The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Ghost House

With a choice of six original Sarah Jane Adventures' audio stories to chose from (each just over about an hour long and read by Elisabeth Sladen), I selected The Ghost House first because the blurb on the back of the CD case spoke of "a crack in time" and a "temporal anomaly"... which all sounded jolly exciting to me.

However, while I went in expecting a spooky haunted house story, The Ghost House quickly revealed itself to be the tale of an alien bounty hunter, called Deathy (who Lis Sladen gifted with an outrageous, Monty Pythonesque French accent), and his prey.

There was no hanging about in Stephen Cole's breathless story, which hit the ground running and kept the action going right through to the closing theme tune.

The fun starts at 5am one Sunday morning when Sarah Jane spots a 1970s' house across from the road from her home has been replaced by a Victorian residence.

Luckily the residents of the house, the O'Brien's, are on holiday because gradually the "temporal anomaly" is swapping the modern fixtures and fittings inside the house for their Victorian counterparts.

When Sarah Jane, and her young helpers, investigate they find a portal that travels back through time 125 years and is gradually expanding.

Mr Smith - Sarah Jane's supercomputer - informs them that if "the crack in time" keeps growing it could devastate life on Earth!

Soon after that Sarah Jane finds a strange three-eyed alien in her house, Rani has to babysit a time-displaced Victorian infant, and Clyde wonders if they will be able to save the planet before the Hollyoaks Omnibus (10am on a Sunday morning).

While Stephen Cole's story is reasonably straight forward, it's still full of character colour (such as the detailed backgrounds of Deathy's prey) and continuity references.

Although Lis Sladen gave the main alien a distinct accent, as I've already said, she doesn't really give Clyde, Rani and Luke particular accents - just enough to differentiate the characters as she speaks on their behalf - because it is Sarah Jane telling us this story herself and that would seem a bit strange.

It certainly adds a layer of authenticity to have Lis Sladen reading the story, almost as though Sarah Jane Smith was reading it from her own journals.