What do we know about Dark Shadows: Windcliff?

By WALLACE McBRIDE

Dark Shadows: Bloodline is over. You can read Justin Partridge's review of the final three episodes HERE, and those of you who opted out of the digital weekly releases should be getting your CDs in the mail soon enough. If you're the kind of person with an aversion to spoilers, you might want to stop reading here ... I don't believe there are any major reveals in this post but some folks are more sensitive than others to spoilers. Proceed with caution.

Big Finish kicked off its grand experiement in serials with Dark Shadows: Bloodlust back in 2015, then made us wait four years before returning to the format. By all accounts the production of these long-play audios is intense, but luckily Big Finish will only make us wait one year for the follow-up, Dark Shadows: Windcliff. The 13-part serial is scheduled for release in April 2020.

Written by Penelope Faith, Aaron Lamont, Rob Morris and Paul Phipps-Williams, Windcliff sees as-yet unnamed characters making a night-time visit to Collinsport’s regional sanitarium. We now have a poster and a snazzy logo for the serial.



While the Dark Shadows audio productions are traditionally shrouded in secrecy (I was generously invited to provide the voice of the radio newscaster in both Bloodlust and Bloodline, and only allowed to see my own lines of dialogue) producer Joe Lidster shared a few details about Windcliff back in September, as part of an announcement of what to expect from the Dark Shadows range in 2019.

“All we’ll say for now is that we, again, wanted to do something we haven’t done before so Windcliff is very different to both Bloodlust and Bloodline,” Lidster said. “The writers are working on the scripts now and we’re looking forward to releasing more details in the future.”

In 2021 we'll get another 13-part serial titled ... Thirteen.

But what about Windcliff ? We'll, there's this ...




Which doesn't tell us much. Curiously, Windcliff Sanitarium now has its own dedicated Twitter account, which started leaking documents from the 1980s earlier this morning.

pic.twitter.com/bEq6qKzfkv

— Windcliff Sanitarium (@Windcliff_Maine) May 14, 2019

If you follow the writers and producers of the Dark Shadows range on Twitter, though, you've already seen a bit of back and forth about the development of the next serial ... mostly from blabbermouth Paul Phipps-Williams. Here's a sampling. Draw your own conclusions.