Detective John Tungsten (played by Tom Clarke)
Our hero John “John Tungsten” Tungsten is a grizzled law man, who must save the world from StairMaster and his handi-inaccessable army, or risk loosing his status as a cop cliché. After graduating from crime school with top marks, wide eyed Johnny Tungsten was ‘brung low’ after an catastrophic accident involving beloved friend and college roommate, Drake Science. The accident left John with patchy facial hair and a questionable American accent. Now, just 41 years from retirement, John must work out who is behind the recent spate of murders, because he’s a policeman and it’s his job.
Dr. Drake Science PhD (played by Adam Blampied)
Before the Accident was a happy time for Drake and he looks back on it fondly with a number of nostalgic nicknames: ‘The Good Times’, ‘The Years Un-Tungsten-ed’ and ‘The Not Screaming’. When asked to describe life after the Accident, Drake will often stare out beyond the curtain of humanity, whisper ‘existence’ and walk mournfully into oncoming traffic, arms outspread for welcome death. When not diligently pursuing the scientist’s ultimate quest of turning suicide into pure gold, Drake does super top-secret science for the government. It’s so secret they won’t even tell him what he’s doing, or where his paychecks are.
Reginald Beanthrop (played by Jon Gracey)
After graduating with a triple honours in Strolling, Jumping and Not-Being-In-A-Wheelchair-Studies from Oxford, Cambridgeand Scunthorpe Polytechnic, Reginald Beanthrop - ex-president of the hiking, skipping and roller-skating club – vowed to devote his prodigious mind to avenging the death of his legs. Having been pushed down Britain’s second-longest spiral staircase days before graduation by his older brother, Cuthelred III, as part of the traditional Beanthrop jape, “Cripple The Cleverest”, he blames “Old Rusty” – the staircase in question – rather than his family’s questionable sources of entertainment, for denying him his pursuit of perambulation. He has studied their mysterious origins ever since.
General Granite MacMann (played by John Henry Falle)
General MacMann is a full-bird general in this man’s Army and doesn’t care who knows it. He won’t any take guff from limp-wristed pinkos like Drake Science but he’s secretly had beef against anything even vaguely stair-shaped ever since his parents broke their necks in a freak landing accident when he was but a lad of forty-five. Furthermore he’s furious that his son is gay. Now he’s primed and ready for the fightback. Ready to lose his ass for his country.
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Vice President Mitchell (played by Richard Bond)
Caleb Mitchell is politics’ Mr Clean. No drinks. No drugs. No dodgy “donations”. Only half a dead prostitute. The man is untouchable. What’s more, his “Stairwell Sunday” initiative has won massive support in both middle-America and the coastal states. A holiday when all Americans, regardless of creed, colour or sexual orientation can climb an escalator, enjoy a picnic in the shadow of a mighty ziggurat or just sit there, on a step ladder, thinking about stuff. The Veep’s entire political future relies on Stairwell Sunday and there’s no risk he won’t take, no sweetly-dishevvled scientist he won’t patronise, no level-headed threat-analysis he won’t ignore to get his heels on the Oval Office desk.
Missy Tungsten (played by Georgie Guinane)
Missy and John met while John was involved in a highspeed chase across town. She liked how driven he seemed. He liked her breasts. They were doing each other pretty soon after that.
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Father O’Fitzpatrickahan (played by Naz Osmanoglu)
Last keeper of the mysterious tablets of the Elavati, Fr. O’Fitzpatrickahan was twenty years clinging to the apron-strings of Mother Church before he suffered his crisis of faith. After he shot that kid.
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Lieutenant Dirk Goodcop (played by William Hartley)
John Tungsten’s Captain in Grit City’s Police Department. Gun-loving and Nancy-shoving, Dirk is as right wing as an American Eagle with its left wing torn off, and twice as angry. When not found screaming at and punching what he believes to be epitomies of Crime Culture (graffitoed walls, littered parks, prositutes) he can mostly be found on the beat, smoking, swearing and growing out his body hair.
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Senator Robert ‘Middle-Initial’ Pendridge (played by Ed Eales-White)
The fluffy lamb of American Congress, the good Senator mostly spends his time at the local orphanage, handing out chocolate vaccinations to underprivileged children. However, his ‘No More Murders’ policies have made him very unpopular with murderers and he is constantly watching over his shoulder, waiting for the day that he’ll be chased down and killed. But that’ll probably never happen.
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The Pope (played by Jonathan May-Bowles)
Jimmy “Pope” Jenkins spent his young life under the tutelage of the nuns of Our Lady of Perpetual Violence at Brickshit convent. After literally fighting his way to the top to become CatholicCorps youngest ever pontiff at 25, Pope Leroy XII thought he could kick back and enjoy the lifestyle – the cars, the women, his own country. But, behind the bright lights and cheap floozies of Vatican City, lay a dark labyrinth of intrigue and skulduggery, a labyrinth filled with stairs. Now he must rely on his wits, his cunning and his two AK47s if he’s going to survive in a world gone horizontal.
