I’m ready for my close-up: Looking for Sweeney Todd, Originally broadcast 21/02/08

Recently brought to the attention of a new generation of media consumers through Tim Burton’s adaptation of the musical “Sweeney Todd: The demon barber of Fleet Street“, Todd has been terrifying Londoners for over 160 years. In a monologue written by Alex Fitch, comedienne Jessica Fostekew takes us on a tour of Sweeney’s haunts both actual and real from his birth in folklore and “penny dreadfuls” to his reincarnation as the star of biographies reprinted in the Daily Mail and a grand guignol avatar in the form of Johnny Depp. Jess and Alex try to sort out the facts of Sweeney’s “life” from the fiction through a literary landscape littered with comic strips, tabloid preoccupations and rivers running red with blood…
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Reality Check: ‘Other’ Cinema on DVD – Originally podcast at Sci-Fi London

Alex Fitch talks to Noel Lawrence, founder of the Other Cinema DVD label about their range of esoteric / underground movies and collections of short films such as The Net – The Unabomber, LSD and the internet, Experiments in Terror, Decasia and Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y…

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Reality Check: Nostalgia and Cult TV - 
originally podcast at www.sci-fi-london.com/audio

Coinciding with the launch of the new TV series Ashes to Ashes which looks a lot like this…

 … we have two interviews recorded at last summer’s Cult TV Weekender: Alex Fitch talks to actor Philip Glenister (DCI Gene Hunt) and writer Matthew Graham about Life on Mars / Ashes to ashes and to Alan Shubrook, writer of the coffee table book 21 Century FX about his time working on Thunderbirds in the 1960s.

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Alex talks to Lisa Bowerman about playing a popular space and time travelling archaeologist in radio style dramas for the best part of a decade. Professor Benny Summerfield started off as a Doctor Who character in the novels published by Virgin in the 90s and then became the first human companion* to get her own solo series, first in print and then on CDs sold in specialist shops.
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Alex Fitch talks to Steve Eley who runs the weekly sci-fi podcast Escape Pod, which features readings of new and classic SF stories written by the likes of Neal Asher, Cory Doctorow, Robert Silverberg and Isaac Asimov.

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Almost podcast in time for Twelfth Night, Resonance FM podcasts bring you the first in a series of podcasts originally podcast at Sci-Fi London.
Alex Fitch talks to Dexter O’Neil, head of Fantom Films, a new company that have been producing cult CD and DVD releases over the last year or so, including a new range of M.R. James audio books featuring the best of his Tales of the Supernatural read by the likes of Geoffrey Bayldon. Continue reading →

Today’s Tight Pudding is guest presented by Alex Fitch who talks to Claire Cook, Simone Pyne and Kate Grove about the “Burlesque Cinema” weekend they’ve curated at the Curzon Soho Cinema and Volupte Lounge in London. The Smoking Cabinet mixes short films, features (The Blue Angel), live acts and talks to explore depictions of cabaret on film from the 1890s to the 1930s.

John Riley, James DeCarteret and Mark Stafford look at three recent releases of classic fantasy films on DVD – Masters of Cinema / Eureka DVD‘s two René Laloux films: Les Maitres du temps, and Gandahar + Tartan‘s 85th Anniversary release of Haxan: Witchcraft through the ages. Originally broadcast 16/11/07 (mp3 format, 41.9mb)