Roger and Elizabeth - Would you recast? And if so, who?

Funny this should come up, as I'm watching my way through the original series for the first time. Right at the moment, I can't imagine anyone else playing these characters. They're so uniquely painted and performed.

For Elizabeth you'd need to find an older actress capable of mystery and matronly, warm with just a touch of severe.
For Roger you'd need an older man who could pull off that peculiar mixture of arrogant selfishness and thinly veiled cowardice.

Perhaps the trick is in the age -- in 1984, Louis Edmonds would have been 61 and Joan Bennett 74. Casting some actors in theirs 60s or 70s, who have a well-established vocal range, might work for re-inserting the eldest Collins generation.

Sarah Douglas could be a good choice for Elizabeth.

When Big Finish started, I was all for recasting characters left, right, and center. I felt that Stuart Manning, Joe Lidster, and company were being silly only bringing back characters they had the actors willing to act for. Over time, I have been impressed by the stories they have written for returning and new characters for Dark Shadows, how the different audios enriched both past plotlines and added new ones. While I do wish we could get a little with Liz and Roger in them, I've learned to trust in the Big Finish process. That and I'm not the best coming up with actors to play roles. I'm happy to hear which actors other fans think to do the roles.

I would be perfectly ok with recasts, but like others, I don’t feel that it’s absolutely necessary. I feel like Joe and David have kept Roger and Liz as viable characters in the audios anyway, via other characters’ imitations, phone conversations, frequently bringing their whereabouts and activities into the dialogue, and also through the wonderful short stories range. Colin Baker perfectly mimicked Joan Bennett’s clipped, icy, New England finishing school diction, even though he kept his male voice and just softened it a bit. Joan’s is really a lost dialect now. Many old Hollywood actresses of the silver screen era had it, but no one really does now. It was very proper sounding, with no contractions (except “cahhhn’t” and “shahhhn’t”) and NO slang, such as “ya”, “yeah”, woulda”, “hafta”, “gonna”, etc.) Also, Nancy Barrett, Kathryn Leigh Scott, and Marie Wallace have all spoken for Liz in the audios at one time or another, and were all excellent...most likely from their familiarity with her on the job. We’ve had Amber Benson as a young Judith (a different Joan character), and she was really good in the role also. For recasts besides the regular DS women, maybe Elizabeth McGovern....she is wonderful as American heiress Cora Grantham on “Downton Abbey”. Of course Meryl Streep can do EVERY dialect or accent, but she’s such a megastar she’d be way overpriced! English actors who I’m sure could pull off polished American, yes, Sarah Douglas, Carolyn Seymour...maybe even Louise Jameson.

For Roger, I agree....Richard Crowest, Greg Patmore, and my favorite, Matthew Waterhouse! Hell, with Alec Newman’s talent for accents, I’d bet he would be brilliant! Roger sounds like a sarcastic, bitchy American who spent a lot of his childhood in England and effects an interesting combination of the two.

But, also like others, I have complete faith in BF’s process, so can easily go with whatever they come up with. Even if it means keeping the characters in the background and giving us bits of their stories the way they’ve done thus far. Liz even had a whole short story about her, narrated wonderfully by Marie.