Our missing Amigo would be hitting my mailbox with joy at this latest turn of the audio drama world. Mark Dreisonstok from The Sentinel posted this lovely gem about Dark Shadows gaining new life in the audio drama world.

The gothic serial “Dark Shadows” has had various incarnations over the years. Starting as an original television soap opera of the 1960s and 1970s, it became a comic book series, a big-budget 1991 primetime series, and several movies. The most recent adaptation was a Tim Burton film, which is both an homage and a spoof of the original series. 

For more than a decade now, the original series has also been continued with original cast members and new storylines in a series of audio productions by UK-based Big Finish Productions.   

Fans of the series will, of course, remember Barnabas Collins. Turned into a vampire by the witch Angelique, Barnabas is undoubtedly the most charismatic “Dark Shadows” character, killing mortal after mortal as a vampire but showing great pathos and remorse as well as fierce loyalty to his family. Collins appears in the Big Finish audio dramas, though less prominently, perhaps because Jonathan Frid, the original actor from the TV show, passed away soon after the audio series began. Nonetheless, Frid performs with cast members in one of the Big Finish productions, “The Night Whispers.” Frid is later replaced by the aptly named actor Andrew Collins in “The Curse of Shurafa,” in which he helps counter an ancient Egyptian curse.  

Being from Canada, most of us never watched Dark Shadows when it was on. But I can absolutely, 100% guarantee Bill. We’d love to listen to it with you now.