The bell above the door jangles as a gentleman steps inside, the warm, steamy air of the barber shop closing around him like a cloak.

The room smells of bay rum and singed hair, the quiet scrape of steel on leather the only sound.

The barber doesn't speak as he gestures the man into the chair, just fixes him with a steady, unreadable look.

The client sits, feeling the cracked leather sigh beneath him, and tilting his

chin as instructed. The barber's hands are practised, almost tender as he lathers the client's throat,

but then comes the razor, gleaming honed to a terrifying edge that catches the gas lamp light.

It hovers, then touches skin.

In that instant, every whispered fear of Victorian London rushes in.

Vanishings, rumours, and the legend of a barber who never meant

for his customers to walk out again. London in the 1840s was a city of shadows, packed slums, grinding poverty, and a public hungry for blood-soaked tales.

Crime broadside sold like hot pies, splashing streets with lurid stories of murder, cannibalism

and vice.

Into this world stepped Sweeney Todd, the demonic barber who slit throats for profit

and sent bodies tumbling below.

A tale born from fear, sharpened by sensationalism, and fed by the city's darkest instincts.

This is the story that shaped the legend, the real anxieties, brutal realities, and gory imagination that made Sweeney Todd impossible to forget.

From the basement of a barber shop, this is After Dark. Hello, I'm Anthony.

And I'm Maddie.

And this is a tale that we know most likely from a film or a musical.

Which we are not allowed to sing for licensing reasons. Well, I wasn't going to, but are we not allowed to for that? Oh, you're just made it. No, I think you are not allowed to sing it unless you are doing a review of it. Okay. It's a very good musical. Attend the day, the Sweetie Todd is what we're doing. And it is a very good musical, actually. The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. But is there a chilling original history behind this story? What are the fears of the time that made this story a sensation? And what pies are really made on? Wait. And were pies really that popular? I mean, I'm going to say yes to that i don't know anything about

this is your episode i know a pie do you like a pie no no no like a chicken pie if i had to do a pie it

would be a chicken pie i make a mean chicken pie that's like my go-to like cozy comfort food and you know

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