Time Travel Is Dangerous, Chris Reading’s sci-fi comedy about two Muswell Hill shopkeepers and a time machine, held its gala premiere in the neighbourhood it was shot in.
Chris Reading’s sci-fi comedy Time Travel Is Dangerous, set among the vintage shops of Muswell Hill, held its gala premiere at the Everyman Muswell Hill on Thursday 27 March 2025. Kiell Smith-Bynoe, who plays the young Ralph, led the cast there.
Reading met Ruth Syratt and Megan Stevenson, who run a vintage shop in Muswell Hill, in 2015. Together they made a short film, The Unreason, around the idea of stealing stock from the past. Anna-Elizabeth and Hillary Shakespeare wrote the feature with him and produced it.
Syratt and Stevenson play versions of themselves, shopkeepers who find a time machine and use it to source their stock. Johnny Vegas, Jane Horrocks, Sophie Thompson and Mark Heap are in the cast, and Stephen Fry narrates.
The film had its world premiere at the Austin Film Festival in October 2024. Its London premiere came on the eve of its British release, in the neighbourhood where it was shot.
Smith-Bynoe made his name as Mike Cooper in Ghosts and in Stath Lets Flats, and has presented The Great British Sewing Bee since 2024. Brian Bovell, who plays Ralph as an older man, and Guy Henry joined him.