In Vile Vole Pie, the pilot episode of Dark Ages, we meet the series' main characters. Gudrun the stonemason of Sludgebrook; his nagging and pan wielding wife Agnes; their daydreaming daughter Matilda; Thane Redwald of Bottingsbury; his slightly unchristian-like friend, Brother Cedric the priest; their Earl, the ruthless and torture-obsessed Byrnoth; and Gudrun's two dim-witted friends, Badsmith and Bigwart. The year in 999ad, and the people of the small Englalish shire of Bottingsbury are worked up in a frenzy of millennium fever. While the peasants of Sludgebrook busy themselves with small talk of Armageddon and curious apocalyptic omens involving two-headed rabbits, Earl Byrnoth's and Thane Redwald's concerns are greater. Byrnoth orders Redwald to take control of the people in his shire and put an end to all the millennium craziness - or else the Thane will discover the true extent of the Earl's imaginative capacity when it comes to torture techniques. Naturally, Redwald is morti

• Paul Putner
• Sheridan Smith
• Pauline McLynn