Today is Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday and to celebrate I am sharing one of my favourite web series: Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Invite Only Casual Dinner Party/Gala For Friends Potluck or more simply, Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party.
Edgar Allan Poe has invited some of the world’s most renowned authors from Dostoyevsky to Mary Shelley, George Eliot to Ernest Hemingway and gathered them in his home where he and the ghost of Lenore are planning a murder mystery dinner party. Things immediately start to go wrong when actual murder is committed, and now the guests must find who the murderer is or risk being killed themselves.
The series was originally funded through a Kickstarter in 2016, and was created by Sinead and Sean Persaud of Shipwrecked Comedy (and who also play Lenore and Edgar). They bring humour, drama, snark and wit to a dinner party and make murder fun. The writing is wonderful as each character uses their own literary styles and works to make references and adds style and drama to the night, or just general frustrations to other dinner guests.
There is so much I love about this series. Seeing George Eliot try to hide the fact that she’s a woman is wonderful, plus Edgar’s frustrations that his dinner party isn’t going as planned, not to mention the continual sarcastic contributions of Lenore or Oscar Wilde’s entire existence.
It includes actors many actors who were in award-winning The Lizzie Bennet Diaries including Ashley Clements and Mary Kate Wiles who played Lizzie and Lydia respectively. It also features Lauren Lopez who you may recognise as Malfoy from A Very Potter Musical among other things, as well as Blake Silver, Jim O’Heir, Ryan Garcia, and a host of other brilliant actors.
The series is made up of 11 episodes, all around ten minutes each. There are also multiple additional videos including prologues, bloopers, and behind the scene videos which are just as fun to watch. You also get to see the planning stages as they hunt for costumes, practise lines, and set up for filming.
The entire series can be found on the Shipwrecked YouTube channel along with all the bonus features. The Kickstarter page, while ended, also has a lot of great information about the cast as well as some great art. You can watch the trailer here and I hope you will fall in love with it instantly. I love this series so much and I think everyone needs to watch it, if not for me, do it for Mr Poe on his birthday.
Lost in a Good Book 