Sea of Souls | |
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DVD cover
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Genre |
Paranormal Mystery |
Created by | David Kane |
Written by | David Kane Ed Whitmore |
Starring |
Bill Paterson Archie Panjabi Peter McDonald Dawn Steele Iain Robertson |
Composer(s) | Sheridan Tongue |
Original language(s) | English |
No. of series | 4 |
No. of episodes | 20 (list of episodes) |
Production | |
Executive producer(s) | Barbara McKissack |
Producer(s) |
Phil Collinson Stephen Garwood |
Location(s) | Glasgow, Scotland |
Running time | 60 mins. |
Production company(s) | Carnival Films |
Release | |
Original network | BBC One |
Picture format | 16:9 |
Audio format |
Stereo Dolby Digital 5.1 |
Original release | 2 February 2004 | – 19 April 2007
Sea of Souls is a BBC paranormal drama series, recounting the fictional activities of a group of investigators into psychic and other paranormal events. Produced in-house by BBC Scotland, initially in association with Sony Pictures Television International, the series debuted on BBC One in the UK in February 2004. A second series was shown from January 2005, with a third following in 2006 and then a fourth in April 2007.
The programme was created by writer David Kane, who also wrote the entire first series. The final series, unlike the previous series, was an independent production for BBC Scotland by Carnival Films.
The central character is Dr. Douglas Monaghan, played by Bill Paterson, who is the head of a parapsychology unit at a fictional university in Glasgow, Scotland. In the first series he is assisted by Megan Sharma (Archie Panjabi) and Dr. Andrew Gemmill (Peter McDonald), but these characters were replaced – without any on-screen explanation – in the second series by Justine McManus (Dawn Steele) and Craig Stevenson (Iain Robertson).
The series has seen the team encounter phenomena such as ghosts, reincarnation and voodooism. Each series has consisted of six one-hour episodes, initially comprising three two-part story lines. The first series was shown on consecutive Monday and Tuesday nights, but for series two the transmission days switched to Saturday and Sunday. Other changes introduced in the second series included the introduction of sub-plots to help with the pacing of each storyline, and more Scottish-focused story lines, the first series having been criticised for the characters' frequent trips to London.