The Hound of the Baskervilles is like the Christmas Carol. You don’t watch or listen to an adaptation to find out what happens but to see how well the creators have captured the story. Big Finish does a superb job of capturing the spirit of the Hound of the Baskervilles in a very traditionalist adaptation. Amazingly, the entire program was recorded and rehearsed in a single day.
The cast is wonderful. Richard Earl has got the part of Watson nailed and that’s vital since most of the story centers around him. John Banks and Charlie Norfolk did Yeoman’s work, playing five parts and three parts respectively. They did it so seamlessly, I didn’t know they didn’t have separate actors for each part until I listened to the Extra’s CD. Samuel Clemens is very compelling as Sir Henry Baskerville. And of course, Nicholas Briggs is great as Holmes.Of course, what makes the piece so atmospheric over audio is the sound design and music, coupled with Earl’s narration and they did an incredibly good job in post-production. It captured the spookiness and suspense of the story. Overall, Big Finish does Doyle’s most legendary story justice in a superb adaptation.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0
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Mutual Radio Theater was a 1980 series that continued the Sears Radio Theater only on a different network and with a multitude of sponsors so Sears could still advertise on him but not have to foot the whole bill. The series was an anthology with five formats. Mondays were for drama and were hosted by Lorne Greene of Bonanza, Tuesdays were for Comedy and were hosted by Andy Griffith, Wednesdays were for Mystery and were hosted by Vincent Price, Thursday was about love and human relations and it was hosted by Cicely Tyson, and Fridays were for Adventure and were hosted by Leonard Nimoy (a replacement for Richard Widmark from the Sears series.)
The set collects the first four weeks of the series or twenty episodes of about 45 minutes in length. As an overall review of the set quality, let’s just say I doubt these recordings sounded quite as good to people listening to it in 1980. The sound quality is pristine, it’s top-notch. Any complaints you have with the set can’t be due to Radio Archives.
The commercials are a real time capsule. The AT&T “Reach out and Touch Someone” commercials encouraging people to call their friends on long distance were prominent, but there were so many sponsors. Probably my favorite commercials were the country-music-style commercials for Motorcraft Parts. The Agree Shampoo commercials also aged hilariously.
But what about the stories themselves? When you’re talking about twenty stories across five genres, you get variable quality. Some are good, some are not so good. But I don’t think that does the production justice. Over the next five weeks (we’ll take Christmas off), we’re going to look at each of the twenty episodes, starting with the stories from the first week. I also note Golden Age radio stars involved in each production.
The Shopkeeper: A shopkeeper keeps two outlaws from robbing his store by using a gun hidden under his apron. The sheriff suspects he might be part of an outlaw gang about to rob a mining payroll. Golden Age Stars: Vic Perrin and Mary Jane Croft.
Review: This is a somewhat average Western story, helped by a nice bit of Suspense over who the protagonist is and what decision he’ll make. I had an inkling early on but the story does a good job throwing up red herrings. Grade: B
Our Man on Omega: A sci-fi comedy imagining a celebration of the man who made first contact with aliens, a somewhat dimwitted computer tech who connected with aliens who experienced time backward and forwards and were shaped like U.S. mailboxes. Golden Age Star: Richard Krenna
Review: This story has potential, but is mostly told through narration by our unnamed Master of Ceremonies. The story tries to get political and offers up some dull one-note villains. It’s unengaging and comes off as just a bit of silly fluff and not all that good. Grade: D
Long Distance: A man about to fly to St. Louis on business receives a warning from his aunt that it’s not safe to fly. He ignores her because she has a fear of flying. However, her call makes him late, he misses the plane, and it crashes. But that’s just the start of her warnings of doom that keep coming true. Golden Age Stars: Janet Waldo, Jerry Hausner, Bill Zuckert
Review: This is a pretty standard spooky mystery setup. The solution was obvious early on, but I think the story did a good job taking us on the journey. I also liked the main characters. This is enjoyable if somewhat predictable outing. Grade: C+
Love Conquers All: A modern British teenager falls in love with her teacher and begins to read romantic literature on how to snare him. Golden Age Stars: None
Review: I enjoyed this. The story starts off slow but develops over the course of the running. I like Cicily Tyson as the host/narrator and she’s given some good material to work with. While I initially found the teenage girl characters over-the-top, the main character became more realistic, even though she’d embraced a lot of silly ideas. I also liked the teacher. He had chastened a fellow teacher for marrying an ex-pupil but has a fondness for this teen girl. Will he hold onto his ethics or discard them? It’s an interesting story, and I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out. I was nervous it was going to go off the rails, but it didn’t.. It’s actually a lovely story that found a good way to resolve it’s issues ethically. Grade; B+
The Ship: One of the world’s biggest oil platforms is hijacked. A member of the gang convinces a naïve provisioner to supply the tanker with food in exchange for his life and a cut of the takings. Golden Age Star: John Dehner. The play stars Brock Peters, who was best known for playing Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird. Mr. Peters is best known in the audio drama world for being the radio voice of Darth Vader in NPR’s Star Wars adaptations.
Review: So far, this is the story that most easily could have been told during the golden age of radio, although probably not with an actual African character as a protagonist. Otherwise, this would have been an average episode of the radio anthology series Escape. Peters performance makes it worth listening to. Grade: C+
The War is over and young Harry Kelly is back, although his absence during his time in the military is still unexplained. The Red Panda and Flying Squirrel are now parents. With the Red Panda well into his middle-aged years, he’s looking for an exit. Could the new superhero emerging be the key to giving Toronto’s Terrific Twosome a chance to ride into the sunset?
The Tenth Season of the Red Panda Adventures (unlike the previous nine) is only six episodes long. The season deals out another run of pulp fiction adventures as the Red Panda takes on old foes and new and also manages some clean-up of all the mad science and magic running about in his world during the War. There are some really solid battles and fun adventures to be had.
Yet, the series overall theme is of transition. There’s a sense that at this stage, our heroes are being pressed to the limit of their abilities and dealing with threats that might begin to get beyond them. Emotionally, they’re ready for the exit, they just need the confidence to know the city is left in good hands. The finale of Season Ten is satisfying and makes for a good chronological close for the adventures of the Red Panda.
The season is a cumulation of years of work. Writer and star Gregg Taylor to take his characters on a journey through a heroic career from close to the start of their career to finish. The Red Panda and Flying Squirrel began their careers during the Depression at a time in real life where mystery men like the Shadow, the Green Hornet, Doc Savage, the Spider, and the Black Bat captured the public imagination. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, they began to be supplanted by the cape and costume crowd: Superman, Batman, Captain America, and Wonder Woman. The Red Panda and Flying Squirrel clearly fit into that former tradition, stayed around during the War, and chose to give way to the new generation of heroes at the end. It’s a really imaginative way to do the arc, and Taylor did a tremendous job plotting this out and also helping the characters to grow and change over the series without becoming unrecognized for who they were at the start.
While this marks the end of their chronology, with 114 half-hour episodes over the course of a career that spanned fourteen or fifteen years, there are plenty of lost opportunities for “lost stories.” And we’ll get around to reviewing many of them here eventually.
There have been multiple books as well as an American audio series from Jim French Productions released under the name, The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. This BBC version was a little late to the party airing between 2002 and 2010 on BBC Radio 4, but is certainly a memorable take.
The sixteen episodes (eapproximately 45 minutes in length) eac tell a Holmes story based on some reference in an original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story. The last story, released in 2010 was a two-episode story that harkened to a previous Further Adventure.
Each of the stories is written by Bert Coules, who does a great job capturing the spirit and feel of Victorian times. Given their release date, there’s very little revisionism to suit modern fancies and tastes.
The soundscape is minimal but sufficient for capturing the Victorian era. The supporting actors are really superb, boasting a very solid professional cast. I’m no expert on British Television but Mark Gatiss, Siobhan Redmond, Stuart Milligan, and Tom Baker (Doctor Who actor who also played Sherlock Holmes) were all names I recognized. Even those I didn’t know gave compelling performances.
I will admit it took me a while to settle in on Clive Merrison’s Holmes. While he had appeared in adaptions of all the classic stories, I’d not listened to them. Still, I think he does do a good job with his own take on the character, which is true to tradition and I’ll have to seek out more of his work.
Most of these stories are quite solid although I have my favorites. “The Savior of Cripplegate Square” is a great listen due to Tom Baker’s superb guest performance and the way Holmes as a young detective finding his way. I also quite enjoyed “The Abergavenny Murder” is an unusual case because it mostly is Holmes and Watson (played by radio legend Andrew Sachs) trying to solve the death of a man who died at 221B Baker Street before the police arrive. Other than “the client” being heard briefly, the play is just Holmes and Watson and is a great opportunity to examine how they work together as well as a bit of their personal relationships.
Overall, if you’re a fan of the original Doyle stories and want to hear stories in a similar style performed by a top flight cast and crew, this product is a much listen.
Rating; 4.5 out of 5
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After five seasons and thirty-six episodes, Black Jack Justice had established the main characters of Jack Justice (Christopher Mott) and Trixie Dixon, Girl Detective (Andrea Lyons). Season six features a fair share of experimental episodes.
“Cops and Robbers” is a story told mostly by the supporting cast, “The Sky’s the Limit” is a story of a Poker game where the players try to suss out what happened on a case where no one has all the facts. “Man’s Best Friend is told from the perspective of the office dog, King.
Of the three, I think “Sky’s the Limit” was probably the best. It’s definitely fun to hear the story pieced together and to be learning details as the characters are. The ending is a bit ambiguous but it’s still a lot of fun. The other two stories have their moments but don’t work as well. The side characters are not as interesting as Jack and Trixie so that limited my enjoyment of “Cops and Robbers.” As for, “Man’s Best Friend,” the dog narration part landed flat. The approach seemed to be, “I’m a dog who thinks he’s a detective.” I think it would have been funnier had he been thinking more like an actual dog.
I personally preferred the other three episodes which were more traditional Justice and Dixon mysteries. “The Albatross” was my favorite as Lieutenant Sabian (Gregg Taylor) hires them to look into the murder of a black girl in a tenement which his superiors want him to lay off of. The episode examines the idea that certain unresolved cases haunt detectives, whether official or otherwise. It’s a well-done episode.
Overall, while I’m not crazy about all the experimental episodes in this season, I still enjoyed it pretty well.
Season 5 of the Red Panda Adventures from, “Decoder Ring Theatre” was originally released between 2009-2010 and is set in late 1930s Toronto.
This is the first season with Kit Baxter (Clarissa Der Nederlanden Taylor) and the Red Panda (Gregg Taylor) married and it’s fun to watch their relationship evolve. Events of this seasons do appear to take place over a long block of time as at the start of the season they’re newlyweds but in the second half of the season, they’ve married well over a year.
Season 5 offers its fair share of traditional Red Panda episodes involving supervillains, and mysterious deaths. On the supervillain front, the “Puzzle Master” is one of the more solid episodes of the series so far.
Yet, at the same time, the pre-World War II stories continued to heat up as Gregg Taylor (who also wrote the series) laid the ground for the next four seasons of World War II stories. The Red Panda and Flying Squirrel keep getting in the way of the Nazis mad preparations for war and their efforts to acquire magical objects. While they have a fair bit of luck against them, the season finale makes it clear the overall effort to stop the Nazis hadn’t gone well as the Stranger arrives seeking their help to limit the damage of the defeat suffered by the Council of Mages. In addition, towards the end of the season, we meet Colonel Fitzroy, an Army officer who would play a big role in Season 6.
Overall, Season 5 was a solid season of The Red Panda Adventures. It lived up to the high standards the previous set while doing a very good job laying the groundwork for the future.
Rating 4.5 out of 5
Season 5 of the Red Panda Adventures is available for free download at Decoder Ring Theatre
In Colonial Radio Theatre’s musical Jimmy and the Star Angel, Jimmy and Samantha, a young brother and sister, are dealing with their first Christmas without their dad. On Christmas Eve, Jimmy destroys one of his father’s Christmas tree ornaments which leads to them being shrunk to the size of ornaments. All the ornaments on the tree come alive. Jimmy and Samantha need their help to reach the top of the tree by dawn to ask the Star Angel for help or risk being turned into Christmas ornaments forever.
If you like Babes in Toyland or the Wizard of Oz, Jimmy and the Star Angel is that type of journey, so you’re sure to enjoy it. This magical quest up a Christmas tree is full of imaginative and fun characters. It’s also an emotional journey for Samantha and especially Jimmy.
The music in this is great. The songs alone are worth the price of the purchase. They vary in tone, mood, and purpose, but they’re all fun. I loved the swinging “Snowman Spectacular” and the penultimate song “Star Angel” is still bouncing around in my head more than a week and a half after I listened to it.
While the plot is a fantasy, there’s an emotional through line for Jimmy and Samantha that’s moving. I also found the use of the Christmas trees to be interesting. Jimmy’s family has passed down ornaments for years and the idea these ornaments serve as a family connection through the generations is well-presented, and it helps to serve as a solution to the problem.
The plot has minor issues that adult listeners will pick up on. The villain, the pirate Scrimshaw (Jerry Robbins) feels like he’s been written because these stories need a villain which leads to the less than satisfactory way in which he’s dispatched as well as the strained way he’s brought in. That said, though Scrimshaw’s not necessary to the plot, Robbins (who wrote the play) is a lot of fun in the role. I like the idea of a Christmas Tree ornament seeking revenge against the boy who broke him.
Overall, this is a great production for the whole family. I recommend you try it out and see if it becomes a tradition like your favorite Christmas tree ornaments.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Disclosure: I received a free digital copy in exchange for an honest review.
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In last week’s article, I wrote about what audio drama producers could do to create a new golden age of audio. Now let’s turn to what fans can do.
1) Don’t Pirate Modern Audio Dramas
Anti-piracy talks from big corporations generates eye rolls from many. It’s hard to feel sorry for a multi-billion dollar corporation and its multi-millionaire producers, directors, and stars. However, modern audio dramas typically operate on a much smaller profit margin. For them, the consequences of piracy can mean they are unable to produce as much new material as they would like,
or may be unable to continue in business at all.
Most people who produce audio dramas professionally do so, first for the love of the art form, but they have to be able to support themselves, their actors, and their crew in order to be able to produce top-notch work. So this point is important.
2) Enjoy Audio Dramas through Legal Means.
How can listeners legally enjoy audio dramas? There’s the obvious answers of purchasing them through either the producers’ websites or through audible.com or the ITunes store. On occasion, an audio drama producer will make a large selection of their works available through a site called HumbleBundle. It allows downloaders to pay whatever price they choose for a whole bundle of video games, books, and occasionally audio dramas.
There are legal ways to listen to audio dramas for free. For example, some audio dramas are still broadcast over the air. Colonial Radio Theatre is on the Air with a brand new series on affiliates in Seattle and in Troy, Alabama with live internet streaming available from the Seattle station. The Twilight Zone radio series is syndicated throughout the U.S. and strong ratings can be a boon to the program. In addition to traditional radio stations, BBC Radio 4 Extra offers listeners a wide variety of radio programs from its own library of programs. It has also broadcast episodes of the Twilight Zone and in the past has featured Big Finish Doctor Who plays.
Also some audio dramas may be available to borrow from your local library. If a particular audio drama isn’t available, you can request the library purchase it. In addition, check and see what electronic lending services your library offers. I found hundreds of audio dramas available through one of the apps my library offers. In addition, Big Finish offers hundreds hundreds of audio dramas through Spotify.
These electronic services can allow producers to earn a small amount of royalties for each listen or download which can be better than the library buying one copy and all the royalties they receive are from the sale of one disc. As I stated, this does depend very much on companies using an active distribution system.
3) Promote Good Audio Dramas
Good Audio dramas need to be talked about. Reviews are always welcome if you have the time to write them. Even a short post on social media that you enjoyed something can be helpful in getting the word out about good audio dramas. Again, most of these companies don’t have a huge PR budget. You honestly sharing what you like is of immense importance. In addition, if you do purchase audio dramas through Audible or through Itunes, you can rate your purchase without writing a review which can also be helpful.
Also consider giving the gift of audio dramas to people who you think might enjoy them. I was once leading a committee and I found there was an awareness of old time radio. I decided to give every member of the committee one of Colonial Radio Theater’s Father Brown CD sets because I thought that would be the most likely thing they would enjoy.
Of course, the gift of an audio drama CD would not appropriate for everyone, and the most important thing to consider in choosing the gift is the recipient. But if there’s someone on your gift list who you think might enjoy a good audio drama, you might open a whole new world to them with a gift no one else would think to give.
4) Join Audio Drama Crowd Funding Efforts
Crowdfunding is one of the more exciting developments of the 21st Century. Under the old model that dominated innovation and entertainment, consumers had to wait and see what would be offered to them by corporations. What food would they buy? What movies would they watch? The power of crowdfunding is that entrepreneurs and artists can bring their idea to people who can choose to invest a small amount of money in making it happen.
Audio Drama crowdfunding will come in two forms: Kickstarter and Patreon. With a Kickstarter campaign, an audio drama producer may ask people to help cover the cost of producing an audio drama or a series of episodes. There will often be rewards at various levels of support where you might get the physical product or a download when the item is released commercially.
With a Patreon campaign, you give monthly to support the audio drama production. It may be producing a podcast where all of its episodes are offered for free for listeners to download and rely entirely or mostly on listener support to continue going.
Whether it’s Kickstarter or Patreon, the concept is the same: You help support the creation of the art you enjoy and become partners in creating a new golden age of audio drama.
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Volume 3 of Big Finish’s Avengers: The Lost Episodes recreates four more lost episodes of Season 1 of the Avengers which featured John Steed (Julian Wadham) and Doctor David Keel (Anthony Howell).
The Springers: This story finds Keel undercover in prison as a notorious convict he hopes to impersonate. The story is a somewhat typical crime story but feels a bit more playful in places than some of the stories in the first box set. It’s a solid if unremarkable tale.
The Yellow Needle: An old friend of Keel’s is Prime Minister of an African nation about to declare its Independence from Great Britain. After an attempt on the Prime Minister’s life, Steed and Keel become involved in the case from several thousand miles away. The story reflects the process of breaking up the British Empire as former Colonies became Independent and the politics that often went into that. This gives it a definite historic value. Beyond that, it’s a taut and well-written political thriller.
Double Danger: Dr. Keel is kidnapped by desperate men who want him to treat a man they kidnapped so they can extract the secret of the location of stolen diamonds. This is set up like a traditional crime story but has a bit more going for it than many earlier stories. First of all, Keel’s adventures apparently have given him a bit of an edge of toughness as he’s far more calm than one would normally expect. There’s almost a hard-boiled aspect to some of the dialogue, and there’s more menace in the villains in this story than in many “thugs of the week” who have appeared before . The story moves at a fairly quick pace, and there’s a very effective use of humor with the old landlord.
The Toy Trap: This story takes a look at the seamier side of London life with a bit of a personal touch for Keel. Keel is to play chaperone to the wide-eyed innocent daughter of a friend, who has taken a job in London at a shop. They find one of her friends missing and that she’s been drawn off into a pornography racket exploiting naive young women. It’s a very well done crime story and it also introduces some genuine conflict between Steed and Keel. In the early going, Keel sharply disapproves when Steed starts doing his typical ladies man routine around his young charge, and then when Steed’s method for breaking the ring puts her jeopardy, Keel really lets Steed have it. Overall, this is probably my favorite episode in this series so far.
This collection contains some of the greatest Avengers Best Episodes Big Finish has produced and is my favorite of the four I’ve listened to.
Rating: 4.25 out of 5.0
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The Hound of the Baskervilles is like the Christmas Carol. You don’t watch or listen to an adaptation to find out what happens but to see how well the creators have captured the story. Big Finish does a superb job of capturing the spirit of the Hound of the Baskervilles in a very traditionalist adaptation. Amazingly, the entire program was recorded and rehearsed in a single day.
The cast is wonderful. Richard Earl has got the part of Watson nailed and that’s vital since most of the story centers around him. John Banks and Charlie Norfolk did Yeoman’s work, playing five parts and three parts respectively. They did it so seamlessly, I didn’t know they didn’t have separate actors for each part until I listened to the Extra’s CD. Samuel Clemens is very compelling as Sir Henry Baskerville. And of course, Briggs is great as Holmes.
Of course, what makes the piece so atmospheric over audio is the sound design and music, coupled with Earl’s narration and they did an incredibly good job in post-production. It captured the spookiness and suspense of the story. Overall, Big Finish does Doyle’s most legendary story justice in a superb adaptation.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0
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The Reification of Hans Gerber is an original Sherlock Holmes audio drama written in the twenty-first century. However, if you weren’t familiar with the Doyle canon, you’d be hard pressed to know that this was written by Doyle himself.
The plot captures the feel and atmosphere of Holmes without retreading over old ground. Holmes is called in to investigate the death of a wealthy man who left behind three nephews and a niece who expect to inherit until the will disappears, then one man is set to inherit. At first, it’s the eldest cousin, but a disowned relative named Hans Gerber emerges to claim the estate. It appears he’s out for more than the old man’s money when one of the cousins is murdered. The mystery is thoroughly engaging from start to finish.
Nicholas Briggs turns in his usual superb performance as Holmes, and Richard Earl plays Watson perfectly in the Edward Hardwicke tradition. One of the reasons the story feels so authentic is the amount of narration and description involved and Earl is a superb narrator. The other outstanding performance was Terry Malloy who plays Inspector Bainbridge, a police inspector who shows an amazing amount of competence.
It’s hard to overstate how much I enjoyed this. Pastiches so often fail to capture the feel of the original or are so busy inserting modern sensibilities and personalities into the story that they feel out of place. The authenticity of the story is outstanding. It’s tour de force in writing, acting, and production values.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0
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The second series of Big Finish’s Sherlock Holmes range kicks off with the adaptation of the two Sherlock Holmes stories. “The Final Problem,” where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle attempts to kill Holmes off, and “The Empty House,” where Holmes returns.
As writer/star Nicholas Briggs admits, these are not traditional adaptations. In the previous adaptation, a bonus talking book of “The Speckled Band” was released with a word-for-word reading of that story. This is similar but this production dispenses with “He said.” Otherwise this is a straightforward, almost word-for-word adaptation of Doyle’s stories with most of it told through Watson’s narration or Holmes narrating to Watson what has happened previously. As such, the strength of these adaptations rest on the strength of the underlying story.
However, Big Finish does add some nice touches. There’s an emotional core in these stories that Richard Earl, as Watson, does a superb job of capturing. Briggs turns in a solid performance as Holmes, playing the character perfectly as written, even when he’s being smug in “The Empty House.” And one of the most interesting and subtle things they do in “The Final Problem”is tell the narration as Watson writing this down, and we hear the pen crossing the paper and the sound of pen will change and become more pronounced at certain emotional points. It’s a simple bit of sound design, but it’s clever and adds something interesting to the production.
These are solid, dramatic readings with a good soundscape added in. However, given the wealth of material and the countless adaptations of these stories, the appeal of this release is limited and this would be the last time Big Finish used the format for Sherlock Holmes.
Rating: 3.75 out of 5.00
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Following the success of the first Star Wars film, George Lucas sold the rights to do a radio adaption to National Public Radio for $1. Adapting movies to radio was a tradition that dated back to the 1930s with the Lux Radio Theater. And in some ways, the resulting Star Wars radio drama bore some similarities to the old Lux Radio Theater with two stars (Mark Hamill as Luke, and Anthony Daniels as 3CPO) returning for their original while other actors filled in other lead roles.
But in other ways, the production was entirely different. Instead of condensing a story like Star Wars into an hour, this expanded it into 13 25 minute episodes, allowing for an expanded narrative.
So how did it work?
Positives:
The expansion of Star Wars into a multi-part audio epic makes a lot of sense given that it’s modeled after golden age sci-fi serials.
The sound design is absolutely gorgeous as it’s done with Lucasfilms cooperation and the same sound from the original film. But they do a good job of creating soundscapes in other areas including the race through Beggar’s Canyon.
The actors who take over roles played in the film are mostly just as good as the original actors, which is a testament to the strength of the story. I actually thought Ann Sachs was a slight upgrade from Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia.
Most of the expansions of the story were thoughtful. The series begins with two episodes that serve as establishing shots for Luke and Leia prior to the events of the film, and it’s nice to hear. We get to have Luke racing through Beggar’s Canyon and we also get to see him interacting with Biggs and trying to soldier through his uncle Owen’s constantly putting him off about going to the Academy. His frustration comes off as more reason and less immature.
The audio drama really fleshes out Leia’s character beautifully. She’s far stronger than in the film and more relatable. I really loved everything new they wrote for Leia. One highlight is a much better, more emotionally engaged reaction to the destruction of her home planet of Alderaan than in the movie.
The plot arcs for Luke and Hans Solo were also improved. You really got the sense growing throughout the story that Hans was or had once been more than just a smuggler out for himself in a way you don’t get from the film. Also, there’s enough time to discuss the insanity putting a back country pilot with no experience in space in charge of fighter as the radio drama has time for concerns to be raised about the efficacy of sending Luke Skywalker into battle.
These slight changes made the journey of Hans and Luke far more engaging. Hans’ journey reminds me of Rick from Casablanca (only with the Milennium Falcon) and Luke’s journey contains echoes of the Bible’s David.
We got a little bit more of a taste of the political intrigue on the Death Star and some insight into Grand Moff Tarkin’s decision to remain on the Death Star during the Rebel attack.
While most of the cast are obscure players, there are a few future stars featured. Perry King played Hans Solo three years before getting the lead in Riptide. David Alan Grier made his acting debut. Adam Arkin also features.
Negatives:
Perry King isn’t bad as Hans Solo but he’s a downgrade from Harrison Ford, who’s the hardest member of the cast to replace.
While most of the material added was interesting, that greatest bane of serialized drama from the Adventures of Superman to Doctor Who shows up in the form of several scenes that are padding. The worst offender was a scene in which Obi-wan Kenobe taught Luke the proper stance for holding a Light-saber. That’d be boring TV, but it’s mind-numbing audio.
Most of the production holds together because of the strong story and great sound design. There are several scenes where the lack of skill and experience in transferring visual adventures to an aural medium become apparent. Examples includes the Trash Compactor scene or Luke swinging Leia across a chasm in the Death Star.
The final scene may have been the worst. The production crew wanting to recapture every single moment of the film couldn’t figure out how to do the scene where Luke, Hans, and Chewie received medals from Leia so instead they had Hans and Luke bickering with Leia joining in the arguing. Not a good way to end.
What’s odd about this is that the Star Wars Audio Drama was produced in Los Angeles in 1980, when many of the people who made the Golden Age of radio so magical were not only alive, but also active in productions like the CBS Mystery Theater. I wonder if it ever occurred to NPR to see if any of these people would have been willing to volunteer their services. If they had, this might not have had so many bumpy spots.
The one really odd change in this was that Darth Vader doesn’t appear during the climatic Death Star battle scene. It’s mentioned that he’s out leading the attack, but we don’t hear him inside his TIE fighter getting a lock on Luke Skywalker before the Millennium Falcon swoops in and that does hurt the drama of that vital scene.
Conclusion:
I used to watch the original Star Wars film several times each year, and did a couple times watching through the entire series in one sitting.
Yet, I haven’t done this for more than a decade. Part of it was growing up and not having time to watch 90 minute movies often, part of it was the prequels which, while having their highlights, replaced the fun, adventure, and heroism of the originals with annoying side characters, big CGI effects, and darkness. Along the way, the prequels’ portrayal of both Anakin Skywalker and the Jedi Knights was disappointing to say the least.
What I loved about this Audio Drama is it managed to recapture the fun and excitement when I watched and rewatched the original Star Wars film so many years. Of course, it’s not easy to get over prequel fatique as I found myself thinking how amazingly off-base Obi-wan’s description of Anakin was based on what I’d seen in the prequels. It wasn’t gilding the lily. It was gilding the skunk cabbage.
I found to properly enjoy Star Wars again, I needed to follow the advice of Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back. I had to unlearn what I’d learned. And this wonderful audio drama helps to do that as it immerses listeners in the wonderful and fascinating world of the original Star Wars characters.
It has its weak points, as well as some unnecessary padding, and could have stood some more expert direction to make this an even better production, but there’s no denying that it does a great job of capturing the essence of a movie grabbed the attention of the world and still holds a place in the hearts of fans to this day.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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When I first started the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio, I began writing weekly articles. For a while, when I was in my 29 and until my early 30s, I was posting two articles per week. These posts came into a wide remit: They discussed old-time radio, detective stories, classic films, classic television, and even detective-themed graphic novels. Now, after more than 15 years, it’s time to end these weekly articles. In this post, we’ll talk about why I started them, a little bit of history, why I kept them going, why I’m ending them, and a little bit about what we’re going to do instead.
Why I Started and How It Went
I started the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio in the stone age of podcasts, where a common piece of advice was to have a blog to go along with your podcast. I jumped right in. I wrote about 1980s Perry Mason movies, Columbo episodes, Monk TV episodes, religious audio dramas, and Nero Wolfe novels. Doing this podcast and the related blog allowed me to dive into things I’d always been interested in and to write about them at length.
I not only had fun, but the blog posts succeeded, at least in getting traffic to the website. So many days I’d look at my stats and see my article ranking Columbo episodes or Monk episodes or Perry Mason episodes being some of my top-viewed articles. Google liked me, it liked me a lot.
Not only that, many people found my articles useful in their own work. I found a handful of books on Google Books that cited me in their bibliography. In one amusing incident, I was checking Google Books to find if there was any additional information on the radio series The Adventures of Babe Ruth that I didn’t have before I recorded an episode of the Old Time Radio Snack Wagon. I found a book that cited a review I wrote of the series.
I’ve enjoyed most of the books, movies, and radio shows I’ve had to consume to write these reviews. In addition, the nice little bits of research have made for diverting rabbit holes where I’ve often found myself surprised by what I’ll find while doing research.
It’s been fun, but it’s time for a change.
Why It’s Ending
I’d say there are two reasons why this is ending. Part of it has to do with the time commitment of putting out something every week My life has changed a whole lot since I was in my late 20s. For one thing, I’m a dad, and I’m working from home full time. The podcast and this website is part of my business, and writing and researching these articles is a time-consuming process. There are simple reviews I might bang out in an hour, but some of the more complex projects might take multiple hours of research and writing to do. It’s a big ask and a big time commitment.
And sometimes, I just can’t do it. While most weeks, I post something original, there have been some weeks where I haven’t posted anything or did a last-minute repost of an old article (an admitted upside of having such a big archive). With everything else, I have weeks where it’s a struggle.
Now, if this were something essential, or doing what articles did for the site back in the 2010s, it would fall me to find some way to make it happen.
But that brings me to the second problem. The articles just aren’t getting traffic anymore. The reason? It all comes down to Google. Back in the 2010s, most of my traffic to articles came from Google search. That’s just not happening anymore. The issues that people raise with Google and how search engines work are well-known and my articles just aren’t getting that traffic from search engines. This has been particularly frustrating with series that I really put a lot of work into, like “The American Audio Drama Tradition” which just didn’t get the results I wanted.
So, in short, weekly articles are becoming more challenging to produce and they’re also not serving the purpose they were intended to. So in light of that, ending the weekly articles makes sense.
What Comes Next?
Does that mean that I’ll stop writing about all the things I’ve enjoyed writing here? No, but the way I write about them is going to change.
In May, I’ll be launching a free newsletter. I’ll talk more about the newsletter next week, but one virtue is that it won’t be weekly, so I won’t be under the gun to “POST SOMETHING!” every week. I’ll be able to plan these out, and I also hope to avoid the sort of “quick review of something” that I sometimes ended up doing. With the newsletter, I’ll be publishing less frequently, but hopefully at a higher quality.
Secondly, I may also consider submitting to other E-zines and websites, which really hasn’t been an option in recent years.
Of course, just mentioning the newsletter leaves a lot of unanswered questions. What will it be about? How often will it publish? How can you subscribe? We’ll answer these questions next week and then after that, you can expect a whole lot less text on our front page.
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.
