Alex Kingston will return as the much-loved Professor River Song in January, in a new boxset from Big Finish, in which she is the titular Friend of the Family.
And this set is a bit different from the previous ones: it’s one long adventure, set in one location. In a four-hour epic multi-generational family saga, written by Tim Foley, Alex Kingston stars as the time-travelling archaeologist haunting an unusual house.
River Song decides to investigate a temporal anomaly after a Luna University expedition makes some odd discoveries in an old Earth house – pages of her own diary with an inscrutable riddle written across them. However, her investigation goes badly wrong when she is transported back into the past of the house and gets trapped within its grounds.
The house is the home of the Mortimers and with a limited ability to travel back and forth in time across 80 years and multiple generations, she finds herself witnessing key moments in their family history.
If she wants to escape, the words in her diary are not the only riddle she has to solve. But not everyone in the house will survive what’s coming. And not everyone is on her side.
Producer David Richardson said:
“This is unlike any River Song box set we’ve done before. It’s one four-hour story by a single writer, giving listeners the chance to fully immerse themselves. Tim Foley has written some of Big Finish’s finest hours and Friend of the Family follows that trend — placing River within a complex family drama that weaves between the generations. It’s emotionally intelligent — a story through history that’s also a story for our times. By turns, it will warm and break your heart.”
Script Editor John Dorney added:
“It’s always a delight to work with Tim Foley and with this script he’s truly excelled himself. It really is one of his best ever. It’s a vast, sweeping family history, and an elegant tapestry that has everything including, I think, a kitchen sink. It’ll make you laugh and cry. It’s absolutely astonishing.”
The Diary of River Song: Friend of the Family is now available to pre-order for £24.99 (as a CD box set and download) or £19.99 (download only), exclusively from Big Finish.
