Benedict Cumberbatch, James McAvoy: Neverwhere - BBC Radio

London Below
Episode 1 of 6
Duration: 1 hour

First broadcast: Saturday 16 March 2013

Beneath the streets of London there is another London. A subterranean labyrinth of sewers and abandoned tube stations. A somewhere that is Neverwhere.

An act of kindness sees Richard Mayhew catapulted from his ordinary life into a subterranean world under the streets of London. Stopping to help an injured girl on a London street, Richard is thrust from his workaday existence into the strange world of London Below.

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.

LISTEN TO THE PREVIEW HERE

ACCESS BBC RADIO 4 HERE

Why Detective David Tennant is a prime-time suspect British murder dramas Mayday and Broadchurch have helped bring event television back from the grave, by Libby Brooks The Guardian,

Life's a beach for police officers David Tennant and Olivia Colman in Broadchurch. Photograph: Patrick Redmond

Who wants to think about murdered children on a weekday evening? A fair few of us, if the ratings are anything to go by. This week BBC1 and ITV have gone head to head with new crime dramas Mayday and Broadchurch: both with decorated casts and nuanced scripts that lift them above the standard police procedural; both previewed as the kind of event television that can seem antediluvian in an age of download and bargain box sets.

Mayday, which tracks the disappearance of 14-year-old Hattie as she is about to take the part of May Queen in her village's annual parade, stars Sophie Okonedo, Aidan Gillen and a fabulously overwrought Lesley Manville. It launched on Sunday – the first of five consecutive nights – with 6.2 million viewers and a 25% audience share; but lost out the following evening to the first of eight weekly installments of Broadchurch, which began with 6.8 million and a concurrent gush-in on social media. Coincidentally, both series are made by Kudos, the production company behind Spooks and, most recently, the bizarrely brilliant Utopia.

It has already been suggested that Broadchurch detectives David Tennant and Olivia Colman, investigating the death of a local boy in the eponymous seaside town, owe a debt to the Nordic noir plotlines that have dominated quality crime drama of late – although the scenery of Dorset's Jurassic coast, where the series was filmed, could give any fjord a run for its money, and, as Tennant proved on Monday night, it is difficult to be entirely sombre when you're eating a 99 ice cream.

READ MORE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/05/tennant-prime-time-suspect-mayday-broadchurch

New photos of Benedict Cumberbatch, James McAvoy and the cast of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere (RADIOTIMES)

An exclusive first look at shots of the star-studded cast of the Radio 4/4 Extra fantasy drama, also featuring Natalie Dormer, David Harewood, Sophie Okonedo, Christopher Lee and Bernard Cribbins

Paul Jones
10:08 AM, 04 March 2013
London Below is slowly coming to life. With less than two weeks to go until Radio 4/4 Extra opens a portal to the magical realm in fantasy drama Neverwhere, we have a gallery of exclusive shots of the star-studded cast, including Benedict Cumberbatch, James McAvoy and Natalie Dormer.

McAvoy is Richard Mayhew, a young businessman drawn into the subterranean world of London Below after he comes to the aid of a girl named Door, played by Dormer. In a place where famous landmarks take on a life of their own, Benedict Cumberbatch is the Angel Islington, an actual angel who watches over the city beneath the city.

VISIT THE BBC NEVERWHERE SITE HERE

READ MORE: http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-03-04/new-photos-of-benedict-cumberbatch-james-mcavoy-and-the-cast-of-neil-gaimans-neverwhere