Review by Daniel Mansfield

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In 1981, K-9 and Company gave us a one-off glimpse at what a spin-off show starring Sarah Jane Smith and K-9 would look like. Twenty years later, Sarah Jane and K-9 finally got the series they deserved in The Sarah Jane Adventures, propelling the characters into the 21st Century to explore what they got up to all those years later. But that hasn’t stopped us wondering what a full series of K-9 and Company might have been like had it been commissioned back in the day.

With Smith and Sullivan, a new audio series from Big Finish, we find out exactly that. Throwing it back to the 1980s to explore Sarah Jane (Sadie Miller) and K-9’s earliest adventures together, this boxset has the feel of a cosy, teatime drama – albeit one with killer robots, alien cuttlefish and deadly hairdressers!

The series opens with The Caller by Tim Foley. Investigating unexplained deaths in phone boxes across London, Sarah and K-9 cross paths with Harry Sullivan (Christopher Naylor), who is also on the case. Add to that an appearance from Sarah’s Aunt Lavinia (Annette Badland), a no-nonsense virologist with a hidden softer side, and you have a truly wonderful central cast, each bringing something different to the table.

With such lovely moments as Sarah and Harry’s reunion, Harry meeting K-9 for the first time, and Aunt Lavinia encouraging Sarah to make an effort to keep Harry in her life, it’s easy to forget about the plot and just focus on the characters and their interactions. That’s not to say the story itself is bad – far from it, what with car chases, disembodied alien voices and a fiery finale – but the real joy here is spending time with the characters.

While Roland Moore‘s Union of the Snake might on paper seem to have a similar premise to The Caller, it distinguishes itself with its espionage-infused tone, with Sarah going undercover to unearth a web of shadowy alien tech dealers. Meanwhile, Harry and K-9 get some quality time together, the former trying to teach the latter how to speak more like a human with some hilarious results.

The relationship between Sarah and shady businessman Eric Chen (Chris Lew Kum Hoi) is well-played, with a slight frisson of romance coming to the fore. Chen also gets an interesting backstory, elevating him above a mere moustache-twirling villain, and a poignant, open-ended conclusion to his story which shows that this series is capable of both light, frothy adventure, and more serious character moments.

Simon Guerrier‘s Blood Type is the best story of the set and offers something completely different, eschewing the monster-of-the-week format of the other two episodes and focusing more on Sarah’s career as a journalist. This episode is talked about in the extras as being a ‘montage’, which I think is the perfect description for it – we hop from incident to incident, building a fuller and fuller picture of what Sarah’s day-to-day life is like as we do.

While Blood Type might first appear to be a collection of loosely connected vignettes, it eventually coheres into a satisfying whole – a story that comments on such prescient issues as immigration, AI and journalistic integrity, without ever being anachronistic to the 80s setting. It’s a very different kind of story, but it’s something I’d love to hear more of.

Cosy and characterful, with moments of surprising emotional weight, Smith and Sullivan: Reunited is a joy to listen to from start to finish. Add to that the dynamite team of Sadie Miller, John Leeson and Christopher Naylor, and a killer 80-tinged score by David Roocroft, and this boxset feels like the beginning of something very special indeed.

Reunited is available as a download from http://www.bigfinish.com