All posts by Ben

About Ben

Actor, writer and game designer Ben McKenzie is one of the co-creators of Night Terrace. He serves as a producer, writer and actor, playing the part of the gormless Eddie Jones. His other well-known works include the PlayStation VR game Table of Tales: The Crooked Crown and the monthly Terry Pratchett podcast Pratchat.

Season three coming to Kickstarter in 2019

With season two getting near the end of its premiere run on BBC Radio 4 Extra, we’re excited to announce our plans to make a third season of Night Terrace!

Sue, Anastasia and Eddie return for eight more episodes!

Anastasia has been all over space and time with Eddie Jones and Sue Denholm, but there’s still of lot of universe out there. Picking up after the end of season two, season three will have the housemates travelling far across the galaxy, seeing alien life from an entirely new angle, and paddling through the timstream of human history.

The main cast of Jackie Woodburne, Petra Elliott and Ben McKenzie all return, as do company players Amanda Buckley and Dave Lamb. There’ll also be a full supporting cast of guest stars. The series will be written by John Richards, Lee Zachariah, David Ashton and Ben McKenzie, and produced by John and Ben, with music and sound design by David. Season two is planned for release in May 2020.

A new Kickstarter campaign means new rewards – many of which will be familiar to backers of our previous two seasons! Get a digital copy of the new season for $5 off the usual asking price, or get a physical copy on a special USB key with a custom key ring. If you want more, there are signed scripts, the chance to have your name or voice in an episode, and even get an associate producer credit!

As well as the familiar rewards, we have a few new ones this year. We’re particularly excited about releasing a collection of original Night Terrace short stories, by the writers and guest authors – including George Ivanoff! – which will be read as an audio book by Ben McKenzie. They’ll be exclusive to the higher tiers of the Kickstarter campaign, so don’t miss out if you want to hear them!

The campaign will launch in mid-October, just after the end of season two’s broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra. Watch our web site, email newsletter and social media for more information – and maybe a surprise or two – in the lead up to the campaign.

Night Terrace - time travelling to 6 PM Sundays on BBC Radio 4 Extra! Series 1 from April 21, series 2 from August 25.

Coming soon to a BBC near you!

We said we’d have some big news early this year – and this is it! Night Terrace is coming to the BBC! To celebrate, we’re making a new podcast discussing the show – and we want to answer your questions!

Landing on BBC radio from April 21

Beginning April 21, Night Terrace season one – or series one, to use the BBC term – will be broadcast weekly on Sundays on BBC digital channel Radio 4 Extra at 6 PM UK time (that should be 3 AM Monday morning, Melbourne time, given he changeover for daylight savings). It will also be rebroadcast at midnight (9 AM Monday our time), and each episode will be available internationally in the BBC iPlayer (aka BBC Sounds) for 30 days after broadcast. After a break, series two will follow in the same timeslot from August 25.

You’ll see Night Terrace pop up in the Radio 4 Extra schedule about two weeks before broadcast. If you can’t wait until then, you can still listen to episode one right here, and both series – plus two mini-series and our live recorded special – remain on sale on our web site and in our Bandcamp store.

For media enquiries, please contact Barbara Wright at The Wright Word Publicity via thewrightwordpublicity@gmail.com. Review copies are available to media.

On the Terrace

To celebrate the BBC broadcast, we’ve decided to put together a new, limited-run weekly podcast: On the Terrace. Hosted by Vaya Pashos of the hit Neighbours podcast Neighbuzz, each instalment of On the Terrace will discuss that week’s episode of Night Terrace with guests from the cast and crew. Watch this site for more on this new project very soon!

Cast and crew will also be answering questions from fans, and we’d love you to send in yours! Email them to us at info@nightterrace.com and we’ll do our best to answer them.

Night Your Own Terrace in six new mini-episodes!

It’s a Hogswatch miracle! Just in time for Christmas, on the 23rd of the month – the old Splendid Chaps date – we bring you Night Your Own Terrace, a mini-series of mini-episodes featuring some not-so-mini adventures – and almost an hour of new Night Terrace content!

Album cover for "Night Your Own Terrace" showing Ben McKenzie, Petra Elliott and Jackie Woodburne in character as Eddie Jones, Sue Denholm and Anastasia Black, in front of a large image of the sun in space. A sub-title reads: "A mini-series of mini-episodes by you!"

Anastasia, Eddie and Sue find themselves on Pluto, in Antarctica and even more improbable places in six more bite-sized adventures inspired by suggestions from some of our Kickstarter backers. Now the creators have had a chance to listen to them (several hundred times over, by our calculations), and with their kind permission, we’re making them available to the public. (If you backed the season two Kickstarter campaign, you have already been sent these episodes for free – check your Kickstarter updates for details!)

When do these adventures happen, you ask? We’re never that fussed with continuity here at Night Terrace (well…except for Ben), but we’d say during the the first half of Night Terrace season two – definitely before episode five (Ancient History). But these mini-episodes are specifically designed to be listened to in any order you like – why not play them at random? It’s what we do!

Night Your Own Terrace consists of six episodes, starring Jackie Woodburne, Ben McKenzie and Petra Elliott, each 7 to 10 minutes in length for a total running time of around 50 minutes – making it twice as long as our last mini-series!

It’s available now from this site and in our Bandcamp store – pick up a copy today at the bargain price of $10.

Live episode launches this Friday!

The occupants of Night Terrace – an otherwise ordinary suburban terrace house which travels randomly through space and time – are hearing voices! Or at least laughter. And applause. It seems semi-retired adventure scientist Anastasia Black and her companions have landed in a place where the normal rules of logic have been replaced by an ever-increasing spiral of hilarious misunderstandings. Who are these invisible watchers? How does the mysterious little girl fit in? And just what is a “disposable yacht tycoon”?

Situational Awareness is a special episode of Night Terrace, recorded live in front of an audience – and until now, it was only available to backers of our season two Kickstarter campaign. But in the spirit of the Christmas special, it’s set to launch this Friday, December 16 – and you can preorder it now!

Set sometime during the show’s second season, it features the core cast of Jackie Woodburne (Neighbours), Ben McKenzie and Petra Elliott, as well as guest stars Tegan Higginbotham (Whose Line Is It Anyway? Australia), Steven Gates (Tripod), Amanda Buckley (Impromptunes, Impro Melbourne) and Eryn Saunders (Sonnigsburg).

You can score all 40 minutes of live-recorded fun, complete with a laugh track supplied by our wonderful audience, for just $5 – and it’s available for preorder via Gumroad and Bandcamp. Both platforms offer gift purchases, so if you don’t like cluttering up people’s houses with new objects, why not give them the gift of time travel comedy instead?

A Night Terrace Guide to the Comedy Festival

It’s that time of year again! No, not Moomba. The Grand Prix? I don’t think so. Nor the Food and Wine Festival, Fashion Festival, Flower and Garden Show, Motoring Festival or Melbourne Queer Film Festival… No, it’s the Melbourne International Coffee Ex– wait, what? We have one of those? Really?

Do they have tea?

Sorry, got distracted there. No, the particular item we mean from the over-stuffed calendar of the Festival State is of course the Melbourne International Comedy Festival! And many of the performers who appear in Night Terrace are featured in this year’s program.

Petra Elliott (Sue) is one of the stars of the improvised puppet show, The Mighty Little Puppet Show! You won’t want to miss her performing as one of the “Ritas”, colourful puppets on which the audience will build their own characters. It also features guest stars David Innes and Rob Lloyd. The Mighty Little Puppet Show runs at 7:30 PM, upstairs @ Little Sista (next to the Town Hall). It’s a rotating ensemble show, so if you want to see Petra you can catch her on March 25, 27, 29 and 31, and April 1.

Ben McKenzie (Eddie Jones) has had a hand in Claire Hooper’s show this year, through his games company Pop Up Playground; together they present Being Claire Hooper, a whimsical, Claire Hooper-themed treasure hunt through the city. You might even see a familiar face or two… Being Claire Hooper begins at 6 PM each Saturday and Sunday at the statue of Burke and Wills at City Square (opposite the Town Hall). Tickets are very limited so be sure to book!

Amanda Buckley, woman of many voices and one of our company players, features in the completely improvised musical Impromptunes. Every night the ensemble cast will create an entire stage musical based on your suggestions. It’s on at 7 PM at Trades Hall in the Old Council Chambers for ten shows only, March 24 to April 3. Like Petra’s show, it’s a rotating ensemble, so to catch Amanda book tickets for March 24, 30 or 31, or April 3!

You can also find many of our guest stars in the festival! Go see them, do. Check the linked listings for more details.

Night Terrace season two available now!

Night Terrace Season Two is released today, and is be available now from nightterrace.com and our Bandcamp store!

Night Terrace Season Two album artJackie Woodburne (Neighbours) returns for season two as Dr Anastasia Black, alongside co-stars Petra Elliott as Sue Denholm and Ben McKenzie as Eddie Jones. Eight brand new adventures take them to London 60 years in the past, an impossible spaceship in the far future, a society of endlessly warring fiefdoms and even weirder destinations. But with new housemate Sue proving as capable as Anastasia, is there still a place for Eddie in the Night Terrace? And could it be that after all this time, their adventures might finally come to an end?

As well as the returning cast and crew, the new season features a stellar array of guest stars, including Gary Russell (The Famous Five), Colette Mann (Prisoner), Ian Smith (Neighbours), John Clarke (Clarke & Dawe) and Louise Jameson (Doctor Who) – and that’s just in the first episode! Here’s the full trailer for the season:

To celebrate the launch, we released a new teaser trailer every day from February 22 to 28 – all the work of our genius sound designer, David Ashton of Sample and Hold Studio. You can hear them all below:

 

Season Two release date confirmed: February 29!

After nearly a year in production, Season Two of Night Terrace will finally be unleashed on the ears of listeners across space and time on a date only a time traveller could love: Monday, the 29th of February! You can hear our brand new season two trailer below:

To celebrate the release, we’re having a launch party in Melbourne! The cast, crew and Kickstarter backers who made Night Terrace will gather to enjoy performances from Adele Scott (Feminerd), Tom Dickins (A Brief Case of Madness), the Adam Rudegeair Trio and our very own Petra Elliott, as well as a few more surprises!

While the launch event is primarily for those involved in Night Terrace,  there are a small number of free tickets available for the general public as well. Head on over to the Bella Union web site to snag yours if you’d like to come along! You’ll be able to buy the season digitally both from our Buy page and from Bandcamp on the day, and we’ll also have a small number of copies available for sale on limited edition USB.

We won an Aurealis Award!

On Saturday, April 11, we were honoured to be awarded the Convenors’ Award for Excellence at the 20th annual Aurealis Awards in Canberra! You can read more about the awards and see the full list of nominees and winners at their web site. In the meantime, while we were unable to accept the award ourselves, we did write an acceptance speech, and we’d like to reproduce it here.

We are so unbelievably thrilled to receive this Aurealis Award. Night Terrace has been a dream project for us – we’ve been supported by our listeners from the beginning, every cast member we asked said yes, we managed to send Susan From Neighbours into space to say a lot of silly things, and now this. We are speechless, which is why this is typed.

This award also comes as something of a shock since – as the cast and crew of Night Terrace includes women, homosexuals and people of colour – we thought we had been banned from receiving any science fiction accolades. You can’t imagine what Happy Puppies this makes us.

Our goal was to make a narrative series that worked both as comedy and science fiction, and this award makes us feel we made it at least some of the way. We’re so sorry we can’t be in Canberra, but we’re sure there are other people who spend their lives sorry they are in Canberra, so it balances out.

Thank you to the conveners for this honour, to all the listeners and backers of Night Terrace season one and two for making this happen, and to Tehani Wessely for accepting this on our behalf. Thank you!

Season two guest star: Dave Callan!

We’re pleased to announce another of our great guest stars for season two: comedian Dave Callan! Dave will appear in this season’s historical episode, but that’s all we’ll say. No spoilers!

dave-callanFondly remembered for his long stint as “the beardy one with the beautiful accent” on Australian variety shows Rove and Rove Live, Callan is best known as a Triple J DJ – he presents “The Graveyard Shift” from 1 AM on Sundays – and one of Melbourne’s favourite comedians. He’s often on the telly with appearances on Spicks and Specks, the Comedy Festival Gala and Good News Week, as well as being a regular game reviewer on ABC2’s Good Game. He’s performed live comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe and toured Britain, South East Asia, the U.S. and even Hobart.

In recent years he’s departed from regular stand-up to embrace his other love, one he has in common with our mascot, the bilby: dance! His 2014 show A Little Less Conversation was such a hit he’s followed it up with this year’s A Little Less Conversation 2: A Little More Less Conversation, playing at Trades Hall at 9:45 PM (8:45 on Sundays) until the festival ends on April 19.

Dave is not a stranger to voice work; he’s fondly remembered for his segment on Rove Live, “Words That Sound Better When Said By Dave” (for which a Facebook fan page still exists!), and in 2011 played the role of Fergal, a Sea Cucumber who runs an Irish Pub, in the adult animated web series Mollusks, alongside a stellar cast of Sean Micallef, Roz Hammond and Bob Franklin.

So let’s celebrate that beautiful voice with a clip of Dave dancing!

If you want to make sure Dave Callan has his chance to shine in Night Terrace, why not go to Kickstarter right now and become a backer? There are many wonderful rewards on offer, and you won’t have to watch Dave dance again.

A short history of the bilby in dance

Happy Easter everyone! Did you know that in Australia, wild rabbits are considered a pest, causing considerable harm to farmlands and native wildlife? That’s why we have a movement here to replace bunnies at Easter with bilbies, native marsupial animals which are cuter and kinder to the Australian environment!

We’ve adopted the bilby as a mascot here at Night Terrace, and for the last two years produced some informative videos about them (and the music they enjoy). So please enjoy these videos from this year and last!

…and all that dancing inspired us to celebrate reaching half of our Kickstarter goal in a particular way: thirty second dance party!