Without spoilering the plot details for you, this episode takes us from the respectable finery of Paternoster Row to the vivid, rapacious reality of Victorian freakshows, while using the Dickensian plot-twist of a long-lost relative coming back out of nowhere to good geeky science fiction effect. In Family Matters by Lisa McMullin, we find out more about the background of Ms Jenny Flint – we meet her parents, find out what they did to earn their crust, and understand why she ran away from them. In Heritage 3, there’s a degree more focus on where each of the Paternosters has come from, what they’ve had to overcome or escape from, and the courage it took to establish their family of successful outcasts. The Victorian setting, with its mixture of scientific reach and societal prudery, has been rendered well in the first couple of sets, bringing together both character comedy, alien shenanigans and a microscopic look at some of the elements of contradiction in a very peculiar age. Understandably then, their first sequence of box sets on audio for Big Finish has quickly become a favourites with fans who enjoyed their on-screen antics, but also with those who enjoyed the likes of the Jago & Litefoot series, with its ‘coming together of opposites’ feel. The Paternoster Gang are a group of characters who’ve been dying for their own spin-off since the first moment they coalesced on-screen.

The Paternoster Gang by Dan Starkey