Ectoplasm was a 2000 BBC Radio 4 comedy series written by and starring Dan Freedman and Nick Romero. Unlike the other radio work of Freedman and Romero, this series features single, coherent stories in each episode; certain motifs do, however, appear in all of the tales, e.g. Theremin's murder attempts.
The stories follow the adventures of Lord Zimbabwe (Romero), a "walker in the ether", or occult investigator; his friend and collaborator Doctor Lilac (Freedman), a German scientist who has invented various machines, including a time machine and a teleporter, and who breaks into megalomaniacal ravings at inopportune moments; Theremin (Donaldson), Zimbabwe's butler, an abusive, murderous, incompetent servant who refuses to carry out any of Zimbabwe's instructions; and Schrödinger, a semi-corporeal cat that exists in a superposition of quantum states of life and death (cf Schrödinger's Cat), and who is sexually attracted to women. Each adventure is initiated by a request by a different woman (all played by Sophie Aldred) for Lord Zimbabwe to help her.
EPISODES
1 The Curse of Tutancommon
2 The Case of the Missing Lost Soul
3 The Affair of the Baddie's Niece
4 The Adventure of the Stupid, Ignorant Americans
STARRING
Dan Freedman
Nick Romero
Sophie Aldred
Peter Donaldson
Owen Oakeshott
Colin Guthrie
Written by Dan Freedman & Nick Romero
Produced by Helen Williams