Pilgrim is Back

The marvellous Pilgrim series written by Sebastian Baczkiewicz is back on Radio 4 in the Afternoon Drama slot on Thursday afternoon for a fourth season. If you've not come across it before they're about William Palmer who, as the BBC web site puts it, is cursed with immortality by the King of the Greyfolk [and] is now forever forced to walk between the human world and the world of Faerie in a never-ending quest to preserve the uneasy balance between the two.

Yeah, I know, sounds like a load of tosh from the start doesn't it? Even that "forever forced" is so deliberately constructed. But it works. Really well. After an opening scene each episode starts with this haunting introduction which send shivers down my spine very time I listen to it:

In the first episode, Mullerby Fair Palmer, now armed with the Abaeron, a book of incredibly powerful magic that protects its owner above all else and which he gained at the end of the last series, can finally challenge Mr Speed who has stolen generations of brides from one family.

I think that plot gives you a flavour of the way Pilgrim episodes tend to go. They're curious tales and they're not normally my sort of thing but I think what makes then work as much as anything is Paul Hilton as William Palmer whose voice gives Pilgrim exactly the right property of someone who has seen and suffered far too much.

Anyway Mullerby Fair is still on iPlayer for a couple of days so why not give it a go?