We’d like to know too!

More seriously, the entertainment and arts industry worldwide has been severely affected by lockdown and social distancing measures. This is particularly true in Melbourne and the state of Victoria, where the Splendid Chaps Productions team are based. This has disrupted our lives in lots of ways that have made it difficult to work on the show – including the practicalities of recording.

While many audio productions, especially podcasts, are recorded remotely, we make Night Terrace more in the style of traditional radio drama, with the entire cast together in a large studio. This lets our actors play off each others’ performances and is an essential part of what makes the show work. Unfortunately the closure of non-essential businesses since March, including studios, has made it impossible to create a new production schedule. For the time being, production is on hold.

We absolutely still intend to make the third season, though, and we’ll make our intended schedule known when we are able to make one – though as always, we’ll be letting our Kickstarter backers know of any developments first. In the meantime we’re looking for other ways to be creative, when we have the energy and ability.

All of us appreciate your support and patience. We are looking forward to a time when we’ll be able to resume production and show you this new season; it’s gonna be great.

After spending 217 weeks in the charts in a place that never existed, Eddie Jones’ number one single “I Had a Dream” has arrived in our reality – just in time to make your holiday playlists.

Written by Splendid Chaps John Richards and David Ashton, this track actually began life as part of their musical project “International Jewel Thieves” back in 2000. As well as the full track heard in season two of Night Terrace, which features vocals by Ben McKenzie (as Eddie Jones) and Petra Elliott, you can hear two early demo versions of the song with lead vocals by John Richards!

Check it out below or in our Bandcamp store.

When we started Night Terrace in 2014, we crowdfunded it in large part because it was important to us that those working in the arts – performers, yes, but also writers, engineers and producers – get paid for the hard work they do. It’s also why we have stuck to our paywalled model: we can spend more money on making the show, including paying our cast upfront, while hoping to pay ourselves later through sales.

It should come as no surprise, then, that we support workers’ rights, including their right to unionise. We believe that a well-run union is one of the best protections workers can have. So while planning our season three campaign, we were concerned to learn that Kickstarter management was actively working against the formation of a union among their staff. This included firing a couple of employees involved in the unionisation effort and making public statements declaring unions as “inherently adversarial”. This is particularly disappointing given Kickstarter’s status as a Public-benefits Corporation, meant to be an official way of declaring that they have values other than shareholder profit.

Kickstarter staff are still trying to establish a union: Kickstarter United.
Splendid Chaps Productions is in full support of this effort.

We’ve decided to keep our campaign on Kickstarter, and stick with our planned launch timetable, for a few reasons. Many of them are practical – we are aiming for a bigger amount than in our previous campaigns, and we want to maximise our chances of success. It’s also our understanding that boycotting before a union has been formed can be detrimental to the cause. But most importantly, Kickstarter United have asked creators and supporters not to boycott. Instead, they’ve made a list of alternate actions we can take to support the union effort.

We’ll be looking at other ways we can support them, and we hope you will too.

To celebrate Horatio Gray’s debut on BBC radio, we’ve released our Horatio Gray mini-series, Horatio’s Travels!

Originally released as a surprise bonus to backers of our season two Kickstarter campaign, Horatio’s Travels is written by Lee Zachariah and stars Andrew Hansen as Horatio Gray in six short trips through human history.

The series also features a plethora of guest stars, including Dave Lamb, Amanda Buckley, Rob Lloyd, David Innes, Myke Bartlett, Sally McLean, Troy Larkin, Laura Hughes and Celia Pacquola.

Horatio’s Travels brings the number of Night Terrace mini-series up to three, alongside the prequel Hello! My Name is Eddie and fan-inspired Night Your Own Terrace, both produced as part of our Kickstarter campaigns. Watch out for our new crowdfunding campaign coming in October 2019, where there’s a chance we might make another mini-series alongside the new season… We’ll be announcing the launch date soon, so watch this space!

You can buy Horatio’s Travels from Gumroad via our Buy page, or from Bandcamp in the Splendid Chaps Bandcamp store.

If you were a Kickstarter backer of Night Terrace season two, you’ll already have a copy in your backer extras package on Gumroad – just search for the email from customers.gumroad.com and use the Download link provided. (If you’ve lost or deleted the email, get in touch and we can send it to you again.)