down memory lane
Nigel Planer talks about his new audio drama Jeremiah Bourne In Time
The latest original series from audio producers Big Finish is the brainchild of former Young One Nigel Planer – and appropriately for the onetime Neil, its premise is pretty far-out...
A time travel tale with a difference, Jeremiah Bourne In Time doesn’t feature a time machine. Sebastian Armesto plays its titular hero, described by Planer as “moaning all the time” but “an action hero on the quiet” with “a very good sense of wrong and right”. Always ready with a quick quip. he has a special ability – one that he doesn’t initially understand...
“It takes him a few episodes to work out what it is he’s doing to time travel,” Planer explains. “It’s a mental process, to do with his memory.”
The actor compares how Jeremiah moves between eras to a feeling he often gets himself when strolling the streets of the capital. “You’re walking through Roman London, 18th century London, and 16th century London – the evidence of it’s all around. If you walk over Blackfriars Bridge, the bridge you’re walking on was built by people 250 years ago. It’s that feeling of connection with all the generations before you when you walk through an old place. I find my life’s like that a lot – having a sort of double vision. Since I was young, I’ve had quite an overwhelming feeling of dissolving into the past.”
future shock
Jeremiah soon discovers that he’s not the only one with this ability. Most of the others come from a dystopian world 100 years in the future.
“The idea is that after a few digital meltdowns there’d be an elite class, who are the people who can remember everything,” Planer says, pointing out how most of us can’t even recall our own phone number nowadays. “People are scrabbling around trying to grab bits of data, and these people with super memories are able to remember things that didn’t even happen to them. So memory becomes the most powerful thing.”
But the principal time period the series visits is 1910, where Jeremiah encounters some very quirky characters. “There’s a gang of posh people who are all theosophists and nudists and vegetarians,” Planer says. “There was a lot of that in fashion at the time.”
Planer himself plays one Edwardian character: eugenicist Henry Davenant Hythe. The impressive cast also includes Britcom stalwarts like Tim McInnerny, Celia Imrie and Planer’s fellow Young One Christopher Ryan.
The basic concept is one that the actor’s had brewing for many years, and has reworked in various forms.
“I wrote it as a book originally,” he reveals, “But it was a bit of a sprawling mess! I tried to write it into a radio script. Then when I was doing [2010 stage show] Doctor Who Live I gathered up all the ideas I’d had and sent it to the Doctor Who people saying, ‘What about this?’. And they said, ‘We’ve already got loads of writers, thanks very much!’”
So Planer is delighted to have finally ironed out the kinks. And if the first box set does well, he already knows where he wants to take Jeremiah next.
“It’s not written yet, but I’ve got the outline for it. The second series would be set primarily in the 17th century.” IB
Jeremiah Bourne In Time will be available to download sometime in July.