Thirty years ago, Marcy, Reet, Tom and Miss Maitland saved the world from the horrors beneath Bishop Grove School and the horrors that wanted to control them. Now, those horrors have returned and a new generation of heroes is rising to meet them. Right after they’ve done their homework.

Firstly, please go listen to the earlier Dark Season release or watch the original show. it’s a joy, one full of cheerful pulp energy, whip smart dialogue and the sneaking suspicion that every school does have something awful under the playing field. It was a formative show for me. (I have a paddle on my wall entirely because Marcie had a paddle in her backpack. Which I also have.) It’s tremendous fun and so is this.

Those heroes first. Jack (Jacob Dudman) is a cheerful, brilliant science nerd whose slightly spiky relationship with his best friend Nina (Bethany Antonia) drives both their lives along. Nina’s sporty and smart, Jack’s smart and empathic. Taylor Sullivan (Aitch Wylie) is their not quite friend, who knows a lot about everything and whose mom, Reet (Kate Winslet), has been training her for this for years. Lu Corfield’s Miss Maitland is the fourth corner of the square, inheriting her mum’s relentless iron librarian will but a little more switched on to the truth about the school. The four of them crackle with energy and wit and the writers have a very smart, clear approach to how these three weird kids and one weird teacher find each other. There’s caution and anger but also total loyalty, the three of them working out how to be in each other’s lives even as those lives are turned upside down.

Dudman is a deeply smart performer and his Jack is the zero-filter hero we need. His need to fit in, and be good at everything, could be needy if it wasn’t so sweet. The same is true of Antonia’s excellent Nina, whose determination and open heart is the secondary dramatic engine of the series. Finally Wylie’s Taylor is the quiet breakout star of the show. Jack and Nina cheerfully live inside what you’d expect of them. Taylor makes their own way. They have a close friendship with Maitland and a closer relationship with their mother. Wylie and Winslet really play well together and there’s a crucial beat in the final story that is entirely dependent on their bond. Winslet and Corfield, and later Ben Chandler, Victoria Lambert and Brigit Forsyth all impress too and there’s never any sense of this being a two tier cast. The original heroes return when they’re needed and the show deals with the two generations with care and respect.

It also smartly riffs on the original by mapping itself onto the school year. We get one story per season, each split into the traditional Dark Season format of three episodes.

Tim Foley’s ‘Spring’ opens matters and is one of the strongest pilots the company has produced in a long time. A Locked Door mystery, it introduces our heroes, Reet and shows just how malleable Dark Season is as a concept. If anything, it’s more timely now than it was in the pre-smartphone age and Foley’s small-c cyberpunk story feels both of its time and in the style of the original show.

‘Summer’ by Chris Chapman folds reality TV into the mix as Charlie Norton’s spectacularly named Mr Goldsnapp turns the school into a streaming TV show. The need for the kids to succeed, the lure of fame and the inherent competitiveness of the streaming system (both educational and entertainment) is dissected here with a careful hand and some jet black humour.

There are similar roots in to ‘Autumn’. James Goss’ script introduces the omni-popular Chance (Jordan Broatch pitching it just right). Chance is awesome. And everywhere… and as the script unfolds it plays with those same ideas of forced competition and adolescent confidence. Here, Goss ties them around a quantum haunted school story that gives Antonia a lot to play both with and against. It’s a difficult story, arguably the most difficult in the set, but it’s untidy and human and lingers in the mind.

‘Winter’ sees Russell T Davies and the principal cast make their return and it’s lovely. History isn’t an enemy here, and the sense of legacy that’s in the title means something very different to all of them. The Avengers Assemble moment with the old gang is lovely and the return of the original Mrs Maitland is gentle and sweet. It’s also ridiculously good plotting, answering a question you didn’t notice you had and doing so with style. It does a good job of tying everything that’s come before too and establishes, again quietly, just what the original three leads do these days and how the kids are very much carrying on in their tradition but in a new way. If you want to see them, the Doctor Who connections are right there. If you don’t, you get just as satisfying a story. The ending in particular is great, mixing sweetness with a confrontation between Marcie and Mr Eldritch (Grant Parsons, having a whale of a time) that stands with some of Davies’ strongest work.

The actual ending though may be better. There’s a sense of the torch being passed and a second one lit for the original characters as they take on a new position in life. The story’s over but their lives aren’t and the ending is both a joyous bow and a promise that, perhaps, there’s more to come. I’d certainly love to hear it.

Verdict: Smart, ambitious, funny and perceptive work. Bishop Grove, and Dark Season, are in good hands. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

Click here to order from Big Finish