Brenda & Effie

Brenda has had a long and eventful life and she has come to Whitby to run a B&B in search of some peace and quiet. She and her best friend Effie like nothing better than going out for tea and keeping their eyes open for any of the mysterious goings on in town. But the oddest thing in Whitby may well be Brenda herself. With her terrible scars, her strange lack of a surname or the fact that she takes two different shoe sizes, Brenda should have known that people as, well, unique as she is, just aren’t destined for a quiet life.

Brenda longs for a quiet life; a life where she’s free to run her B&B and enjoy cups of tea and the occasional night at the bingo with her friend Effie. Unfortunately for Brenda trouble tends to seek her out.The whole palaver begins with poison pen letters that start flying around the quiet lanes of Whitby. Then there’s Jessie the Zombie Womanzee, an amorous and strangely unaged professor of Icelandic history, and terrifying encounters with bamboo wickerwork gods from the dawn of time. Lord only knows where it will all end…

No matter what she tries to do, trouble has a way of finding Brenda and when her old adversary Mr Danby starts filling the airwaves with his late-night phone-in show it can only mean one thing.But fate has an even bigger surprise in store. Romance is in the air for Brenda and, do what she will, she cannot deny that she and her man were made for each other - literally.

Discover the secret world of Whitby: mystery, mayhem and delicious black comedy. Brenda never meant to tell anyone the truth. She s got used to keeping secrets over the years. But in Whitby, people have a habit of working it out. Especially best friends like Effie, who sniff out the unusual, and expect the unexpected. And Brenda needs friends. She can't keep us safe all by herself. Not any more...

The Wicked Witch of Whitby vs. the Bride of Frankenstein. Meet the good, the bad and the bitten... Something is biting people on the streets of Whitby. In an ordinary town, this would be worrying. Here, it's disastrous, and only Brenda has guessed why. She's also trying to prepare for a packed festive break at her B&B, but her best friend Effie is in distracted mood: she hasn't been the same since her suave gentleman friend Alucard reappeared.

Brenda and Effie are living it up on the continent. Holidaying in Paris, they are menaced by a mysterious Peeping Tom with a limp and a hump, who warns them that they must never return home to Whitby again. Untold disaster will take over the world if they go anywhere near the North Yorkshire coast.... But Brenda and Effie know that they simply have to return to Whitby, even if it means the end of everything they hold dear.

Welcome to the mysterious town of Whitby, where all the monsters and demons of old come to retire and live out the remainder of their spooky days and nights and eat fish and chips on the seafront. There's a strange new landlady in town, opening a B&B by the harbour; a lady with a tall black beehive, nasty scars about her person and a very chequered past.

Anne Reid ( Last Tango in Halifax) stars in the second episode of the award-winning The Brenda and Effie Mysteries by Paul Magrs ( Doctor Who). Welcome back to Whitby! Come and join Brenda and Effie for a night out at the Christmas Hotel, where a once-famous ventriloquist delights in causing chaos and putting the willies up old women. Why does long-eared bat puppet Tolstoy seem eerily alive of his own accord? Why is Brenda walking about the harbour at night in only her night things?

Anne Reid ( Last Tango in Halifax) stars in episode three of the award-winning Brenda and Effie Mysteries by Paul Magrs ( Doctor Who). Brenda and Effie are drawn to a new tearoom in the park. It is owned by the dashing Professor Marius Keys, who has stuffed the place with Egyptian antiquities of all kinds. But why does his odd-tasting tea send both women a bit woozy? And why's he got actual bandaged revenants hiding in his room at the Hotel Miramar?

Anne Reid ( Last Tango in Halifax) stars in the fourth episode of the award-winning Brenda and Effie Mysteries by Paul Magrs. Romance, it seems, has come Effie's way. She has started to date Keith, a latter-day Elephant Man who lives in a caravan. Brenda thinks her friend has had her head turned and counsels against getting carried away. In her experience the Elephant Man didn't have a trunk and large ears. Brenda, meanwhile, is having flashbacks to her adventures in foggy London in the 1880s.