Continued from Part Two

As television rose, radio drama declined. The year 1951 saw the first time television advertising revenues surpassed those of radio. This led to rising budgets for television and falling budgets for radio. On radio, the big stars’ appearances became less and less frequent. Radio’s most talented writers began writing for television, often pulling out old radio scripts, dusting them off, and rewriting them for television.

The budget cuts showed up in music. As television rose, some programs saved money by switching from orchestral scores to organ scores. NBC saved money in the early-to-mid 1950s by using the same musical bridges on nearly all of their dramatic programs. Radio appearances by big stars on programs such as Suspense became rarer as the decade went on. The quality of films getting adaptations on the Lux Radio Theater declined as well.

A vicious cycle emerged. Declining budgets led to declining quality of on-air programs which led to further declines in listenership which led to budget cuts which led to declining production quality, which led to more declines in listenership which led to more budget cuts

Radio did have one last great moment of major pop culture influence. In 1953, the series Gunsmoke appeared and began a major trend: the adult western program. Westerns had a place on radio since the 1930s. However, Gunsmoke dealt with more mature themes and featured rich, well-developed characters. The series would run for eight years and spark a revolution on radio and television that would carry over into the 1950s.

Gunsmoke would make the jump to television but not with the radio version of Marshall Matt Dillon. The character was played by William Conrad, who was viewed as too fat for the role. The role went to James Arness, who would do a superb job. However, Conrad being left in the lurch was a reminder that television was a far more shallow medium than radio.

Quite a few TV shows attempted to continue to air separate radio episodes. It was a win for the networks who saw having separate radio and television programs as an opportunity to cross-promote. For the actors, it meant more money. Yet for most shows, it began to make less sense with declines in radio listenership reduced the amount of the revenue, and the burnout that comes with doing the same thing repeatedly took a tool. Ozzie and Nelson record thirty-nine episodes on television and another thirty-nine on radio, Dragnet recorded fifty-two on radio. At some point, it began to not make sense for TV successes to hang around radio.

1955 saw some major departures: Jack Benny and Bob Hope left radio along with Dragnet and the Lux Radio Theater. Beloved programs were leaving in droves, yet radio drama would survive until the 1960s.

How Network Radio Drama Survived the 1950s

Among fans of the golden age of radio, by far, the most beloved radio programs of this era came from CBS. While the big stars became scarce on radio, CBS was buoyed by a de facto radio repertory theater where the same actors appeared over and over again in CBS various radio productions. Actors like Virginia Gregg, Parley Baer, Peggy Webber, and John Dehner were the backbone of CBS’s Hollywood radio output of the late 1950s. None would be famous, but each were talented and performed with thousands of radio appearances under their belt. That sort of talent and competence kept radio interesting.

Their work could be heard in CBS’s surviving anthology programs: Suspense and Romance. In addition, they appeared in the CBS Radio Workshop, an experimental program that harkened back to the groundbreaking Columbia workshop of the late 1940s and 1950s.

Outside of this, CBS maintained many soap operas and launched a new one, The Couple Next Door, in 1957. Several Westerns also aired during this period, including Gunsmoke. In a reversal of adapting radio shows to television, CBS launched a radio version of its western TV Show Have Gun, Will Travel with Dehner as the lead.

The big surprise during this era was Yours Truly Johnny Dollar. The series had run from 1949-54 with three different actors playing the lead over the course of more than 200 episodes. However, CBS wanted to bring the show back as a serialized version with stories told in 15-minute segments Monday-Friday. Bob Bailey was cast as the new Johnny Dollar. The serialized episodes often expanded upon previous half an hour stand-alone detective scripts or combined concepts from multiple scripts. In 1956, the series continued on as a half-hour program. (For more on the Johnny Dollar in this era, see my recent article on the top five detective dramas of the declining years of the golden age of radio.)

NBC also contributed to this era, starting with its Monitor series, a weekend-long block of a variety of radio programs. This included occasional bits of vintage radio, most notably five-minute episodes of Fibber McGee and Molly.

However, NBC’s greatest contribution to this era came in April 1955 when they launched a science fiction series called X Minus One. The series ran only seven weeks and advised listeners if they wanted to continue hearing the program to write in. That says a lot about the reluctance of Network radio to go into Science Fiction. However, luckily for science fiction fans, interest was high and the series returned to radio and continued to air until New Year’s 1958. It adapted the works of great science fiction authors like Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov. It would be re-aired as part of NBC’s Monitor series through the 1970s and there would be a brief attempt to revive the series with new episodes.

Another Science Fiction anthology series began to air over Mutual called Exploring Tomorrow, which aired for 55 weeks twice a week from December 1957-December 1958. It also adapted a similar high quality number of stories. It’s not as well-remembered as X Minus One. The production is hurt by the fact circulating examples of the series have much poorer sound quality than X Minus One and there are far less of them.

Mutual continued to try to be competitive in the world of radio drama into the late 1950s. It became the new home of the long-running radio hit Counterspy and also brought over Gangbusters and another Philip H. Lords program Treasury Agent. They also launched programs of their own, but few of them are in circulation among listeners.

ABC also aired a program called Police Blotter at least into 1957.

However, by 1960, except for an occasional bit of radio drama on Monitor, the sole home of mainstream network radio drama was CBS. On Yours Truly Johnny Dollar on September 25, 1960, the show featured an episode “The Five Down Matter.” The episode celebrated five years of the series revival and continuance. At the height of the golden age, anniversaries or episode milestones passed without notice, or perhaps just a comment after the episode. However, surviving five years when great programs were failing deserved celebrated. Johnny Dollar featured Bailey and all of the most memorable supporting characters from his five-year run.

Five weeks later, Bailey’s run on the show came to a sudden and unceremonious end without on-air acknowledgment. The series moved to New York without either Bailey or the supporting cast.

November 1960 would be brutal. CBS canceled nearly every remaining radio drama. It gave the remaining soap operas a month to wrap up their storylines. It canceled the radio version of Have Gun, Will Travel. After that November, all that remained on the radio was Gunsmoke and Yours Truly Johnny Dollar. 

The Golden Age of Radio’s Final Months

Yours Truly Johnny Dollar acclimated to New York with an entirely different feel to the series and Bob Readick in the lead. In June 1961, CBS radio line-up had one last shake-up. Gunsmoke ended and Suspense returned to the air in New York. This meant all of CBS’ radio operations would be centered in New York and would rely upon actors it worked with on its daytime soap operas. Mandel Kramer, a veteran radio actor, and a supporting character on the TV soap Edge of Night became the last actor to play Johnny Dollar.

For the next 15 months, both programs carried on as best they could. However, on September 30, 1962, both programs aired their last episode on a day that is considered the end of the Golden Age of Radio. But what exactly ended? And how has the legacy of the Golden Age of radio endured since?

We’ll talk about that in our next installment.

Caroline Crompton, host of the Shedunnit podcast, was the guest on BBC Radio 4 Extra’s Podcast Radio Hour on an episode where the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio was recommended. She noted that many people didn’t think of America as having an audio drama tradition like the British do.

The British tradition of audio drama as embodied in BBC Radio productions is a storied history of prestigious productions. The works of great authors, both past and present are reflected in the adaptations. In addition, the BBC also produces original comedies and dramas. It’s known for great sitcoms like The Navy Lark as well as bringing radio adaptations of popular television programs including Yes, Minister, Dad’s Army, and Steptoe and Son as well as the original mystery series Paul Temple. These productions feature some of the greatest radio actors of their time. Legends like Derek Jacobi, John Hurt, and Julie McKenzie have all made their appearances in BBC Radio Four productions, as well as current stars like David Tennant, Martin Freeman, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Hayley Atwell.

In addition to BBC, there are also independent audio production companies like Big Finish which have put out a prodigious amount of high-quality audio dramas.

The American tradition is different. It’s a long, complicated story with many twists, turns, and aspects. While many British people don’t think Americans have a heritage of audio drama, there’s plenty of misunderstanding on this side of the pond, too. Some Americans don’t know about it. Others think the last day of the golden age of radio in the United States was the day the audio drama died, despite all the other countries in the world that never stopped making it. The idea America ever completely stopped putting out radio dramas is inaccurate, too.

So my next few articles will talk about that tradition. Note I’m not trying to tell an exhaustive history. Rather, our focus is going to be on the major events, programs, and milestones in American radio drama. We’ll start with the era known as the golden age of radio that effectively began in the late 1920s and carried through until 1962.

The Golden Age of Radio and It’s Milestone Programs:

Books stretching into the thousands of pages have been written on the history of the golden age of radio. My aim here is a relatively quick summary, so I’m going to limit my discussion to a few key programs and events.

In the late 1920s and early 1940s, America’s radio networks began to form. There was CBS, Mutual, and NBC Red and Blue Networks. The NBC Blue Network would later be sold off and become an Independent entity now named ABC.

The expansion of radio represented a gold rush opportunity for entertainers. Programs would appear across the four networks. In addition, several programs were sold as first-run syndications to Independent radio stations as well as network affiliates to air at times when network programming wasn’t playing.

The first programs to gain popularity were serialized programs. Cecil and Sally, Amos ‘n Andy, Lum and Abner, and Vic and Sade would become fixtures on American radio as serialized comedy. Regular soap operas like The Goldbergs, One Man’s Family, and Ma Perkins became daytime mainstays that outlasted many other programs.

Rudy Vallee’s Fleishman’s Yeast Hour began in 1929 became the first great musical variety program on radio. The series mixed music, comedy, slice of life interviews, short dramas, and comedy sketches. The show made stars of many guests, most notable ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy. Jack Benny had his first broadcast in 1932 and eventually became radio’s most popular comedy program, often featuring parodies. Benny and fellow Comedian Fred Allen thrived on a long-running “feud” that enriched both of their careers. Not only did Benny succeed, but Dennis Day and Phil Harris starred in it. Another co-star, Eddie Anderson, became one of the most well-known performers of the time.

Lux Radio Theater came to the air in 1934. It began as a series based in New York that provided hour-long dramatizations of Broadway plays. The series moved to Hollywood in 1936 and began adapting movies to radio, often with members of the film cast reprising their original roles. The series became a massive hit and spawned several other movie adapting series, the longest lasting of which was the Screen Guild Theater.

Fibber McGee and Molly starring real-life husband and wife Jim and Marion Jordan hit the air in 1935 and would evolve into one of radio’s most beloved and successful sitcoms, spinning off two other series: The Great Gildersleeve and Beulah. 

In January 1936, Gangbusters came to the air and became a sensation in the world of crime drama. It’s violent opening and it’s tales of notorious criminals (often told over multiple weeks) made it massively popular listening for years.

Orson Welles made his mark on radio. His career began with a 7-part adaptation of Les Misérables for CBS. Then, he became the uncredited voice of The Shadow. However, he’d make his most famous mark on radio when he took to the air with the Mercury Theater. The plays were evocatively told, often in experimental ways. The most noted of these is the “War of the Worlds” broadcast, which was staged as a newscast and led to a national panic. Even though Wells would have a prolific career and make one of the greatest films of all time in Citizen Kane, that radio play is his best-known work.

As War came to the Earth, radio also focused on its greatest writers. Arch Oboler could write great plays about the typical human condition. However, he was also well-known as the writer of the horror series Lights Out. Many of his wartime plays include elements of the imaginative or supernatural, such as a woman who finds Adolf Hitler suddenly a passenger in her car. Norman Corwin was radio’s poet laureate. He was capable of writing delightful surreal stories like “The Undecided Molecule”  and “The Plot to Overthrow Christmas.” Yet at the same time, that poetic force could be turned on European fascists or used to solemnly commemorate the end of the war. These two writers were stand-out eloquent voices who told evocative stories that captured the feeling of the age in unforgettable ways.

In 1942,CBS launched a new anthology series called Suspense. Each episode was “well-calculated to keep you in suspense.” The genre of the episodes would vary. The stories could have elements of mystery, horror, the supernatural, adventure, and some could be considered Science Fiction. The series ran for twenty years and had numerous showrunners who had their own ideas of what a Suspense episode would like. The series became popular with the general public, and also with Hollywood actors. At the peak of the show’s success, Hollywood greats like Jimmy Stewart, Humphrey Bogart, or Lucille Ball were often the series guest stars. Often guest stars acted against their typical type. For example, Jim and Marion Jordan appeared outside their Fibber McGee and Molly guise in a serious role. The series produced its most famous episode when Agnes Moorhead provided the principal voice performance in the classic play, “Sorry, Wrong Number.” The episode was performed eight times on the series and adapted into a major motion picture.

After the War, the hard-boiled radio private eye began to proliferate. The hard-boiled private eyes tended to be involved in more violence than the traditional programs, both on the giving and receiving ends. Dick Powell’s Rogue’s Gallery was the first of the number and a key plot point involved him being knocked so senseless each week that he had a conversation with his alter ego. In addition, there was also a unique style of hard-boiled dialogue and narration that has endured as a staple of the genre. The most famous and iconic of the lot was The Adventures of Sam Spade starring Howard Duff. Hard-boiled private eyes proliferated all four networks and the trend didn’t begin to taper off until the mid-1950s.

Many American police officers bristled at their portrayals in Golden Age radio in detective dramas: from comedic characters with painfully stereotyped accents to clueless simpletons who needed the help of brilliant detectives to figure out how to perform even rudimentary functions of crime detection to brutes who smacked around detective heroes and forced them to solve the crime for them on pains of being sent to the gas chamber and executed for a crime they didn’t commit. The portrayal of police departments and their operations were so unrealistic, as far as real police detectives were concerned, the stories might as well be set in another universe.

A police sergeant who was a technical adviser on the film He Walked by Night discovered Jack Webb, a supporting actor in the film, had played radio private eyes and griped at length. He asked why a radio series wasn’t made portraying how police really did their jobs. The idea came back to Webb in 1949 when his radio series was set to go on hiatus and he needed to find a way to support himself and his pregnant wife during the summer. He pitched NBC on a series of realistic police dramas, and it was greenlit as a summer replacement. Dragnet became one of radio’s iconic hit programs. Webb was not only the show’s star but it’s director and was dedicated to making it as realistic as possible. He used unheard-of sound effects men to create a sound and feel for Dragnet that was years ahead of its time. Just as the success of Sam Spade had led networks to rush out their own private detective programs, the success of Dragnet had every other network making realistic police dramas and served as a major evolution of crime dramas in the United States.

As the 1950s began, American radio was a massive force in American culture. It featured numerous dramatic anthologies that adapted movies, great works of fiction, as well as those told original tales. It boasted America’s finest comics and numerous situation comedies. It also featured a great deal of culturally significant programs about history and literature. It features programs made for men, women, and children. As America entered the 1950s, radio was king. Yet, radio was living on borrowed time and it’s reign would come to an end early in the next decade.

I’ve experienced a lot of mysteries. I’ve listened to thousands of mystery plays and watched hundreds of hours of mystery TV shows and movies, and read a lot of mystery novels and short stories. With all those mysteries under my belt, I’ve noticed some popular tropes or plot points that often are silly and don’t make sense. Most of these can be used effectively if done right, but they so rarely are.

4) The Dying Clue

You’ve been shot, poisoned, or knifed. You have seconds to live and you know who your murderer is and want to reveal who murdered you, so you leave a dying clue.

Dying clues get silly when they get complicated. The dying person may have 20-30 seconds to leave a clue. They don’t have time to develop a complex cipher based on objects on their desk or develop codes. Sometimes the writer knows they’re being absurd and will write an excuse for their overly complicated last clues. “She loved puzzles,” they write as an explanation for why the victim left behind a clue requiring knowledge of proper verb tenses in Swahili and popular Elizabethan riddles. (I exaggerate slightly.) These seem to be ways writers show their cleverness but I have yet to see a dying clue that was more clever than it was ridiculous.

Better Ways to Do It:

Keeping the dying clue simple is a good idea in theory but if it’s too simple, you don’t have much of a mystery. I like the idea of an unfinished dying clue that’s puzzling because the victim couldn’t finish it before expiring.

Another great idea is to make the dying clue a distraction. For example, sometimes the killer will fake a dying clue to implicate someone else. Or it might be possible the victim thinks they know who the killer is but don’t, or imagine someone who hates another person so much they would rather that person suffer than their actual murderer be found.

3) Witness Getting Killed Before They Can Talk to the Detective

The detective takes a phone call from a witness.

The witness cries out. “I know who did it and I’ll tell you everything.”

“Who was it?”

“Not over the phone. Meet me in an hour at the old, poorly lit warehouse with no street lights where the killer could come up from behind me, murder me, get my body out of sight, and get away with no possibility of any direct witnesses.”

The detective says, “See you then,” before hanging up the phone.

Of course, the detective finds the witness murdered but maybe a clue that will point him towards the culprit.

This should not be confused with the witness about to reveal everything right away and then they’re shot. That builds suspense. It annoys the audience but the writer has to have their fun.

The problem with the, “Meet me and I’ll tell you who did it.” trope is it makes the detective into something of a sap. I used this once in my novel Slime Incorporated, but this was my hero’s first murder mystery. However, I’ve read characters who have appeared across multiple novels and/or TV episodes who have lost a witness that way before and agree to it anyway without batting an eye, which makes them thick and foolish. Plus everyone expects it’s coming.

Better Ways to Do It:

The detective should have enough sense to try and dissuade their witness from making such an obvious mistake. Maybe they try to get them to stay where they’re at or to meet them near a public place or to tell them over the phone. If the writer needs to kill off the witness, it can be despite the detective’s best efforts, not because the detective didn’t remember the last time a witness was gunned down in a hail of bullets.

Also, misdirection can work here. One of my favorite alternatives is to have the witness survive and turn out to be the murderer deflecting suspicion by looking like a potential target.

2) Rube Goldberg Murder Methods

Murders are generally performed through a variety of very basic methods. However, for a certain type of writer, it’s often occurred to make murder methods as complex as possible, involving elaborate and impractical mechanisms. Many of these elaborate approaches are so complicated a minor mistake can foil them or can kill someone else, leaving the intended victim alive. While I think Raymond Chandler’s critique of some puzzle mystery was a bit broad in his famous essay “The Simple Art of Murder,” he does hit the nail on the head when it comes to such overly complex schemes:

they do not really come off intellectually as problems, and they do not come off artistically as fiction. They are too contrived, and too little aware of what goes on in the world. They try to be honest, but honesty is an art. The poor writer is dishonest without knowing it, and the fairly good one can be dishonest because he doesn’t know what to be honest about. He thinks a complicated murder scheme which baffles the lazy reader, who won’t be bothered itemizing the details, will also baffle the police, whose business is with details. The boys with their feet on the desks know that the easiest murder case in the world to break is the one somebody tried to get very cute with; the one that really bothers them is the e murder somebody only thought of two minutes before he pulled it off.

Better Ways to Do It:

There has to be a good, believable reason for why the murder was complex. There should be a reason why the murderer chose an elaborate plot involving the shipping of Russian dolls, a hijacking, sabotaging a Toyota dealership, and the end result being a poisoned postcard sent to the intended victim when they could have just shot them. The TV series Monk usually did a good job justifying its outlandish and complicated plots. The episode Mr. Monk and the Sleeping Suspect is a great example.

Sometimes a character can justify the elaborate murder plot. Many episodes of Columbo featured plots that were elaborate and impractical. However, the series got away with it because the over-the-top methods spoke to an overly confident, arrogant killer who believed he was smarter than anyone.

1) Night Club Photographers Must Die

In these stories, the detective discovers someone was murdered to suppress a picture taken by a night club photographer or the like. Why? To hide someone who was in the background (such as a mob boss.) This was done way too much in older TV, movies, and radio programs.

The criminal is scared of the photo being found and implicating them in a crime. So to avoid being recognized in a random photo, they leave a string of bodies about that will draw the entire police force onto their trail, as well as any heroic private operatives. It’s the silliest idea any criminal could have. In reality, 999 times out of 1000, the nightclub photo will get shoved in a purse or box for decades and looked at rarely. Any of us could have organized crime figures waltzing around in the background of pictures we had randomly taken and we’d be none the wiser.

This applies to vintage mysteries. In the modern era, many individuals (whether employed by law enforcement or freelancing) do a search through photos posted online in hopes of finding clues to crimes. So criminals would have a motive to stop someone who got them in the background, but it’s difficult to suppress digital photos. A desperate criminal might kill a photographer, grab their phone, and run over it with a car within a minute of the photo being taken and still have the incriminating photos already uploaded to the Internet, where they will garner attention from law enforcement all the more after the murder.

Whether it’s the 1940s or the 2020s, it doesn’t make sense for a criminal to kill someone for taking a random photo of them, although for slightly different reasons.

Better Ways to Do It

In stories set in the past, there are many plausible fixes. For example, the photographer might be a crime buff, realize what they have, and blackmail the criminal. Or the nightclub photographer might be a disgraced photojournalist who recognizes the person in the background. And if you substitute a news photographer for a nightclub photographer, this becomes real because a photo with the suspect in the background could be seen by millions of people.

It could also work if the writer gives them a reason for it, such as an extreme phobia or psychological compulsion. Or if the decision is being governed by someone who’s got ulterior motives.

It’s harder to make it work in a modern-day setting. Every idea that came to my mind was still half-baked. My wife’s best suggestion is a revenge killing over a nude photo posted as revenge by an angry ex, which either ditches any criminals being in the background or renders this plot point only a red herring.

What are your thoughts on the silliest mystery tropes? Do you agree? Disagree? Have you seen examples of these tropes done well? Do you have other tropes you think belong in the list. Write about it in the comments.

Over the next three weeks, we’re going to count down the top five radio detective programs of three distinct eras during the Golden Age of Radio. The eras are the World War (1939-45), the Post-War (1945-51), and the Declining Years (1952-62).

From the outset, let’s keep in mind three things.

First, the rankings are based on the surviving programs. Right away, that is limiting. If we had more circulating episodes of some programs (or any episodes of programs that are completely lost), no doubt they would rank higher or might not be in the list all. But we work with what we have.

Second, there were detective programs prior to 1939. However, there’s not enough programs with a meaningful number of surviving episodes to allow for helpful comparison so we won’t be ranking them.

Third, many programs’ runs crossed multiple eras. Programs like Nick Carter, Mister Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, and Mr. and Mrs. North aired during all three eras. For the purposes of our rankings, we’ll only evaluate the program for what we have of its run during the given era. It’s also possible for a series to be ranked in more than one era.

World War II Era Rankings

While there are more recordings of programs during World War II available than pre-War, many recordings are scarce. So many series from that era are lost or have left little evidence of their existence. This is partially due to the materials used for transcription disks being important for the war effort.. Still there are enough shows that have enough information for us to compare them even if we’re only basing that comparison on a few circulating episodes.

That said, let’s get on with ranking the top 5 World War II era detective programs:

5) Mister Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons

Network: CBS

Star Bennett Kilpack

The longest-running radio detective series of all-time was in transition during the War. It was moving from being about what the title implies to solving murder cases each week. While the series has its flaws (over-the-top soap operatic acting, constantly repeating characters names), it has undeniable charm. Mister Keen is mostly true to his reputation as a “kindly investigator.” The series is fun to listen to, with reliable and lovable performances from the leads.

4) Mr. and Mrs. North

Network: NBC

Stars: Joseph Curtain and Alice Frost

When most people think of husband and wife detective teams, they think of The Thin Man. Over radio, during the War, Mr. and Mrs. North was the better series. Curtain and Frost have great performance chemistry. The scripts are witty and light. The mysteries are fun. They also have a different dynamic than other shows, where the wife was the husband’s Watson. Both Norths are capable detectives and either one can end up solving the case. It’s a fun dynamic that makes for an interesting listen.

3) The Man Called X 

Networks: CBS, Blue Network, NBC

Star Herbert Marshall

The Man Called X took its titular hero and threw him into the heart of wartime action. During the war, Ken Thurston got into all sorts of espionage mysteries, even getting into Berlin just ahead of the allies. The mysteries were well-written, with plenty of action and suspense. Comic relief was dispensed by Pegon Zellschmidt (Hans Conreid, later Leon Belasco.)

2) Nick Carter

Network: Mutual

Star: Lon Clark

Nick Carter originated as the lead character in a series of dime novels in the 1880s and had a long life in print and other media, including a three-film series starring Walter Pidgeon from 1939-41. The character’s radio program is perhaps the character’s most memorable form. Nick Carter is a master detective who has put away so many criminals it’s a lengthy task to go through even a portion of his files. The radio series had one of the most memorable openings of any program during the golden age of radio, with frantic knocking on the door. A woman answers, “What’s the matter, what is it?” A man answers, “It’s another case for Nick Carter, Master Detective!”

At a time before the coming of the hard-boiled private eye to radio, Nick Carter’s cases packed a bit more punch with more peril and excitement involved. He’d often pull off improbable escapes. They weren’t quite on the level of a 1940s Batman serial where Batman got away by pulling a full-sized acetylene torch out of his unity belt once, but they were a bit out there. The mysteries had a bit of pulp fiction flavor to them.

Carter did mostly half-hour episodes, but it also broadcast 100 serialized episodes for over twenty weeks. The series rarely touched on the War itself and provided a great diversion for folks at home.

1)The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Networks: Blue Network, Mutual

Star: Basil Rathbone

Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce had starred as Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson in two films already when they starred in the first series of New Adventures over the Blue Network in 1939. They did a total of three seasons that averaged twenty-four weeks each. Then came the Universal Sherlock Holmes features that placed Holmes and Watson in the World War II era and a new series over Mutual that would release a new episode every single week for two years. Through both networks runs, the duo performed  both works from Doyle’s original canon and added true new adventures. The tone would vary from week to week: from the comedic to the horrific and the poignant. Through it all, Rathbone and Bruce rolled with the punches and turned out solid performances each week .

Bruce not only played Holmes’ sidekick but an older Watson who had retired to America and would play host to the pitchman for whatever product was sponsoring them in a given season. It adds a nice touch of charm to a well-acted and written series worthy of the world’s greatest consulting detective.