Pitches for future shows (poll)

As we mentioned in our previous Patreon post, here at House Eskew we have a lot of ideas for future audiodrama productions that we could potentially work on in 2024 and beyond once The Silt Verses wraps.

We have too many of them, in fact. Far too many of them.

The audiodramas that we've pitched below are all ideas that we've been developing at some point over the past couple of years. For most of these we've already drafted a show structure, a mini-bible or a pilot episode, but we haven't gone further than that.

What we need from you

Nice and simple! Please go ahead and vote for any show concepts that sound the most - on paper, at least - like something you might want us to make.

This won't be a legally binding referendum to determine our next project, of course, and we're not going to focus-group ourselves to death here. In the end we'll pick the project that makes us want to get up in the morning and spend all day working on it.

But we do want to try and get an initial idea of any frontrunner concepts that our supporters and Patrons seem particularly excited about...

...or any shows that we can probably remove from contention because it seems like they're going to land like a big ol' wet fart.

Without further ado: please enjoy some pitches.

Bigger shows - two seasons or more, full cast

#1: Manes

Genre: Historical horror, cosmic horror, family drama with murderous stakes

Influences: The Terror Season 1, pretty much.

Summary: In 208 AD, the ailing Roman emperor Septimius Severus travels north across Hadrian's Wall into Caledonia, with the aim of finally uniting Britain under imperial rule.

For Severus, there's more at stake, however - his two sons are openly at odds over the succession, and it's openly said that a war of succession will follow the emperor's death.

Severus himself rose to supreme power through violence and the elimination of his rivals. Now, grown superstitious and dwelling on his legacy, the emperor hopes to share his final triumph harmoniously with his sons and demonstrate a different lesson to them - that an equitable peace is a lasting possibility.

But as the Roman column makes its way north into apparently endless woods, surrounded by cronies, schemers, soothsayers, priestesses, and traders, the emperor and his family realise that they are being followed in turn by something deeply strange and terrible.

And soon enough, the Romans realise that they have perhaps strayed not into Caledonia at all - but into a hostile realm of their own imagining.

Why make this show? We adore period horror, and there's far too little of it out there.

Severus and his family are a fascinating set of characters who we'd love to spend some time with - as ethically-compromised participants in a very Shakespearean tragedy, and as individuals whose heritage, religious beliefs and psychologies allow us to explore aspects of ancient Rome that haven't been done to death in fiction already.

#2: I'll Dance In The Deep Shadow

Genre: Weird-fiction noir, paranoid espionage fiction, cosmic horror

Influences: Cold War spy classics, Roadside Picnic

Summary: Across the water from the mainland UK, a vast walled island has come unexpectedly into existence.

The island's walls are composed of purest shadow; its leaders have not revealed themselves to us, nor have they made demands of us.

Only those who have forgotten themselves are permitted to enter.

We call the island Umbra.

Umbra is a bottomless well of shadow and secrets; its darkened landscapes are home to suppressed memories turned savage and monstrous, and forgotten things from the outside world. 

Its citizens and its guards are twisted echoes, repetitions, and whispering relics of the world's buried past - and they will not reveal Umbra's purpose to us.

Around Umbra's great walls, representatives from the world's governments gather and plot against one another - mercenaries, guides, spies, black-market traders, scientists and killers - to try and uncover Umbra's secrets and navigate its dangers for themselves.

Why make this show? Less of an Eskew sequel than it probably sounds at first glance, this one. 

We'd love to do a paranoid, twist-filled, pessimistic John Le Carre-style spy thriller, with multiple characters who can neither trust themselves nor each other - and we feel like we've got some really interesting horror themes around memory and forgetting here to explore with this concept.

#3: Our Wars Have Ended

Genre: Dark fantasy, New Weird fantasy

Influences: The Black Company, the Bas-Lag series, Gormenghast.

Summary: It’s a strange time to be alive.

Twenty years ago, countless legions of the ancient dead rose from their graves to conquer the living lands; lands which now rest in an uneasy - but peaceful - state of occupation.

Withered corpses sit upon the thrones of the living and play silent courtier in the shadowed halls, acting out the rituals and habits of their past lives while dead men and women keep watch from the ruined towers.

But this is a time of wondrous change, too - new technologies, empowered by the revelations of the Dead Reclamation. Strange machines rumble through the hills and necronautical vessels delve into the unexplored territories of the afterlife itself.

And it has been announced that the Hollowbrow Queen will unite the nation with a powerful gesture, taking on a living consort in a marriage of the fleeting and the eternal.

On one side of the conquered country, an old veteran leads his mercenary company on a reluctant expedition towards the capital, in the employ of a long-dead king on a mission of revenge.

On the other, a young dead-diver is hired to investigate a peculiar mystery, and a conspiracy that may involve both the living and the dead...

Why make this show? Because Game of Thrones had no interest in the (to us) enjoyable questions of 'well, why do the ancient dead want to conquer the living, exactly? What happens once they've done it?' and we'd love to deconstruct that and play with it.

Because we think we've built up the confidence and the skills to take a big swing at an epic adventure story and a semi-traditional fantasy - it feels like an idea that could potentially appeal to a wider audience while remaining true to our own core values of Weirdness, Horrible Things and More Weirdness.

Smaller shows - likely one-season wonders

#4: To Those Who Wait

Genre: Cosmic horror, dark comedy, mockumentary

Influences: Dead Set, Ghostwatch, Savageland, Evil Dead

Summary: Eskew Productions has gone in a surprising direction with its latest production - a new reality experiment and dating-show podcast.

Eight lovelorn singletons have been given rooms in the exclusive Gregory Hotel. Over the course of six weeks, these contestants will go on dates, carry out team challenges, and ultimately try and find themselves a life partner - all without seeing each other's faces.

The aim of the experiment? To prove that good things really do come to those who wait.

As they pore through a mixture of recorded and behind-the-scenes footage, however, it may become very apparent to listeners that something else is waiting in the Gregory Hotel. 

And one by one, our contestants find themselves at risk of far more than being voted off...

Why make this show? As a great big act of play more than anything else.

We adore horror mockumentaries, but in audio-drama they tend to be faux-journalistic. 

Doing a show that instead mimics hokey reality shows to the point of being mistakable for the real thing, but turns out to be a ghost story instead...that's a lot of fun to us.

#5: In The Devil's Counties

Genre: Historical horror, cosmic horror

Influences: Nathan Ballingrud's Wounds, Seven Samurai, Between Two Fires, Dog Soldiers, Aliens...

Summary: As the Magna Carta states: “All evil customs relating to forests and warrens, foresters, warreners, sheriffs and their servants, or river-banks and their wardens, are at once to be investigated by twelve sworn knights of the county, and within forty days of their enquiry the evil customs are to be abolished completely and irrevocably.”

In early-medieval Sussex, a motley group of knights rides out to investigate tales of ungodly horror and acts of forbidden worship from deep in the English countryside - including Ralph Dagworth, 'hell's mapmaker'.

What the party of knights discovers out in the warrens and the forests of the county, however, is far stranger and more terrible than any Christian conception of hell...

Why make this show? Again, because we're itching to have a go at some period horror, and that weirdly specific Magna Carta quote is just too fun to pass up as a springboard for some 'isolated squaddies in enemy territory' storytelling. (Sadly, it does have a more grounded explanation.)

#6: Strangling Knot

Genre: Anthology horror

Influences: Junji Ito, experimental 8-bit horror, Black Mirror's Bandersnatch

Summary: 

“The rules of the game are simple. This is a place of endless forking paths and one exit. 

There’s something terrible in here with you. Get ready."

A Choose Your Own Adventure-style horror audio anthology; each episode is a distinct story with branching paths that may lead to failure (most of the time) or escape (more rarely).

Why make this show? This is likely the only show that we could reasonably produce as a side-project (and we've been chatting to a couple of other talented horror creators about it already, sssh).

We'd like to be able to play with single-narrator horror storytelling again that's relatively quick and easy to produce - but we do want to at least try and ensure it doesn't feel like we're repeating I Am In Eskew.

There's some really fun stuff happening out there already with CYOA-style audiodrama, and that seems like an opportunity that's ripe for playing about with.

...and the wall of text ends there. Let us know below: which of these ideas sound like something you'd like to see from us?