Welcome to the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio! A podcast featuring the best vintage detective radio programs. Each week from Monday through Saturday, we feature six of Old Time Radio's great detective series from the beginning of the show to its very last episode. And as a bonus, twice a month we also post a public domain movie or TV mystery or detective show video.
Along the way, I'll provide you my commentary and offer you opportunities to interact.
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- Your host, Adam Graham
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Currently Featuring
YOURS TRULY, JOHNNY DOLLAR THE FALCON DANGEROUS ASSIGNMENT DRAGNET MR. CHAMELEON THIN MAN… and more!
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Barrie Craig, NBC, Podcast
EP0526: Barrie Craig: Dead Loss
by Yours Truly Johnny Blogger • 0 Comments
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Barrie is hired to protect a man until his divorce can be finalized.
Original Air Date: October 15, 1952
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Golden Age Article, Hercule Poirot, Movie Review
Telefilm Review: Appointment with Death (2009)
by Yours Truly Johnny Blogger • 0 Comments
“Your appointment with death was always to be here…”
In Appointment with Death(2009), Poirot arrives inSyria to follow the expedition of Lord Boyton (Tim Curry), who is searching for the head of John the Baptist. While there, Poirot witnesses Lady Boyton’s unpleasant behavior towards everyone other than her husband and overhears two of her children talking about how she must die.
And die she does. She’s found stabbed to death from her perch in the sun above the excavations where she watched her husband’s team excavating. Poirot is asked to investigate, but there are more secrets being kept by members of the party other than murder. Poirot (David Suchet) must sort through them all to find the real killer.
Review:
The acting in this telefilm is superb. David Suchet is his usual self and is supported by a fantastic cast of supporting players including Curry who has a great scene with Poirot in a cave where the two retell an ancient fable that’s written on the wall. This foreshadows much of the rest of the story and forms a narrative that suggests that no matter how long evil is unpunished, judgment and death finally catch up with the perpetrators.
Suchet was spell-binding in a 23 minute wrap-up of the case in which he deals with all the “red fish” in the case and reveals all.
The story (while not at all faithful to the book it’s supposedly adapting) is compelling and well-written. The teleplay like the later adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express is a product of its times, as it focuses on Lady Boyton’s sadistic abuse of her children from childhood to the present, and is in many ways reflective of frustration with the pervasiveness with this sort of behavior and the seeming inability or unwillingness of the courts to punish it. It is a very dark story, yet the writers do manage to work a few rays of hope into what is a very heavy ending.
Appointment with Death also features stunning cinematography, as well as a powerful soundtrack that makes it a solid mystery.
Of course, as mentioned earlier the film deviates so much from the original novel, it’s barely recognizable. It’s addition of characters, subtraction of characters, change of murder methods and murder motives, change of location has been documented by many sites.
Clearly, Christie fans who complain about the movies have a point as the changes from Christie’s original are extreme. Ideally, if you title a movie by a book title and say it’s an adaptation, the movie should keep to the book. And if you’re going to make something vastly different, it ought to have a different title just as the 1940s Sherlock Holmes movies which borrowed elements from the Arthur Conan Doyle Stories were titled completely different from the canonical Sherlock Holmes stories.
One also has to ask whatever to the cozy mystery series? The original series of one hour Poirot episodes was more genteel, while recent films have taken a more gritty turn. The changes seem to be the result of ratings pressure. Scripted television of any sort is in an endangered species and if a TV show is going to be shot as an expensive period piece, it better draw rating. So far, these grittier Poirots have succeeded as the series has drawn good ratings and been renewed and perhaps will generate interests in the original stories.
Despite its departures from the source material, Appointment with Death is a compelling story in its own right and one of my favorite mystery films of recent years.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0
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CBS, Lady Sleuths, Mystery Special, Podcast
EP0525s: Columbia Workshop: Murder in Studio One
by Yours Truly Johnny Blogger • 0 Comments
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A female detective tries to solve a murder in a radio studio in the series 26 by Corwin.
Original Air Date: October 12, 1941
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Golden Age Article
Mr. Monk’s Top Twenty List, Part Five
by Yours Truly Johnny Blogger • 4 Comments
Past Posts: 6-10 11-15, 16-20 and honorable mentions.
We’ve reached the end of our top 20 list. I do have to say that it appears that the second half of Season 2 of Monk was the show at its absolute best as 3 of the top 5 episodes are from that period.
5) Mr. Monk Can’t See a Thing (Season 5, Episode 4):
Mr. Monk is blinded while trying to protect an elderly firefighter from his murderer. The great detective finds himself apparently temporarily blinded, which at makes him happy as many of his obsessions, compulsions, and fears are tied to eyesight. He struggles with his blindness, but using his sense of touch, he manages to compensate for it. The episode features an involved mystery with a false ending and a final scene that is perhaps the most thrilling in the entire series.
4) Mr. Monk and the Paperboy (Season 2, Episode 10): Mr. Monk’s paperboy is murderered in an attempt to keep Monk from reading his morning paper. Monk surmises that the cause was stop him from reading the paper lest he discovers a crime. Monk’s challenge isn’t finding a crime, but finding the right one. He solves two unrelated crimes after reading the paper and still hasn’t found the reason for the murder of the paperboy. This is definitely a story of legendary proportions, with some great payoffs.
3) Mr. Monk and the Astronaut (Season 4, Episode 13): Monk faces another impossible murder. This time, Monk identifies the murderer. The problem? He was an astronaut in orbit of the Earth at the time the victim died. Monk is dismissed and underestimated by the astronaut as a weakling who will always back off until Monk begins to close in and the astronaut has to stop Monk from the finding the key evidence. The climatic scene on the airstrip is one of the most memorable and satisfying of the series.
2) Mr. Monk and the Missing Granny (Season 2, Episode 13):
Monk is engaged to find a woman’s kidnapped grandmother in hopes of getting help with his reenstatement case. What Monk finds is a baffling case where as ransom, the kidnappers demand that they provide the homeless a meal and the perpetrators claim to be tied to a radical group from the 1960s. This one is very cleverly plotted and one of the few Monk episodes where there’s no homicide.
1) Mr. Monk and the Three Pies (Season 2, Episode 11): This is the first episode in which we meet Monk’s more ingenusous and more disturbed brother Ambrose whose agoraphobia hasn’t allowed him to leave their house since their father left them and has caused him to save all mail and newspapers for the day their father returns. Monk’s been nursing a grudge because Ambrose missed Trudy’s funeral and never calling or writing Monk afterwards. Ambrose suspects foul play in the disappearance of a neighbor. At the same time, murders are being committed involving people who won the neighbor’s pies at the fair. A great classic mystery puzzle with that perfect blend of comedy and drama.
That brings us to the end of this series and there were many great Monk episodes that didn’t make the cut. Be sure to let me know what you think in the comments.
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1949-54 Johnny Dollar, CBS, Podcast, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar
EP0525: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Elliot Champion Manner
by Yours Truly Johnny Blogger • 0 Comments
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A warehouse burned down and Johnny and a team of investigators arrive, believing the owner burned it for insurance, but the owner insists that the perpetrator was a man he sent up for embezzlement.
Original Air Date: December 12, 1952
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Podcast, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Old Time Radio
EP0524: Sherlock Holmes: The Cadaver in the Roman Toga
by Yours Truly Johnny Blogger • 0 Comments
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Sherlock Holmes goes to investigate the case of a man found dead in Toga where there used to be Roman baths.
Original Air Date: November 9, 1947
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Let George Do It, Mutual, Podcast
EP0523: Let George Do It: Island in the Desert
by Yours Truly Johnny Blogger • 0 Comments
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George goes South of the border at the request of a dead Mexican fire insurance investigator and sets out to find why the investigator was killed.
Original Air Date: July 10, 1950
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