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Out in the traditional British countryside something spooky is stirring in the hedgerows. In the most ambitious online entertainment project put together in this country, the BBC is to launch Signs of Life this spring.

The show, from the makers of Big Brother, is the first fully fledged interactive drama to be launched first on the internet and is set in the fictional Suffolk town of Whyte. Despite the rural English location, the production team promises the storylines will be more Twin Peaks than The Archers

Article continues ’It is a thriller and it is all about characters and discovery,’ said Peter Cowley of Endemol, who developed Signs of Life alongside the BBC’s drama department. Due to go online in the next few months, the drama is aimed at the teenage market. A team of screenwriters has shaped the sequences which will be filmed as live drama and then go out as loosely-framed episodes. How long the viewer stays with each episode will be a matter of individual choice.

The BBC’s Ashley Highfield, who runs new media for the corporation, has committed £800,000 to making eight ’segments’ of the drama.

Highfield believes the drama is reminiscent of the hit US teen series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Rather than creating a plot which revolves around supernatural forces and the undead, as Buffy’s did, Signs of Life is hoping to capitalise on young people’s interest in astrology.

For Peter Bazalgette, the chief creative officer of Endemol UK and the man who brought Big Brother to Channel 4, the most interesting thing about Signs of Life is the fact that its content is being provided away from the central control of the broadcasting channels themselves, although Cowley underlines that Endemol has developed its ideas with the BBC drama department once the original deal had been negotiated with the new media arm of the BBC.

’There have been a few experiments in educational drama like this before,’ said Cowley, ’and back in the days of the internet boom there was a drama called Caroline On-line, which some people may remember. Obviously that was restricted at the time by the way it could be delivered to people. It also had a vaguely thriller-like plot too and was character-based.’

In a push to reach younger viewers through the internet the BBC also launched Wannabes last week, a broadband drama created by Illumina Digital.