Category: Golden Age Article

Book Review, Golden Age Article

Book Review: Monk and the Blue Flu

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A version of this article was published in 2011.

How do you get more Monk if eight years wasn’t enough? You can read the Monk novels by Lee Goldberg (or more to the point, listen to the book through Audible). While I could have started with the first Monk novel, Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse, I decided to skip that one as it was adapted to a Season 5 episode. Instead I opted for a novel had a far more interesting plot – Monk and the Blue Flu.

The Plot:  Police are not getting what they want in negotiations with the city. With a serial killer on the loose, detectives and senior officers phone in sick, staging a “blue flu” to put pressure on the city.

The Mayor of San Francisco offers to reinstate Monk and make him Captain of Homicide if he’ll help out during the crisis. Monk jumps at the chance and takes command of a motley crew of discharged cops called back to duty, including a senile detective, a paranoid schizophrenic detective, and a violent psychotic detective.

The Mystery: Goldberg crafted a fine mystery here, with multiple cases playing out in the novel. We’ve got nine separate murders (with a shoplifting ring thrown in for the heck of it) and three different killers.

One complaint with Monk in the later seasons was that the mystery element of the show seemed weak. No problem here. This is a fun ride with clever cases that really require some thought to solve.

The mystery is in the tradition of the cozy mystery, told without a whole lot of bloody details.  In other elements of the story, Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu is about as clean or even more so than the TV version, with the notable exception of some pretty tacky flirting between two of the psychotic detective’s assistants.

Monkness:

A Monk story is more than just a mystery. The characters on Monk, particularly Monk himself, add the comedy and drama that makes the show a winning combination even when the mystery lets us down. Here, Goldberg falls short.

The book is told from the perspective of Monk’s assistant, Natalie Teager. This is a popular tactic for mystery writers to use when dealing with genius detectives (think Dr. Watson or Archie Goodwin). It’s difficult to see the world through the eyes of a super genius, and that goes double for Monk. However, in the book, using Natalie doesn’t work well, as she doesn’t quite ring true to the Natalie we know from the TV series.

Natalie’s narration is filled with what’s known in the writing business as “telling.” We are repeatedly taken out of the story to get her opinions on everything from politics to shopping.

Her daughter, Julie, doesn’t ring true either, as a somewhat shallow fashion diva, nor does Captain Stottlemeyer seem to be quite right. Even Monk is occassionally not himself, going way over the top, even for him.

In one scene early in the book, Captain Stottlemeyer steps in dog doo at a crime scene. Monk insists that Stottlemeyer remove a shoe and have it sent for hazardous waste destruction and Stottlemeyer actually goes along with this. I didn’t buy Monk going that far, nor Stottlemeyer humoring him to that degree. This also creates a strange inconsistency in the story. When Monk has Natalie surrender a shoe, he insists that she remove both shoes for symmetrical reasons, but no such insistence was made with Stottlemeyer earlier.

While the characters are more expressive about emotions in this story than in a normal episode of Monk, the emotional scenes have less impact.  On the TV show, the writers were experts at showing us things that evoke emotion. Here, we are more told how to feel about different scenes.

Of course, to be fair, Goldberg’s task is a challenging one. While it is difficult to adapt books as movies and television shows, it’s even harder to adapt a television show to a book. While we may have an idea of what a character is like from reading a book, when we’ve seen a character on a TV show, the actor’s interpretation has given our imaginations a solid picture of who the character is, and we don’t like deviations.

You also lose things in translation between the mediums. For example, Goldberg can’t show us Monk during his therapy session with Dr. Kroger due to the limit of having the story told from Natalie’s point of view.

The book does have its moments in several scenes when Monk acts like Monk. Randy Disher is well-done, although we don’t see enough of him in this story.  I will say that while the looney detectives on Monk’s replacement squad are a bit stereotypical, the idea of all of these psychoses coexisting within the same division is pretty funny.

It also continues the Monk tradition of providing hope for those with mental illness. The clear message is that they could overcome their difficulties to function in society, even if their approach to life is a little different. While I won’t give away the exact conclusion, Goldberg does give Monk’s colleagues an amicable ending.

If you read Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu, you can expect a pretty good mystery and a story that has its moments. However, don’t expect to get an episode of Monk via audiobook or paperback.

Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu is available on Amazon (affiliate link)

DVD Review, Golden Age Article

Film Review: The Street With No Name

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In The Street with No Name, a young FBI agent (Mark Stevens) is dispatched by FBI Inspector George Briggs (Lloyd Nolan, reprising the role from The House on 92nd Street) to a generic American city to infiltrate an emerging criminal organization led by a charismatic and clever criminal (Richard Widmark) whose wartime experience has inspired some new twists on how criminal organizations work.

The story has a realistic tone to its investigative procedures, with the gimmick of actual FBI agents being involved in the production or appearing in the roles they played in the original case. Nolan turns in his usual solid and believable performance as the officious Inspector Briggs. This was an early role for Richard Widmark, who easily turns in the most compelling performance of the film as a menacing and unpredictable lead villain who commands the audience’s attention each time he’s on screen.

The story of the investigation is interesting enough, yet it’s a bit bland, particularly in comparison to some of the other great procedural films of the era, such as He Walked by Night, T-Men, and especially House on 92nd Street. Outside of Widmark’s character, there are no really interesting characters. The forgettable and interchangeable men who play the thugs in this feature pale in comparison to the colorful German agents of House on 92nd Street brought to life by expert character actors.

The one other character who shows promise of being able to make some sort of impact is the villain’s wife (Barbara Lawrence), who has some strong moments opposite Widmark, but is ultimately and brutally sidelined before the final act.

One of the big interest factors is the FBI’s cooperation, which I can’t help but feel led to them choosing to dramatize a case that put the FBI in a great light, but isn’t nearly as interesting as it could have been.

At the end of the day, it’s an okay crime thriller with two big points of interest that may make it worth watching: the outstanding performance of Richard Widmark and the historical curiosity about older FBI procedures and the participation of actual agents in making the picture.

Rating: 3.25 out of 5

Street with No Name is available on DVD on Amazon. (Affiliate link)

Book Review, Golden Age Article

A Review of the Zeck Trilogy

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A version of this article was posted in 2011.

Holmes had Moriarty, but who did Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe have?

For three books, published between 1948 and 1950, crime boss Arnold Zeck served as an antagonist for Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

And Be a Villain

A man who writes a horseracing tip sheet is poisoned on a radio talk show while drinking the sponsor’s product. Wolfe is hired to solve the case by the sponsors and the show’s star.

On the positive side, this mystery had many twists and turns as to who was even the intended victim. At one point, Wolfe gets so disgusted with the show’s staff for lying to him and wasting days of his time that he turns a key piece of information over to Inspector Cramer in the hope that Cramer will find the killer and earn Wolfe’s fee for him. When this plan fails, Archie executes a daring move to get Wolfe back on the case.

This particular novel had a few moments where it became a tad tedious. It takes until Chapter 4 for an exact agreement to be reached as to who will be paying Wolfe and how much. Then we have pages consumed by detailing when the staff came in to be interviewed in what turned out to be pointless and fruitless interviews because they had all agreed to conceal a vital fact. Perhaps this helps us sympathize with Wolfe when he walks off the case, as we’re tempted to as well.

But no one ought to walk away. The book’s look at the world of 1940s radio is worth the read for fans of old time radio. Also, when Wolfe does get back on the case, the mystery continues to twist and turn as we wrestle with who was the target and who had opportunity commit the crime.

In And Be a Villain, Zeck plays a minimal role. He threatens Wolfe to be careful where he treads in investigating the case. Wolfe figures out Zeck’s role in the crime that led to the murder he’s investigating, but as the fact isn’t essential to the police investigation, he leaves Zeck out of it.

Perhaps, this is the great challenges with the Zeck trilogy. While Holmes and Moriarity were driven by ego and intellectual vanity ever closer towards a fatal confrontation, Wolfe would rather not deal with Zeck if he doesn’t have to, and all things considered, Zeck would rather not rid the world of Wolfe because it would make the world less interesting. They’re willing to do what they have to do, but as I finished listening to the audiobook of And Be a Villain, I knew it was going to take something big to get this rivalry off the ground.

Rating: Satisfactory

The Second Confession

Something would come in The Second Confession. Wolfe takes a case for a rich industrialist who suspects his daughter’s boyfriend is a Communist. Zeck calls Wolfe and makes it clear that he doesn’t want the case investigated. He punctuates his demand by shooting up Wolfe’s plant room and destroying thousands of dollars in plants.

However, when the young man is murdered, everything is reversed. Zeck wants the man’s killer caught. Wolfe begins an investigation with plenty of caveats offered to everyone involved. Along the way, Wolfe takes on the American Communist Party to get the information needed to seal his case. The Second Confession shows both the anti-Communist leanings of the Montenegrin-born Wolfe, as well as Stout’s own American-born anti-Communist perspective. With plenty of plot twists and a nice bit of political intrigue thrown in, this is a fun and multi-faceted Wolfe story.

Wolfe begins to realize that a confrontation with Zeck may be unavoidable and so he begins to make preparations just in case. However, all things being equal, he’d still rather leave Zeck alone.

Rating: Very Satisfactory

In the Best Families

As The Second Confession ends with Zeck congratulating Wolfe on solving the case and Wolfe once again reiterating his independence, readers have a sense that this can’t go on forever. Things come to a head at last in the next book in this trilogy, In The Best Families. Wolfe agrees to help a woman who merely wants to know where her husband gets his money. Zeck shows his disapproval of Wolfe taking on the case by intercepting a package of expensive sausages and putting tear gas in its place.

After yet another menacing phone call from Zeck, Wolfe and Archie confer on what to do. Archie figures that since their last encounter with Zeck, they’d taken forty cases, and Wolfe thinks that running into Zeck every forty cases is quite likely. Wolfe and Archie have to decide whether to oppose Zeck or to acquiesce to him and back off whatever case he doesn’t want them on. Archie thinks that, without the other, either one of them might have given in to Zeck, but neither wanted to be seen as cowardly by the other. So their course is set, though Archie doesn’t know what that course will entail.

Archie goes to spend a weekend with the client and her family to get a feel for her husband, and while he’s there, the client is murdered. He calls up Wolfe and fills him in. True to that old saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going,” Wolfe gets going, fleeing the brownstone, setting up alternate arrangements for his orchids and servants, placing the house on the market, and ordering Archie not to follow him. He leaves his old friend Marco as Power of Attorney.

The next few chapters after Wolfe’s disappearance are fascinating for fans of the Wolfe stories as we get an idea of what the characters would be like in Wolfe’s absence. Theodore, the gardener, sulks; Fritz, the cook, shows almost maternal concern, and NYPD homicide inspector Cramer shows up to offer some friendly advice. Cramer’s appearance is noteworthy, as it begins with Cramer showing that he’s a smart cop and ends with him taking a swing with Archie when the latter suggests Cramer is on the take.

Archie takes center stage in these chapters. Wolfe’s disappearance puts Archie in a bad spot, as the DA believes that Wolfe knows who committed the murder and that Archie knows where Wolfe is. Due to Archie’s reputation as a skillful liar, no one believes him when he insists he has no idea where Wolfe has gone.

In addition to this, while Archie is allowed to collect his salary and stay in the house until a sale occurs, he has been left with nothing to do other than follow up on unfinished cases and collect payments from clients on payment plans. Wolfe has left instructions for Archie with Marco that are incredibly vague: “You are to act in the light of experience as guided by intelligence.”

Archie is clearly miffed by Wolfe leaving him holding the bag. He also misses working with Wolfe. However, unlike a more modern assistant, Archie follows Wolfe’s command not to search for him.

The Zeck trilogy does a good job showcasing the complexity of the Archie-Wolfe relationship, with its various elements that are understood by the two, even if they are never spoken in a quasi-parental or mentorship relationship.

Wolfe can be protective of Archie. Indeed, when Archie first learns of Zeck in And Be A Villain, Wolfe orders Archie to forget he’s heard the name. And there’s a sense that Wolfe is continuing that protective behavior by leaving Archie out of the loop during the dangerous preliminary stages of his plan against Zeck, only bringing Archie in when it becomes absolutely necessary.

Archie doesn’t care for being protected, nor is Nero Wolfe’s legman meant to sit around for months waiting for Wolfe to make a move. So Archie stops taking a salary from Wolfe and opens his own private detective agency. He hopes his first case will be to solve the murder of Wolfe’s last client. When he fails to get cooperation, he drums up business and prides himself on earning clearly more than Wolfe pays him. Still, when Wolfe comes back, there’s no question of staying on his own.

Given that there were 25 years of Wolfe books after In The Best Families, it’s not a spoiler to say that Wolfe returns and triumphs over Zeck. However, I will say that the final showdown is anti-climatic after the fascinating character drama that drives the middle of the story. The final confrontation between the two (if we can even call it that) is disappointing.

In the final analysis, Zeck disappoints because he is not equal to the task in going against Wolfe. To be sure, he is a dangerous technocrat, but he’s still a technocrat. Zeck builds systems that keep him safe: a network of B, C, and D operatives that shield him while turning a profit. It seems that nearly every racket that Zeck is involved in is one where Zeck thinks he’s figured out how to avoid any danger.

In the midst of his foolproof systems, and risk-free crimes, Zeck seems weak at anticipating human behavior, expecting it to fall into neat patterns. Zeck handles Wolfe with typical mafioso style and forces a confrontation he can’t win. Wolfe’s understanding of human behavior and his ability to see the flaws in Zeck’s systems assures the outcome as soon as Wolfe steps out of the Brownstone.

The actual mystery of who killed Wolfe’s client is relatively simple. And indeed, it’s surprising that it remains a secret for so long, as the key clue is revealed to all important parties early in the book. Readers could be excused as Stout directed our attention to the character-driven story and Wolfe’s dealing with Zeck.

So on one hand, In the Best Families has a weaker mystery and a disappointing villain, but it also offers some insights into Archie and the characters in Wolfe’s world. The middle part of the book is interesting enough to carry the rest of it. So, overall I’ll give the book:

Rating: Satisfactory

The Zeck Trilogy is available for the Kindle. (Affiliate link)

Audio Drama Review, Golden Age Article

Green Acres on Radio

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A version of this article appeared in 2010.
Green Acres

 

If you mention Green Acres, people think of the 1965-71 Sitcom starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor. But fifteen years before Green Acres came to TV,  it came to radio.

CBS broadcast Granby’s Green Acres as a Summer replacement series. Granby’s Green Acres told the story of John Granby, a Banker who got fed up with city life and took his wife and family to relocate to a farm.

Sound familiar?

The radio Green Acres were written by a 33-year old writer, who would go on to write 150 of the 170 TV episodes of Green Acres.

There were quite a few similarities between the radio and TV versions of Green Acres. Both featured a scatter-brained Mr. Kimball (although the radio Mr. Kimball ran the county store rather than being the County Agent.) Granby also had a farm hand named Eb. The radio show had some good bits that Sommers would dust off for early TV episodes.

An early Green Acres TV episode where Oliver can’t decide what to plant has its basis in the radio episode, “Mr. Granby Plants a Crop.”

And this great little bit of dialogue was transplanted directly from the radio:

Oliver: I’d take a seed, a tiny little seed, I’d plant it in the ground, I’d put some dirt on it, I’d water it, and pretty soon, do you know what I would have?
Lisa: A dirty little wet seed.

At the end of the radio run. John Granby (Gale Gordon) told listeners to send letters in to their local CBS station with their thoughts on Granby’s Green Acres.  The show never returned to the air.

There were many reasons the show didn’t make it in 1950. First, I don’t think audiences were ready for it. Americans had migrated in large numbers to cities like New York and Los Angeles in search of economic opportunities. Granby’s desire to move to the country seemed absurd. When Green Acres appeared on TV, it was a very different world with violence, unrest, and crime on the rise. Moving to Hooterville sounded a lot less crazy and made us more sympathetic with Mr. Douglas.

The biggest problem with Granby’s Green Acres may have been that it just wasn’t ready for prime time. Granby is too much of a cantankerous blowhard. The radio version gives you an appreciation of the talent with which Eddie Albert played the role of Oliver Wendell Douglas, as a complex mix of bombast, idealism, practicality, and romance that makes the character a joy to watch.

In the radio version, Sommers only had given real airtime to Mr. Kimball from the store, and a know-it-all all County Agent who always ate Granby’s supper. Pretty thin gruel.

Not continuing Granby’s Green Acres was a smart decision. Even with great comics like Burns and Allen leaving radio for television, radio comedy was still undergoing a golden age and Sommers’s creation simply was not in the same league as shows like Our Miss Brooks, Life of Riley, and Life with Luigi.

It also had a nice aftermath. Sommers continued to develop as a writer and work in the world of television, writing on such shows as Amos and Andy, Dennis the Menace, and Petticoat Junction. When Green Acres got its second beginning, it became one of television’s most beloved sitcoms.

It features Pat Buttram turning in the role Mr. Haney, who is always trying to sell Mr. Douglas something, Eva Gabor as the sweet but often confusing Hungarian princess Lisa Douglas, and the Ziffels, who treat their pig like he’s their son, and much more.

While the radio show didn’t have these elements, it serves as a rough draft of Green Acres, which makes it an interesting listen.

You can listen to Granby’s Green Acres here. You can currently watch Green Acres for free with Pluo.

DVD Review, Golden Age Article

Telefilm Review: Kojak: How Cruel the Frost, How Bright the Stars

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Kojak
Background:

Kojak was a 1970s series starring Telly Savalas as a bald NYPD Greek-American Lieutenant Theo Kojak. The series was in the top 20 for ratings in its first three seasons. The series and Savalas won multiple awards during its run. In its third season, Kojak featured its first and only Christmas episode, which aired on December 21, 1975.

The Plot:

A skeleton crew is set to work on Christmas Eve at the 11th precinct, with Kojak having the night off. Those plans get scuttled as two different cases emerge with life-and-death stakes. A man who shot a woman in a bar and was injured in the process is still on the loose. In addition, a young woman from a wealthy family wants the police to track down her boyfriend because she fears he’s going to commit a robbery to get her a Christmas present.

Review:

There are crime shows that pretty much abandon their premise for Christmas, but Kojak didn’t. While the stakes were not as big as in other episodes, Kojak still offers two separate cases that involve peril with at least one life on the line in each case. The episode is well-paced and sticks to a mostly realistic plot and story structure, but with some nice Christmas moments, such as when Kojak and his Captain receive presents from his men. The scene of the Christmas party in the precinct gives some good character insight about Kojak and the men who work under him.

The guest cast is competent and features a couple of noted talents. This is the TV debut of Veronica Hamel, who’d go on to net five Emmy nominations for her work on the 1980s police classic Hill Street Blues. A young future Emmy Winner John Laroquette (Night Court, Boston Legal, The Librarians) has a small role as well.

It’s Kojak who has the most memorable moments, showing both wisdom and compassion when confronting difficult situations, and having a lovely personal moment before events interrupt his date.

The biggest challenge with this episode is figuring out how to view it as a Christmas episode. Unlike some Christmas episodes, it doesn’t overwhelm you with Christmas cheer or atmosphere. It also isn’t one of those depressing or truly dark holiday tales that are popular in some quarters. The situations, while serious, are not grim or dire, and neither situation ends up as bad as it could have been.

It’s tempting to view the episode as coincidentally set at Christmastime for the sake of it. The episode approaches a subtler theme of the Christmas story – that of sorrow at the current state of the world. While not depressing, the episode does have some downbeat moments, which makes sense for an episode that aired in a post-Watergate and post-Vietnam world with skyrocketing crime rates.

The opening dialogue-free street scene features a minute of a song of lament (I couldn’t find the title and the IMDB page only listed the traditional Christmas songs in the music credit). It begins with:

What have we lost in
all of the days flown by?
A dream or two has gone to die.
What have we lost in only a year gone on?
We’ve seen some sadness and felt the cold.

One of the episode’s key scenes features Kojak talking to a young Greek lady who immigrated to the United States three years ago. She has very high English proficiency and a grasp of the current cultural situation, but has only picked up vague information about past events. As a lifelong New Yorker, Kojak tells her about the past. This leads to some humorous moments, such as her getting confused about why the Giants are playing in New York rather than San Francisco, and not really understanding why Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were ever a team.

It also finds Kojak reflecting on how life has changed in the city. There’s a whiff of nostalgia, but Kojak also acknowledges that the past had its problems, reflecting on how the streets were dirty, yet not smog-filled as they have become, and not with the level of crime. He reflects, “Summer nights, believe it or not, you could walk in the park—any park in New York.

“And downtown, the Lower East Side. Great place. Pushcarts and selling watermelons and pineapples and bananas and flowers and people and laughter and like that. You let the fun go out of this city, Eleonora. Everybody’s afraid of everybody else now.”

Yet, this sorrow doesn’t sour Kojak. Towards the end of the episode, Kojak warns that everyone in the city will be wearing bulletproof vests if folks don’t wake up, and then adds, “But you know something, Frank? It’s our neighborhood, right, baby? We gotta love it.”

And fundamentally, that’s what makes this episode work. It’s about a man who sees the sorry state of the world but does love and serve the people of his community and mitigate the damage while longing for better days.

Kojak shouting, “Love thy neighbor, baby!” might not be the most usual moment in a Christmas episode, but it sums this one up nicely.

Rating: 4.25 out of 5.

All Five seasons of Kojak are currently streaming on Amazon Prime.(affiliate link)

DVD Review, Golden Age Article

DVD Review: Hawkins: The Complete TV Movie Collection

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A version of this article appeared in 2016

A recognizable and beloved Hollywood actor from Hollywood’s yesteryear playing a sharp and folksy lawyer who solves mysteries? That description will make people think of Matlock, starring Andy Griffith. However, more than a decade before Andy Griffith played the hot-dog-loving Southern lawyer, Jimmy Stewart brought the concept to the small screen as Billy Jim Hawkins, a homespun West Virginia lawyer with a penchant for getting to the truth and winning tough cases.

The Warner Archives DVD set (affiliate link) includes all eight of the Hawkins telefilms that aired in 1973 and 1974. The first film is ninety minutes long. The other seven are seventy-five minutes long, as they aired along with another mystery series to compete with the popular NBC Mystery Wheel.

In each case, after a sensational murder has been committed, Hawkins is called in to defend the accused, who generally has a massive amount of circumstantial evidence pointing towards their guilt. Hawkins usually has to win his client’s trust, insert himself into his client’s world, and get to the bottom of the case, with the help of his assistants, to clear his client.

Like Matlock and Perry Mason, every movie ends with a climactic courtroom scene where Hawkins reveals the true killer. There are a few more nods to legal procedure in this series than in either of those better-known series. In particular, the series acknowledges that, as Hawkins hasn’t been licensed to practice law in every state, to appear in those states, he needs to be working under a local attorney who will serve as the Attorney of Record for the defense, even though Hawkins will do the arguing.

The Supporting Cast

In each episode, Hawkins is helped by one or more assistants. One of the key points of Hawkins’s backstory is that Hawkins has an enormous extended family of more than a hundred people. In different episodes, different members of that family show up to assist. Most frequently, it’s R.J. Hawkins (Strother Martin), but Jeremiah Stocker (Mayf Nutter) and Earl Coleman (James Hampton) take turns as well. Stewart has the best chemistry with Strother Martin, and R.J. Hawkins is the most interesting character, which is probably why R.J. Hawkins is in the final three films without any other assistants after only appearing in two of the first five.

The guest stars are generally quite competent. There’s an early performance by Tyne Daly, as well as appearances by Golden Age Hollywood notables like Lew Ayers and Teresa Wright, along with character actress extraordinaire Jeanette Nolan. One of the more interesting guest appearances is James Best, playing a serious role as a sheriff in the episode “Blood Feud.” In a few years, he would take on the role of the ultimate comic sheriff, Rosco Coltrane.

The Lead

Ultimately, while the scripts were decent and the supporting cast is competent, it’s Jimmy Stewart who makes the series worth watching. While watching the first few minutes of the opening film, I thought Stewart had overplayed the folksiness, but once he settles into the role, he makes Hawkins special. Hawkins is a country boy, and he doesn’t put on airs. Everyone who meets him is urged to call him Billy Jim.

Yet, at the same time, Hawkins has a keen mind and is aware of how the world works. Like many of the characters Stewart played over the years, Hawkins lives by a code.  His life is dedicated to the core principle that everyone’s entitled to a defense. Hawkins has a great way of connecting with and gaining the confidence of clients who’ve been unwilling to act in their own defense before.

In the courtroom scenes, Stewart is superb, building a level of rapport and using subtle humor to undercut the prosecution and then delivering an innocent “aw shucks, I’m just a country lawyer” type of comment to deflect objections from the prosecution. The scenes where he confronts the genuine murderer are incredibly compelling. Hawkins was one of the more credible TV lawyers to be featured in this sort of program. In many ways, he seems true to life to other nationally known trial attorneys, such as Gerry Spence, as opposed to a character someone made up.

Stewart’s acting netted him a well-deserved Golden Globe Award for Best Actor.

Why It Only Lasted One Season

In addition to Stewart’s win, the series was nominated for a Golden Globe, as was Strother Martin for Best Supporting Actor. However, despite critical recognition, the series went away after a single season. Why?

CBS created the series as a counter to NBC’s rotating mystery programs, and CBS didn’t quite seem to understand a big part of why NBC enjoyed success. NBC rotated Columbo, McCloud, and McMillan & Wife along with a few other series that only lasted a season or two. The beauty of the mystery wheel was that these programs all appealed to the same audience and if you liked one, there was a good chance you liked them all, and NBC could count on you to watch their mystery movie every Sunday night.

CBS on the other hand rotated Hawkins with the TV series Shaft, based on the Blacksploitation film series of the early 1970s. The two series drew two very different audiences and there was little crossover in audiences between the two shows and as a result, both got cancelled. Hawkins could have lasted longer if not for the network’s scheduling mistake.

Is This Series For You?

If you love classic lawyer series, these films are for you. Stewart’s Hawkins is at least as good as Perry Mason or Matlock. If you’re a fan of Jimmy Stewart’s later work, this is also a must, as this was arguably Stewart’s last great role before his career went on the downswing and hearing loss drove him to semi-retirement in the early 1980s.

Overall, I found Hawkins to be an enjoyable series that stands up well when compared to most of its 70s peers.

 

Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0

 

Audio Drama Review, Golden Age Article

Audio Drama Review: The Great Gildersleeve, Volume 10

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*The tenth volume of Radio Archive’s Great Gildersleeve collection collects all of the circulating episodes of The Great Gildersleeve from March 12-June 25,1944, which includes the conclusion of the 1943-44 radio season, and also wraps up the third season’s storyline.

There are lost episodes in sets for this season, but thankfully, the final nine episodes are in circulation, which is really helpful, as the ongoing story really takes center stage. Gildersleeve (Harold Peary) has already decided to run for Mayor of Summerfield, but he also ends up proposing marriage. School principal Eve Goodwin (Bea Benaderet) has agreed to marry Gildersleeve if he manages to win victory in the June 25 primary. If he doesn’t … she keeps her cards pretty close to the vest on what her response will be.

Gildersleeve’s relationship with Eve is interesting. There’s a three-episode arc involving Eve’s mother’s visit to Summerfield and Gildersleeve meeting her. It’s an interesting dynamic. He’s initially nervous but actually finds himself liking her. But when the dynamic between Eve and her mother starts to get in the way of romance, Gildersleeve has to try to work through the complicated and difficult wartime travel situation to get her back to her home. It’s a very different sort of mix and shows a bit more nuance than the typical hostile relationship.

The light-hearted campaign storyline was interesting to listen to, particularly as a far less lighthearted election was playing out while I was listening to the volume. One thing I had to appreciate is that they worked up a backstory for Summerfield’s political situation. Because people of all parties listened to the radio, they didn’t want to offend anyone. So there are two generically named parties in Summerfield and the writers worked up an entire story of how they split, and Republicans and Democrats ended up in both of them. Now, it might take some suspension of disbelief to believe that Summerfield formed its own pocket political universe, but the writers earn right to the benefit of the doubt with the detail they put into this explanation.

The war figures in this story in subte and not-so-subtle ways. In addition to creating a plot point that makes it hard for Eve’s mother to leave town, the end of the show is given to in-universe PSAs that are surprisingly effective.

Gildersleeve’s challenge to the incumbent Mayor gets off to a rocky start. However, a turning point is when the Mayor decides to put Gildersleeve on the spot and have him sing at the town picnic. Gildersleeve wows the crowd and is asked for countless encores, gaining in popularity and heading to frontrunner status. However, as election day and potentially the date for setting his wedding near, we’re treated to the same internal conflict that Gildersleeve shows in the previous season. He’s a man of big ambitions and big dreams but he also likes his status quo life and is afraid of it changing. Will he win despite himself or will subtle (and sometimes not-too-subtle) self-sabotage doom him?

Without giving away the ending, I like the way the writers handle it. The show’s final episode offers a satisfying conclusion to Gildersleeve’s story line without feeling like a retread of season two’s conclusion, while still being true to the character. As usual, the series features strong supporting performances, with Gildersleeve’s iconic supporting characters like Judge Hooker (Earle Ross), Mr. Peavey the Druggist (Richard LeGrand), Floyd the Barber (Arthur Q. Bryan), and his cook Birdie (Lillian Randolph).

There are few points for real complaint with the box set or the season as a whole. As usual, Radio Archives provides a high-quality production which provides a better listening experience than most circulating Gildersleeve episodes. One might wish that there were more episodes, with a greater focus on Gildersleeve‘s supporting cast. But the number of lost episodes makes this judgment hard, as there could have been more episodes focusing on supporting players, but they’re lost. The only real complaint is that the character of Gildersleeve’s niece Marjorie (Lurene Tuttle) seems a little less mature this season, which leads to some weaker jokes.

Still, what we have of season three is very strong. It mixes music, romance, comedy, drama, and a bit of political satire for good measure to create a really grand listening experience.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Golden Age Article, Telefilm Review

Telefilm Review: The Avengers: The House that Jack Built

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A version of this post appeared in 2018.

Series: The Avengers
Season 4, Episode 23
Original Air Date: March 5, 1966

“The House that Jack Built” begins atypically for an Avengers episode. Mrs. Peel (Diana Rigg) shows up to find John Steed (Patrick Macnee) developing photos. There’s no big case. She just stopped by for a friendly chat before heading off to look at a house her solicitor sent her a letter saying she’d inherited.

When Mrs. Peel arrives, she’s trapped inside the house and forced to wander through a series of confusing rooms, traps, and weird contraptions seemingly meant to reduce her to a state of terror.

This is a brilliant episode. The directing is superb, giving this situation a very haunting claustrophobic atmosphere throughout. The design of this house and all the related traps lend to the suspenseful feel.

This episode is also a showcase for Diana Rigg. While Steed finds clues that put him on Mrs. Peel’s trail and allow him to be in on the finale, the focus is on Mrs. Peel as she creeps through this house with few words. Rigg is superb. Mrs. Peel is one of the few female characters on television in this era who wouldn’t break out in hysterics. Rigg plays Mrs. Peel with appropriate coolness, without portraying a flippant bravado that would take the viewer out of the episode.

While the Avengers had a fun light touch, this episode shows the series could work with a serious and suspenseful tone, too. This episode is a classic that’s well worth watching.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Buy the Avengers: The Complete Emma Peel Megaset on DVD or watch the Avengers on Amazon Prime Streaming. (affiliate link)

Audio Drama Review, Golden Age Article

Audio Drama Review: Theater Five: And Dream No More

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Theater Five was the first great attempt to revive network radio drama after the end of the Golden Age of Network Radio Drama on September 30, 1962. Theater Five was launched in 1964 as a five-day-a-week series broadcast on ABC and originated in New York.

The Theater Five Project seeks to document the series and upgrade the circulating episodes of the program. In celebration of the sixtieth anniversary, a newly upgraded sixtieth-anniversary collection was posted. In addition to improved audio and thorough documentation, the collection includes one newly recovered episode that has not been in circulation among collectors, “And Dream No More.”

“And Dream No More” was broadcast on June 3,1965 and starred Conrad Nagel, a silent film matinee idol and later as a character in multiple mediums as well as a radio and TV personality and host. Nagel plays Dr. Roger Borton, a psychiatrist who has reached the portion of his career where he’s given up actually paying attention to what his patients say. In an early scene, Borton prescribes a pill to a patient dealing with a fear of crowds who objects. The doctor makes no attempts to respond and just tells him to do it and see him back there. Borton has developed a grand theory of everything that explains all mental illnesses: that they all come down to a fear of death. When a maid (Frances Cheney) for a wealthy client comes in troubled by predictive dreams, Borton already “knows” what’s going on and plans to treat her in time to leave for a golf game with a fellow doctor. But does he really?

Both Nagel and Cheney are great. Cheney does a good job portraying someone who really wants help but is in doubt of his very confident but also very pat answer. Nagel is superb in bringing a super-confident and overbearing character to life. The script by science fiction pioneer Nelson Bond is a taut piece of work that examines not only predictive dreams but the limits of human knowledge.

It’s a solid and thought-provoking script that enhances the already-strong circulating Theater Five canon.

Rating: 4.25 out of 5

“And Dream No More” is available for free download on the Theater Five Sixtieth Anniversary Collection

Audio Drama Review, Golden Age Article

Audio Drama Review: Imagination Theatre: The Investigators

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A version of this article was posted in 2019.

The late Jim French is best remembered for his greatest creation, the Seattle-based, modern private eye Harry Nile. However, French produced many detective and crime shows during his remarkable four-decades-plus in radio. Imagination Theatre: The Investigators (affiliate link) from Radio Spirits is a sampler pack of nine different crime shows that French produced over the years as part of his Imagination Theatre

The set kicks off with three episodes of Harry Nile. These shows come from 1999, towards the tail end of the run of Phil Harper (the original actor to play Harry Nile). We’ve reviewed this series extensively before, but for those who haven’t heard of it, Harry Nile is a period piece set in late 1939 through the late 1950s. Initially, the titular detective worked out of Los Angeles, but then he moved to Seattle, where French’s research and attention to detail really shine. The episodes are superb. They’re tailored to provide a complete, compelling mystery in just about twenty minutes.

Next come three episodes of The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which isn’t to be confused with the BBC Radio series of the same name. This stars John Patrick Lowrie as Holmes and Lawrence Albert as Watson. I’d listened to one of these before and hadn’t thought much of it. However, I did enjoy these. While they’re not the greatest of the Holmes pastiches, and a few of the British accents are a bit iffy, the stories do have a Doyle-esque feel to them. While I wouldn’t consider them in the same league as Big Finish’s or the BBC interpretations, it’s better than the 1947-49 radio version with John Stanley. If you enjoyed that take, you’ll enjoy this one as well.

Following that, we’re treated to two episodes of The Adventures of Dameron, which I was happy about.  Dameron was French’s first radio detective. The episodes in this set aired in 1972 and were set in contemporary times. Dameron (Robert E. Lee Hardwick) is a freelance troubleshooter who takes on all sorts of cases. He’s like a 1970s Frank Race, though generally with better production quality. There’s a dearth of 1970s radio detectives, so the two in this set are a definite treat.  We also get to hear actress Pat French, who later played the role of Harry Nile’s secretary and partner, Murphy.

We further get two episodes of Mr. Darnborough Investigates, starring David Natalie. These are cozy mysteries made in 2005 and 2015, but they could have been done in the Golden Age of Radio or over the BBC in the 1940s. Darnsborough is a gentleman detective who calls to mind Campion and Lord Peter Wimsey. If you enjoy those characters, you’ll like Darnsborough.

Then we get a couple episodes of Kerides the Thinker. This series has a different setting for a mystery series: third century BC Alexandria, Egypt. Kerides (Ulrick Dihle) is a travelling Greek student who goes around solving mysteries, accompanied by Adria, a former slave girl (Sarah Schenkkhan), who was freed after Kerides revealed her former master is a murderer. On one hand, I love the idea for the setting and it’s clear that the writers did their homework. On the other hand, the mysteries are so-so and the way Adria is written makes her seem insufferably whiny and unpleasant. Instead of being grateful for her freedom, she’s upset that she has lost her place in the world and has no idea what to do. It’s an interesting concept, but the way it’s realized doesn’t quite work for me.

Next up are three episodes of Kincaid, the Strange Seeker, starring Terry Rose. This one is a series about a TV reporter who investigates mysteries that always have a supernatural cause, such as bank robberies that turn out to be done by ghosts. I’m not a fan of supernatural mysteries, and I also wasn’t sure how to feel about these episodes. They aren’t scary and they don’t have a Twilight Zone-style twist. The stories seem off-the-wall more than anything else. In addition, I was bothered by how Kincaid gets hit with unwarranted skepticism despite a solid track record. Other than that, the production values are still good. This just wasn’t my thing.

Following this, we’re given three episodes of Raffles, the Gentleman Thief, starring John Armstrong. These are based on the character of A.J. Raffles, a brilliant gentleman thief created by E.W. Hornung.  These were popular in their time but have faded from public consciousness.  The adaptation does a good job of capturing the spirit of the original stories with good acting and good effects. The first two episodes are adaptations of Hornung’s original stories and the third is a solid pastiche. I’m not a huge fan of Raffles, but I could appreciate the way they handled the character. My only complaint is that Raffles, particularly as portrayed in these stories, isn’t an investigator of any sort, but plenty of people who enjoy detective fiction love Raffles. If you do, you will enjoy these stories.

Then we have the Hilary Caine Mysteries, which is my second favorite thing that Jim French Productions put out. It features Australian actress Karen Heaven as Hilary Caine, an on-staff “girl detective” for the British Tittle-Tattle Magazine. The series is set in the 1930s and finds Hilary stumbling into a crime scene being investigated by Inspector Finn (Randy Hoffmeyer). At first, she seems to be a bit silly, but ultimately she shows her cunning in solving the case. These are fun, light mysteries and Heaven is wonderful in the role of Hilary Caine.

The collection rounds up with two episodes (including one double-length episode) of the Anthony Rathe Chronicles, which is a modern British drama that follows the career of a guilt-ridden attorney who solves crimes to atone for a case he got wrong. It definitely has a modern BBC feel. It’s a bit soapy for my tastes, but the mysteries are well-written.

Overall, this was a fun mix of programs. While I liked some more than others, it was interesting to hear or re-listen to such a variety of detectives. It’s great to have a chance to appreciate all the audio dramas Jim French put out over nearly half a century, when most people thought audio drama was a thing of the past. I also think the success of this set may help Radio Spirits determine whether they release larger sets for Jim French series outside of the quite popular Harry Nile and Sherlock Holmes series.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0

Golden Age Article

Eight Old Time Radio Podcast Episodes for Baseball Fans

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As the World Series between the Yankees and the Dodgers starts this weekend, I thought it’d be appropriate to share some baseball podcast episodes I’ve recorded for your listening pleasure. We’ve done A LOT of baseball-themed or baseball-linked programs over the past sixteen years. Detectives such as The Saint, Bulldog Drummond, and Boston Blackie have all had baseball-related capers. So this is not an exhaustive list by any means.

Snacks:

My latest podcast, the Old Time Radio Snack Wagon, features bite-sized podcast episodes and we’ve already featured some baseball-related snacks.

Of course, we’ve featured Abbott and Costello performing their famous “Who’s on First” sketch.

Then, we also played an episode of The Adventures of Babe Ruth, a series dedicated to the most iconic player who ever lived. A man so larger-than-life that he inspired this series of fictitious and fictionalized adventures.

Most recently, we featured a rare 1947 interview of the Yankee Clipper, Joe DiMaggio, by a group of teenage baseball players from New York’s Police Athletic League.

Detective Stories:

In the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio, the number of episodes that have some baseball tie-in is quite high. However, not every episode features a Baseball Hall-of-Famer, and in honor of both of this year’s World Series teams, we have shows featuring both a Yankee and a Dodger Hall-of-Famer.

In “The World Series Crime,” Ellery Queen is called in to find a star baseball player’s lucky bat before the start of a World Series game. Ellery Queen featured a panel of “armchair detectives” who would hear all the evidence that Ellery was provided and then guess at the solution before the radio audience was told who did it. One of the armchair detectives was Yankee second baseman and reigning American League MVP Joe Gordon. Gordon would go on in a few weeks to win the actual World Series that year.

Of course, Gordon didn’t act in the radio play. However, Dodgers legend Jackie Robinson did make a radio acting appearance in an episode of The Adventures of the Abbotts, in which Pat Abbott tries to solve the murder of a baseball catcher.

Of course, if you don’t care about Hall-of-Famers or your traditional baseball detective boilerplate stories, you might want to check out one of my favorite oddball episodes. It’s the only surviving episode of the New York anthology series The WOR Summer Playhouse. It’s a little story entitled “The Mystery Of The Perfect Throw From Left Field And The Conga Dancer’s Aunt.” It’s a quirky story about a part-time “clownpire” who can also play detective (and don’t even start to ask him about his day job).

Miscellaneous Baseball Old Time Radio

During the spring of 2020, when the Major League Baseball season was on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I did my bit to alleviate baseball fans’ hunger with a six-week mini-series. I’ll highlight three of these.

Gary Cooper stars in The Lux Radio Theater adaptation of his classic film Pride of the Yankees, where he plays all-time baseball great Lou Gehrig, whose greatness on the diamond was only matched by his courage and class in dealing with the tragedy that ended his baseball career and would eventually cost him his life.

Destination Freedom was a Chicago-based Golden Age radio series that told the stories of Black Americans. In “The Ballad of Satchel Paige,” the series tells the story of one of the game’s all-time greats and larger-than-life figures with appropriately epic musical accompaniment.

Finally, a bit further removed from reality is the X Minus One story “Martin Sam.”  Now, X Minus One isn’t alone in imagining sci-fi baseball. In the 1990s, I watched Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which often came back to the game, with it even being played on the Holodek. The Klingons, Bajorans, and Ferengi were similar enough to humans that they could easily play the game. However, Martian Sam asks what if we encountered an alien completely different from us, and he wanted to play baseball, and it was impossible for humans to beat him.

Conclusion

Whether you’re wanting to hear the voice of one of the game’s greats, relive a great story or hear a far-out adventure involving a Conga Dancer or an alien from outer space, I hope you’ll find these enjoyable listens, either in between games or when you get hungry for baseball in that long season when true fans are waiting for pitchers and catchers to report to spring training.

Audio Drama Review, Golden Age Article

Audio Drama Review: The Death and Life of River Song

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Solving a mystery is hard. It’s even harder if you’re trying to do it on an Earth nearing an apocalypse. It’s particularly challenging if you’ve been dead for thousands of years. However, Professor River Song (Alex Kingston) has to do just that to return to her family and a happy electronic afterlife in the first box set, “Last Words”, for her new Doctor Who spin-off series from Big Finish Production, The Life and Death of River Song.

Background

For the uninitiated, or even those who only saw Doctor Who on television, some explanation is in order. River Song was introduced as a character in the fourth series of Doctor Who in 2008 in the two-part story, The Silence in the Library andForest of the Dead. She and the Doctor arrive at a mysteriously abandoned library planet. She knows who the Doctor (David Tennant) is but he doesn’t recognize her. The Doctor is a time traveler and she’d met him in his future and they’d had a life of adventures together and (it’ll eventually be revealed) she had married the Doctor. These adventures would play out onscreen during the tenure of Tennant’s successors, Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi.

In her first adventure on-screen, she dies heroically saving the Doctor. However, in last dramatic scene, the Doctor is able to save her data pattern and mental essence onto the library’s massive cloud, along with all the friends she had with her when they came to the Library, giving her a happy digital afterlife.

Of course, her further on-screen adventures add depth to her backstory. They also establish that she operated as a private eye during the 1930s, using the name Melody Malone.

In addition to her on-screen work, Kingston appears in twelve series’ worth of box sets in her previous series, The Diaries of River Song, as well as making guest appearances in numerous Big Finish Doctor Who audio series. None of these extra adventures are necessary to understand this set story, which occurrs after her time being stored in the library.

The Set-Up

It’s the distant future and apocalyptic solar flares are threatening to devastate Earth and its terrestrial-bound inhabitants, who long ago abandoned space travel. A multi-billionaire mogul (Greg Wise) has a bunker and plans to remake the world in his own image once the dust settles. But there’s a fly in the ointment, and mysterious forces could undermine his plans. To get to the bottom of this, he needs help. He acquires the library where River’s essence is housed and extracts that essence into a cloned body – a decaying cloned body.

He tasks River with finding a missing scientist who is the key to the whole conspiracy. If she helps him, she’ll get placed back in the library. If she doesn’t, she’ll die and be forever separated from her family. River thus finds herself alone, in an apocalyptic world of failing technologies and a doomed humanity. Her life depends on her uncovering a dangerous secret that people will kill to keep her from discovering.

Review

This isn’t the first time River Song has played detective (see my review of Series 7 of The Diary of River Song) but this story is different in that the entire four-hour box set tells a single story, a single apocalyptic mystery adventure. While the chapters have different titles, this is mostly a continual stream of the same story. Only the second chapter, “Fate and Fatality”, could be said to be set apart, as some listeners might be confused by River Song apparently being in a regency historical. But really it’s all the same piece.

What we’re given is a complex and well-developed plot that blends the detective and mystery genres seamlessly into the apocalyptic setting. The result is a thoroughly engaging bit of techno-noir within the frame of the Doctor Who universe.

As usual, Big Finish provides a solid cast of regulars from the British acting community with solid performances all around. Greg Wise is appropriately sinister as the ruthless billionaire. Jamie Parker does a great job playing a complex character whose morality and motives remain a mystery until the final chapter.

It’s Kingston who puts in the best performance. Writer Rob Valentine had been under the impression that this would be the last River Song story and wrote it accordingly. In the midst of the mystery and high-speed chases, Valentine shows sensitivity in exploring River as a character with emotional beats as she deals with living in a world without her husband or her library family. However, Valentine avoids making this a navel-gazing production by letting River Song’s actions show who she is more than her words.

Overall Thoughts:

It’s tough to make a four-hour full-cast audio drama work. But Big Finish nailed it. Last Words offers an engaging mystery, sci-fi action, a few laughs, and some beautifully played emotional moments that make this one of the best Big Finish releases of the year, and one of Kingston’s strongest performances.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0

The Death and the Life of River Song: Last Words is available exclusively through BigFinish.com through the end of the month

Audio Drama Review, Golden Age Article

Audio Drama Review: Perry Mason: The Case of the Lucky Legs

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A version of this article appeared in 2011.

Colonial Theatre released the third of its Perry Mason audio dramas, “The Case of the Lucky Legs.”  As with the first two, this is an audio drama based on the original Perry Mason novels of the 1930s, but produced in the 21st Century.

Perry Mason is retained initially to take legal action against a beauty contest promoter who cheated small-town businessmen and a local young woman by promising her stardom as the winner of a Lucky Legs contest and then leaving her high and dry in Hollywood. When Perry goes to have a discussion with the con man, he finds the man murdered.

Perry finds himself dodging the police until he can find the truth, questioning the witnesses, all while not even sure who the client is, as the man who gave a retainer for $5,000 to file the lawsuit keeps changing who Perry is supposed to represent.

The recording is quite a bit shorter than the previous Perry Mason stories that Colonial Theater had done and the length works for this story. It really creates a very tight and well-paced mystery. The plot is full of twists and surprises. At one point, Perry even hires another detective agency to spy on Paul Drake’s operative, only it turns out they are working for the man who paid him.

If there is one criticism I have for the production, it is that role of the winner of the Lucky Legs contest had a voice that didn’t fit the part. She sounded more like 14 rather than 21.  Still, that’s a minor flaw in a brilliant production.

Rating: 4.25 out of 5

Book Review, Golden Age Article

Book Review: Bulldog Drummond

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H.C. McNeile’s novel Bulldog Drummond (originally Bull-dog Drummond) successfully re-introduced the character of Hugh Drummond to the world (following a little-regarded short story in The Strand in which Drummond was a policeman). In the novel, Drummond is a veteran officer of the First World War who finds himself bored with peacetime living. He puts an ad in the London Times advertising for adventure and gets it when a young woman’s concern about his father’s business acquaintances puts Drummond up against a dangerous of ruthless gang of international conspirators.

Bulldog Drummond fits into a continuity of adventure and mystery literature. The catch-and-release game that Drummond and his foes play calls to mind books like The Lone Wolf and its protagonist, Michael Lanyard, a well as many other adventure books of the era. The concern about sensational conspiracies threatening civilization originated from Anarchist activity prior to World War I, the war itself, and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. A shadowy conspiracy overthrowing the established fo made for a good villain. It also called to mind several later works. Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence would use a similar newspaper ad to find adventure in The Secret Adversary two years later. While reading about Drummond’s escapades and the activities of the men who joined him, I couldn’t help but be reminded of The Saint novels by Leslie Charteris.

What sets Bulldog Drummond apart is the titular character. Drummond is unusual in that one of his most noted characteristics was that he was utterly unattractive. (This was an element that films forgot when casting actors like Ray Milland to play him.) The other key point is that Bulldog Drummond came out in an era when many literary adventurers were various shades of gray with criminals and ex-criminals like Boston Blackie, The Saint, and the Lone Wolf. By contrast, Drummond is a heroic figure, whose decision to delay involving the law reflects honor and love, not attempts to acquire boodle. Drummond is proficient and resourceful, but no genius, which means the spots he gets himself into believable and relatable.

Drummond comes off as a simple, likable hero. He defends the world from forces that seek to overthrow it, not because he believes in the status quo, but because he thinks that evolution, rather than revolution, is key to solving society’s ills.

Beyond that, Bulldog Drummond is a good solid mystery adventure story. If you enjoyed the other stories I’ve mentioned and are in the mood for something fun that’s similar to those, this is worth checking out.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Bulldog Drummond is in the Public Domain and can be read for Free at Project Gutenberg

Golden Age Article, Telefilm Review

Telefilm Review: Gabriel’s Fire: Pilot

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As I was researching the career of James Earl Jones, I found out he had a detective series from 1990-91 called Gabriel’s Fire. The series has not been officially released on DVD but the pilot has been posted on YouTube.

Gabriel Bird (James Earl Jones) is an ex-cop serving a life sentence for murder. A friend is murdered in the prison yard and his friend’s lawyer Victoria Heller (Laila Robins) wants Bird’s help to find the killer, but Bird refuses to cooperate. She decides she wants his cooperation and so sets out to have him freed from prison and gets his two-decade-old murder conviction thrown out on a technicality.

If Heller getting Bird released from prison and getting a murder conviction thrown out without his cooperation is so uncomplicated (compared to actual cases) that it calls to mind comedian Ryan’s George’s catchphrase, “super easy, barely an inconvenience,” Bird’s reaction is much more grounded. While Heller had hoped for gratitude and for Gabriel to agree to help her investigation, what she gets is anger from a man who had long ago given up hope of getting out, and now has to cope with an unfamiliar world he isn’t ready for.

Jones is compelling throughout the episode, capturing the range of emotions of a man who has forgotten what it’s like to be on the outside and is unsure of his place of the world, plagued by his own feelings of guilt, and his fear of being abandoned and forgotten. He’s a man in his 50s who’s trying to figure out who he is. It’s a difficult process, but with some highlights. One of the best scenes is shortly after his release, when he orders a hot dog. It’s a simple scene that shows Jones’s superb talent.

Beyond establishing Bird as a character, and also establishing some plot points that could be addressed in the series proper (his missing ex-wife and daughter, and the police having it in for him), the episode spends most of its time with Bird in the stage of “rejecting the call to adventure,” a stage of the hero’s journey. When he does finally take the case, he manages to solve it within minutes of screen time. The pilot probably would have benefitted from being TV movie length. Still, for as quick as the resolution was, it was still dramatically satisfying and moved Bird’s character forward.

All in all, it was a fascinating hour of television that left me eager to view more. It’s easy to see that Jones won an Emmy for his work on the series. I really hope that rights holders will make this series available on streaming or DVD.

Rating: 4 out of 5