Impact Winter: Series One — Audible Review

From executive producers of The Walking Dead and Travis Beacham, the writer of Pacific Rim, comes a heart-stopping Audible Original featuring a brilliant British cast. It’s the near future and seven years since a comet hit the earth and blotted out the sun. The world is a dark, frozen landscape. And then, beastly creatures emerge and take over. Can they really be vampires?

In the British countryside, a band of survivors forms a resistance in the fallout shelter of a medieval castle. Darcy is a battle-tested vampire hunter who is at the front line leading the charge to save humanity. Meanwhile, her younger sister Hope wants life to return to normal so she can go above ground and know what it’s like to live again. And she just might be willing to risk it all.

Travis Beacham embraces the gothic horror aspects of the vampire genre in this epic audio drama. With elements and themes fans of Underworld, The Last of Us and The Walking Dead will love, Impact Winter was indeed a cinematic production, with each episode perfectly written. I binged the entire series over a weekend, I couldn't wait to hear where the next episode would lead.

Holliday Grainger leads a stellar cast in this series. Every voice actor was excellent in their respective roles, but Grainger stole the show. I would've loved seeing these characters brought to life in a movie or TV show, but the budget would have been immense for a live-action adaptation. Darcy is a superbly complex protagonist, one that is forced to reflect on her own viewpoint on the world after years of being in survival mode.

Despite this series being set in eternal winter with a war waging between vampires and humans, it is a story about love at its core. The sisterly relationship between Grainger and Esme Creed-Miles' Hope was at the heart of this, but so were the complex relationships Darcy has with the vampires and the human survivors. Liam Cunningham was a superb casting as Jepson, Darcy and Hope's father figure and mentor. The exact same can be said for Himesh Patel as Darcy's love interest.

The concept of who were the monsters and who were the victims was constantly challenged throughout this audio drama. I am a fan of morally grey characters that challenge archetypes of heroes and villains and Travis Beacham’s writing captured that complexity perfectly.

The vampire characters were brilliantly crafted in this series — with terrific performances from David Gyasi, Bella Ramsey, Caroline Ford and Indira Varma — Beacham’s detailed development of the vampire lore and history added so much depth to these characters. He literally flipped the script on which characters were the hunters and which were the prey throughout the first season.

With a second and third season confirmed on Audible — the second season has been confirmed to debut this week — the season finale ended in a surprisingly satisfying way. There was drama, tragedy and resolutions to many of the storylines, but also an intriguing twist to set up season two.

I’m glad I listened to this recently and I cannot wait to hear where the story goes next. To end this review on a little prediction, I think Beacham will be exploring the international impact of vampirism outside of England — which is where Season One mainly took place with the entire cast of characters being from the United Kingdom. I’m genuinely curious to hear who will be reprising their roles and in what capacity as the production around the second and third seasons have been very quiet. Which is impressive these days.

If you’re a fan of the supernatural genre, I’d highly recommend getting into this series. It’s brilliantly written with a superb ensemble cast. Definitely worth a listen!

My rating for Impact Winter: Series One is ★★★★★.

Impact Winter: Series One is available on Audible as an episodic audio drama and on Amazon Prime Video with the complete audio series in a 4 hour timeframe.