Robin Hood series 3 : Audiobooks

Richard Armitage reads two audiobooks tied to the third series of Robin Hood.

Big Finish is releasing six audiobooks to coincide with the broadcast of the third series of Robin Hood on BBC One. Richard Armitage is the reader of two of them, while the others are read by Jonas Armstrong (Robin Hood), David Harewood (Tuck) and Sam Troughton (Much).

Unlike the audiobooks of the first series that he read that were novelisations of the first four episodes of that series, these are original stories that are linked to the events of the third series. Each book is one hour long, and will be available on CD or as a download.

Richard reads the first audiobook of the series, The Witchfinders, written by Rebecca Levene. The story is set early in series 3. The Sheriff of Nottingham accuses Robin Hood of witchcraft, and invites a gang of witchfinders to Nottingham to track him down. Sir Guy of Gisborne leads the hunt for Robin. But since returning from the Holy Land, he has been haunted by dreams of Marian, whom he loved but whom he murdered. Now she has started appearing to him in the waking world too, talking to him. If the witchfinders discover Gisborne’s secret, will they will burn him at the stake?

Listen to an excerpt from The Witchfinders...

At the end of the CD there's a short interview with Richard Armitage about Robin Hood and these audiobooks. When asked about his preparation for series 3, he revealed that he had in fact imagined something similar to what happens to Guy in The Witchfinders.

Speaking first about how he played the scene at the end of series 2 in which Guy murdered Marian, he said, "I couldn’t find a way to make Guy do that voluntarily, it had to be a crime of passion, it had to be an involuntary action. I had to rationalise that within the character, and in a way that’s what the character’s doing for himself. The answer to the equation that he comes out with is 'x+y=Robin, you made me do it'."

He continued, "But the whole notion of Marian haunting him was the starting point to the beginning of series 3.  The preparation was exactly similar to [The Witchfinders], which was that Marian lived in the corner of his bedroom and would talk to him all the way through the night and keep him awake. And actually he daren’t go to sleep and he started drinking to numb the pain - and that was where I began.  He turned into a bit of a car crash, somebody that was so fearful of sleep that he was wired." [1]

The Witchfinders is now available and can be ordered from Amazon UK, The Book Depository or direct from Big Finish, from where it's also available as a download.

Richard also reads the final audiobook of the series, The Siege, written by Simon Guerrier. Robin Hood and his outlaws are on the run from a gang of mercenaries and take shelter in the ruins of a castle. They're soon besieged there. Robin knows the castle and the family who used to own it. They were brought to ruin and the castle has been abandoned ever since. But is it haunted?

It can be ordered from Amazon UK, The Book Depository or from Big Finish (from where it's also available as a download).

Link

Big Finish's news release about the series

Source

[1] Interview with Richard Armitage on The Witchfinders audiobook.

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