Few projects in recent years have excited me as much as the found footage horror-fiction podcast, The Holmwood Foundation. Let’s be honest, it’s hard to resist a podcast with the tagline “A secretive organisation. Two antagonistic work colleagues. Dracula’s severed head…” Or a pilot episode combining the Gothic essence of Dracula with the quirky fun of X-Files or Warehouse 13. Or the biographies of the cast, crew, and creators behind the podcast.

The Holmwood Foundation is in a sprint to meet their Kickstarter goals by November 14. My friends, this is a top-tier project. The team behind Holmwood is being reasonable, even frugal, but top-tier comes with a price tag. I am putting my website in their service to share my excitement with readers (and, hopefully, convey what a loss it would be if this project doesn’t make).

Holmwood is the brainchild of Georgia Cook and Fio Trethewey, with a script-editing touch by Katharine Armitage, all speculative fiction veterans with sterling credentials in horror, the Whoverse (since my website sometimes veers into weird areas, I should clarify that is Who as in “Doctor” not “Horton hears a” or “Live at Leeds”) and other strange, wonderful corners of speculative fiction. To bring their vision to life, they’ve assembled a stellar cast and crew with some very big credits under the belt.

Co-creator Fio Trethewey was good enough to give me some of his time at this very busy moment and answer a few questions I had about the project. It turns out Holmwood is, simultaneously, an idea both years and months in the making.

“So, Georgia [Cook] is a massive horror fan, and I’m more a dark fantasy guy – but Dracula was something I loved ever since I was a teenager, and when we met and became good friends it was Dracula and the book that we bonded over. Over time, we talked about what we might do if we had the reigns on Dracula (we became friends during the era where Dracula 2020 graced our TV screens), and as such, the characters of Jeremy and Maddie were born, but we weren’t sure exactly what to do with them. If we needed to make them something original, away from Dracula, that was totally on the cards.

“Then, back in May, Georgia was asked to watch a found-footage Horror Film called Grave Encounters for a review podcast. It’s about a ghost-hunting TV show entering a haunted asylum and everything going very wrong from there. It’s a lot of fun, and while sitting at a convention table the following week, we suddenly wondered if our Holmwood concept would work as an audio drama.

“We wrote out a few scenes, and we realised it would—and now here we are seven months later with a pilot and a crowdfunding campaign for the full season!”

Set in the present day, in narrative continuity with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Holmwood pulls back the curtain on the events of Stoker’s novel to reveal that, in the actual version of events, Dracula survived, or at least his head did (functioning, at least in the pilot episode, as a macabre MacGuffin for our protagonists).

After the events of Dracula, and Jonathan’s death, Mina and Arthur Godalming established an organization, the eponymous Holmwood Foundation. While presenting a public face of a philanthropic organization dedicated to the study and treatment of rare blood disorders, the foundation’s true purpose, while no less altruistic, is of necessity, the antithesis of public facing: protecting an unsuspecting world from Dracula and his minions.

I very much appreciate Holmwood’s metatextual wink and nod of making Stoker an early ally of the Foundation, charged with the essential task of preserving cautionary tales about the undead while also obscuring the horrid reality behind such tales by transforming Dracula himself into an allegedly fictional figure of funhouse horror.

Trethewey shared what he liked about Stoker’s Dracula and wanted to channel for The Holmwood Foundation and, conversely, what he wanted to move away from or update with new elements.

“Adaptions of Dracula often point at Dracula as this malevolent-yet-alluring villain that you’re supposed to be seduced by, particularly alluding to Mina and Lucy being corrupted by and desiring him, which is not what we took away from the book at all.

“In our version, we were certain we did not want Dracula as a potential love interest. And instead wanted to explore him as more of an eldritch horror.

“Also, The Crew of Light, our central protagonists of the novel, are usually merged, altered, or repainted in an unflattering light, in order to serve the aforementioned transformation of Dracula into an alluring figure. It’s something we would like to explore more in the coming seasons, particularly characters like Arthur and Quincey, whose characters are rarely given the chance to shine. Jonathan Harker is also very often sidelined, becoming the stuffy rival for Mina’s affections when Dracula becomes the central character – which is disappointing when Jonathan’s love for Mina, and what he would do for her, is such a vital part of his character journey, and the book.

“Lastly, there’s a lot of queer reading around Dracula that doesn’t often get explored in its adaptions, which we wanted to shed some light on – as queer writers with a queer cast!”

While there is certainly a place for Dracula-as-heartthrob, I admit I enjoy takes on the Count, such as Holmwood’s, which either cleave closer to the original Slavic folklore or embrace the conventions of eldritch horror. As a Texan, I am also very curious to see what Holmwood does with the character of Quincey Morris. Perhaps this is just me rooting for the hometown boy, but as a character with so much potential, I find Quincey almost criminally underutilized in the Dracula stories.

A Short Review of the Pilot Episode

Holmwood has a stellar pitch. But the devil or, in this case, the vampire, is in the details. Looking beyond the pitch and listening to its pilot episode: not only does The Holmwood Foundation live up to its description, it actually delivers more than it promises.

Listeners are dropped right into the action, after things have gone pear shaped, very pear shaped, at a foundation safe house in the Yorkshire seaside town of Whitby (sound familiar, Dracula fans?). More than simply an action sequence, the pilot episode is an adrenaline-fueled chase as the protagonists, pursued by Dracula’s thralls, reluctantly settle upon a dangerous cross-country journey to foundation offices in London to avoid putting innocent people in harm’s way. Along the journey, exposition unfolds in a fashion that feels integral and authentic to the chase.

We quickly meet our two sets of protagonists. The first are Maddie, junior archivist for the foundation, and Jeremy, a foundation executive. The second are … Mina and Jonathan Harker … through mechanisms not yet understood, periodically inhabiting the bodies of Maddie and Jeremy. That’s the kind of narrative device that is wonderful when it goes right, but is so easy to get wrong.

In the pilot episode, I was very impressed by Holmwood’s deft handling of this. It creates an emotional tension in which Jonathan and Mina, separated by death for over a century, never directly interact with each other but can hear each other’s voices and leave messages for each other on Maddie’s voice recorder. This is something which could easily skew into cornball or maudlin territory. It is to the credit of the podcast’s writers and actors that it never does, and instead comes across with genuine and earnest emotion.

This “four protagonists, two bodies” approach is also used to quickly and organically set up the “rules of the world,” essential for any form of speculative fiction, via exchanges between the modern protagonists and their 19^th century counterparts.

As someone who primarily writes historical fiction (and is often aghast at how some of my colleagues portray people in the past), I was very gladdened by Holmwood’s presentation of Mina and Jonathan as intelligent, capable individuals who quickly grasp the operation and possibilities of technology such as audio recorders and mobile phones.

Episode One also reveals a layer to The Holmwood Foundation I did not expect. Beyond all its yummy Modern Gothic is some real crunch, pathos, feels — call it what you will. Holmwood is a story about people, relationships, and self-identity. And, if the writing and acting in Episode One is any indication, that may prove the most memorable aspect of what promises to be a very memorable series.

After a fair bit of wheedling, cajoling, and pleading, I convinced Trethewey to give us a tiny reveal about Episode Two. I’ll call it an exclusive, even if that isn’t, strictly speaking, accurate:

“Episode Two, huh? Well, Jeremy and Maddie still have some emotions to battle through after the end of Episode One, and there might be a train journey involved. Also, we’ve yet to say goodbye to the horrors from the Whitby Westenra building.”

To discover more about The Holmwood Foundation, check out their website and Kickstarter. And don’t forget to listen to the pilot episode.

The Holmwood Foundation Cast & Crew

Cast

Rebecca Root: Maddie Townsend/Mina Harker

Seán Carlsen: Jeremy Larkin/Jonathan Harker

Sam Clemens: Arthur Jones

Becky Wright: thralls/phone voice

Jessica Carroll: newsreader

Attila Puskas: Dracula

Luke Condor: Robert Swales

Crew

Georgia Cook: writer/producer

Fio Trethewey: writer/producer

Katharine Armitage: script editor

Sam Clemens: episode director

Benji Clifford: sound engineer/editor

Duncan Muggleton: composer