), Ben McKenzie (producer, Eddie Jones) and David Ashton (audio designer) about the epic conclusion to the first series: “Home”.
When we last left our heroes, they’d crashed their time and space travelling house into some kind of alien virtual reality disco…thing. And they got themselves ejected. Now, they’re split up, and find themselves in an eerie white void – and they’re not alone. We finally get a bunch of answers about Sue, the DEPARTMENT and even the origins of Night Terrace itself! But can Anastasia and Eddie survive to make use of this information? Vaya, John, Ben and David talk about the plot, guest star Jane Badler, regular stars Jackie Woodburne and Petra Elliott, psychic igloos and the first series as a whole.
We’ll be back with season two of On the Terrace when Night Terrace returns to BBC Radio 4 Extra in August 2019. In the meantime, send us your questions via Twitter, Facebook or email, and we’ll see if we can release a bonus Q&A episode in between series.
Episode eight of Night Terrace, “Home”, is available on BBC Radio 4 Extra for 30 days after broadcast. You can also listen to episode one for free, and purchase the rest of the series, via nightterrace.com or the Splendid Chaps Bandcamp store. Find Vaya on Neighbuzz at neighbuzzpod.com.
Show Notes
Jane Badler is best known as the evil alien queen Diana in the 1980s sci-fi series V and it’s modern reboot. She’s also an amazing singer whose work spans multiple genres; you can find out more about everything she does at janebadler.com and she’s on Twitter as @JaneBadler.
If you were to look at spacetime – the fabric of the Universe, essentially – at the subatomic level, it wouldn’t be smooth; instead, fluctuations in quantum gravity would cause tiny regions of expansion and contraction, sort of like the bubbles in foam. Hence the idea that very close up, spacetime is a “quantum foam”. The idea is credited to John Wheeler in 1955, though he took it much less literally than Auguste Night.
The white void or white void room trope occurs many times in fiction. Notable instances in Doctor Who include the Land of Fiction in The Mind Robber, and the null space between universes in Warrior’s Gate.
“Five Characters in Search of an Exit” is an episode of The Twilight Zone television series, originally broadcast in 1961. It’s title references the 1921 Italian absurdist play Six Characters in Search of an Author, and Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 play No Exit.
Planet Nerd was a geek culture lifestyle show created by Dan Walmsley for Channel 31 in 2007.
The Good Place is an American sit-com created by Michael Shur for NBC. It stars Kristen Bell, Ted Danson, William Jackson Harper, Jameela Jamil, Manny Jacinto and D’Arcy Carden. If you get into it, we also recommend The Good Place: The Podcast, which is a lot like On the Terrace, only about The Good Place. (You probably shouldn’t start listening to it until you’ve finished watching season one of the show, though.)
Sapphire & Steel was a sci-fi/fantasy serial created by P J Hammond and starring Joanna Lumley and David McCallum. It was produced by ATV and broadcast on ITV between 1979 and 1982, in a series of long serialised “adventures” which do not have titles. It’s weird and spooky and we love it; you’ll need to track it down on DVD, though.
Return to Oz is the 1985 unofficial sequel to The Wizard of Oz, loosely based on some of the later Frank L Baum books. It stars Fairuza Balk as Dorothy, whose stories about Oz have landed her in the sites of some sinister psychiatrists, but she returns to Oz (it does what it says on the tin) in order to help her old friends and make new ones.
Angel is the spin-off of Buffy the Vampire Slayer which follows Buffy’s ex-boyfriend Angel, a vampire cursed to have a soul, as he tries to fight the forces of evil on behalf of the “Powers That Be”. Evil law firm Wolfram & Hart’s “White Room” first appears in the season three episode “Forgiving”.
To find out more about Vaya’s new podcast Media Darlings, watch mediadarlings.com.au and sign up for her mailing list!
The other Splendid Chaps Productions podcasts are Splendid Chaps, Pratchat and re:Discovery.
37 min

About On the Terrace

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A companion after-show to the time travel comedy Night Terrace, as heard on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

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On the Terrace

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