Tag: good review

Audio Drama Review, Golden Age Article

Audio Drama Review: The Red Panda Adventures, Season Ten

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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.

Rating: 4.25 out of 5

The Red Panda Adventures Season Ten is available for free from the Decoder Ring Theatre Website

DVD Review, Golden Age Article

DVD Review: Cannon: The Complete Collection

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CBS/Paramount stopped releasing the 1970s private detective series Cannon after doing a DVD-R release of Season 3 in 2013. VEI took over the project in 2015 and brought the full collection, all 122 episodes plus the pilot TV movie and the revival movie The Return of Frank Cannon. 

TV Series Overview

Cannon was released during a golden age of television detective programs  It ran from 1971-76. The show’s tenure overlapped partially with Columbo and NBC’s Mystery Wheel movies, along with Kojak, Ironside, Mannix, and the Rockford Files, among others. Many well-made detective programs that got produced during this era couldn’t get renewed due to the sheer competition for people’s eyeballs. In such a world, Cannon‘s endurance for five seasons is a testament to its quality.

The series stood out for a few reasons. First was its lack of an ongoing supporting cast. Recurring characters were a rarity. In season one, a young Martin Sheen played Jerry Watson, an ex-cop with a disability, and was Cannon’s assistant for two episodes. And that’s it for any significant recurring roles throughout the series. If you look at the Cannon IMDB page, you’ll see a few actors appeared multiple times but most appeared as different characters. The show’s guest cast was a combination of future stars (Sheen, Mark Hamill, and Nick Nolte), recognizable talents like Stephanie Powers and Dick Van Patten, well-known veteran actors like Anne Baxter and Keenan Wynn, and obscure actors.

The series leaned a bit towards suspense rather than typical whodunit plots, particularly in the program’s early episodes. The villains would be known to the audience, and it would be a question of whether Cannon would thwart the villains. The series leaned heavily in the direction of action. If you like car chases, fistfights, and explosions, then Cannon has got you covered. Despite his size, Cannon is more than able to handle himself, not only with guns but also with his fists.

Cannon isn’t just a pudgy fighter. He shows many sides to his character in the course of the series. He was a Korean War Vet and and a widowed ex-cop turned high-priced private investigator. In the first episode, Cannon is portrayed with a nice apartment and an assistant, but in this series itself, this was scaled back. Cannon’s apartment in the series could be best described as comfortable. He wears decent suits, but more often than not, conducts his investigations in a windbreaker and clothes that we’d consider business casual. His Lincoln Continental was a luxury car but has been mentioned at least twice on lists of most ugly television cars.

He generally approaches the question of whether to accept any given case with professional detachment. However, his high prices to the wealthy often allowed him to take on the cases of people in need but without means for free or at a reduced rate. He’s naturally friendly and particularly kind to young people in distress as they seem to bring out his fatherly instincts and he jumps in to help. However, he accepts no nonsense and if you start a fight with him, he will finish it.

The writing on the series was solid. With the series not committed to any particular formula, this gave the writers a lot of freedom to put Cannon into different situations that could range from suspenseful adventures to more typical mysteries. Some story ideas reoccurred, such as the small southwestern towns where law enforcement was crooked or some dirty secret was kept and Cannon had to bust heads to set things right. But that also left room for interesting ideas like the time Cannon helped a political prisoner from another country flee only to discover he’d been conned and had to get the prisoner back or the episode where Cannon had to investigate a murder that appeared to be committed by a being from outer space, or the last episode where Cannon had to save a friend who had gone mad after some military experiments. And then there were a lot of plots around the mafia and underworld class that knew of Cannon from his years as an honest cop.

Cannon never jumped the shark. In fact, Cannon’s last season was probably its best written. It started out with “Nightmare,” the best episode of the series that dug deep into Cannon’s past and how his wife died. (Review here) and also the crossover with the Buddy Ebsen-led series Barnaby Jones, “The Deadly Conspiracy” (reviewed here). The series end was not a case of the show going bad or losing its edge but of the public’s interest going elsewhere.

The DVD also includes The Return of Frank Cannon, a TV movie released four and a half years after the series ended. It finds Cannon having retired and bought a restaurant. However, Cannon comes out of retirement to help the widow (Diana Muldaur) of an old friend, who was also an old flame. Cannon’s friend’s death is tied up in a some cloak and dagger stuff and the local area’s unusually high number of retired intelligence officers.

The Return of Frank Cannons feels like a long episode but a good one. The romance between Cannon and the widow is played up more than any other romantic angle in the TV series. The romance is wistful and sweet. The movie does feel padded at times. Reportedly there were talks of doing a few more Cannon TV movies, but they only ended up doing one which leads to some scenes which in retrospect become unnecessary. That doesn’t stop the Return of Frank Cannon being a nice curtain call for a remarkable TV series.

In my view, Cannon is underappreciated. In its time, the series received several awards nominations including Emmy and Gold Globe nominations for Conrad, and was well-beloved overseas and recognized with awards in West Germany and Spain. But until recently, it’s not received near the same amount of play in TV syndication or on streaming services as many other 1970s programs.

While Cannon isn’t as good as Columbo and The Rockford Files, it’s a well-made series and better than some shows from the era that have been more widely distributed. It’s a superb series and a highlight of a great decade for TV private eyes.

DVD Release Review

This is a no-frills collection. They even dumped the pre-show teasers that CBS included in their releases. Other than some production slides with the theme music playing in the background, you have no real extras. The episodes are essentially provided exactly as aired with no remastering or retouching.

To be fair, Cannon isn’t a series where you expect high definition remastering or featurettes about the making of the series. VEI released a set that’s sure to make fans say, “Finally, the whole series is available on DVD.” And for that, I’m glad.

The DVD Covers are all basic, as is the disc art with William Conrad framed in a picture and a different color for each of the five seasons of the show. I do like the disc art, which does show a sort of elegant simplicity. Each season also has an episode guide with the date the episode aired and a generally accurate synopsis of the plot.

My only complaint with the presentation comes back to how they handled the release of “The Deadly Conspiracy.” Originally, it aired as a two-parter with part one being an episode of Cannon and part two continuing on Barnaby Jones. On this collection, “The Deadly Conspiracy” is shortened to a single episode that hardly justifies the title with a different ending. To get the story as it originally aired, you have to purchase Barnaby Jones, Season Four. VEI was only following the syndication strategy that Cannon had used. (While Barnaby Jones syndicated both episodes as originally aired.) However, it does seem like they could have included the full version of “The Deadly Conspiracy” particularly since Cannon Season Five included an extra disk that would have easily accommodated it.

Overall Thoughts

Cannon is a personal favorite. William Conrad is a delight in this, and if you’re a fan of old school private detectives, this is a real gem of a series. As of this time of this writing, the entire collection is available for $33.99, which comes out to twenty-eight cents per episode. A true bargain by my measurement.

Rating 4.0 out of 5

Note; If you’re curious about Cannon but not ready to buy it, you can check out an episode or so for free. It’s currently airing on the nostalgia-themed network ME-TV. It’s currently in the 2 a.m. time slot, so unless you’re an insomniac or work the late shift, you may want to plan on setting the DVR to record it.

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Audio Drama Review, Golden Age Article

Audio Drama Review: Black Jack Justice, Season Ten

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The Tenth Season of Black Jack Justice saw Jack Justice (Christopher Mott) and Trixie Dixon, Girl Detective (Andrea Lyons) engage in six more episodes set in the 1950s and featuring the regular cast of characters as they navigate a world of mobsters, lying clients, and even a disappearing mummy.

At this point in the series, Black Jack Justice had settled into its reliable mix of hard-boiled narration, philosophical musings on well-worn adages, caustic banter, and occasional gunplay. If you’ve listened to and loved the first nine seasons, there’d be nothing to make you say, “Stop this ride, I want to get off!” It continues to be excellent at what it does.

The fifth episode of the season did push up against the limits of the series. “The One that Got Away,” was about a murder attempt on a man Trixie had toyed with earlier in the series, an operative for the Brakewait insurance agency who’s getting married. The episode is a fun one as Trixie is at the office working late and one by one, Jack and other male supporting characters show up with the man following an attempt on his life after the party. The story has fun twists and crazy dialogue. Yet, it also strives to be more focused on Trixie dealing with someone she’d dated getting married. There, it doesn’t quite work. Trixie as she’s been played for ten seasons is completely self-assured and self-contained with no interest and perhaps no ability to form long-term relationship and no inkling of any further depth. The episode doesn’t do much to push the boundaries of her character as there’s not much further it can be pushed after ten seasons. She works as a superb homage to the dime novel detective but that’s about it.

Overall, the tenth season works, particularly when it sticks to what it does and knows best. If you enjoy noir stories, with witty dialogue and a dose of comedy, Black Jack Justice continues to be a worthy listen.

The Tenth Season of Black Jack Justice is available for free on the Decoder Ring Theatre website.

Rate: 4 out of 5

DVD Review, Golden Age Article

DVD Review: Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple – Movie Collection

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The four 1960s Miss Marple films starred Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple. For purist fans of Agatha Christie’s spinster detective, these films don’t offer much. Only one of the four was based on a Miss Marple book while two others were based on Poirot stories and one of the four was an original story. Some have compared these films to Peter Ustinov’s Poirot films in the 1970s and 80s, but to me that misses the mark. Ustinov’s Poirot films were at least nearly recognizable as the same character and stories despite the changes.

The only way to enjoy these four films is on their own merits and by that measure they do work. Miss Marple finds herself in one murder mystery after another. It begins with Murder She Said, when she sees a murder through a window while riding a train and is disbelieved by the local Detective Inspector (Bud Tingwell) and she’s assisted in solving it by her friend, the local librarian Stringer (played by Rutherford’s real-life husband Stringer Davis.) The formula of her getting involved in murder and having the Inspector treat her like she’s a meddling amateur and her being vindicated in the end is the way all three films go that see her investigate murders at stables, at a rooming house, and at sea. And she also generally gets an unexpected marriage proposal.

The series gets a little goofier, though mostly in a good way, as it goes along with a lot of tongue and cheek humor. I might compare it in some days to a somewhat more restrained version of the approach to the 1966 Batman TV series with a bit more of a British pantomime take to its comedy, as there are very broad characters who are well-played.

The writing is decent, although the last film Murder Ahoy (the only original story) was a bit weaker than the rest of the series. However, the weaknesses in the script are made up for by the performance of Lionel Jeffries gives as the ship’s captain as he helps sell the dodgier aspects of this story.

The music is light, with a cheery upbeat tune that wouldn’t fit most productions based on Agatha Christie’s writing, but fits this one like a glove.

This is one of the coziest mystery movie series you’ll find. If you like that sort of film and can tolerate its deviation from its source material, this is a delightful romp that’s worth viewing.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5

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Audio Drama Review, Golden Age Article

Audio Drama Review: The Patrick Scott Smokin’ Mysteries

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To enjoy the Patrick Scott Smokin’ Mysteries, set the right expectations. These are not typical half-hour or hour-long mysteries. Rather, they’re about 4-6 minutes in length and meant to be enjoyed in short bursts, preferably with family. They are more about puzzles, brain teasers, and trivia than whodunits. Think more Encyclopedia Brown than Hercule Poirot.

In one episode, a series of clues were used as two police officers were engaged in trying to find where a suspect was heading and the police officer would intercept with the key being the listener’s ability to guess which street they were heading to. Of course, real police officers have a knowledge of a city’s street set up, so there’s no mystery in real life. The set up reminds me of detective-themed riddle books.

However, once you understand the set up, these are enjoyable diversions. Each episode follows Lieutenant Patrick Scott, Jr. (Scott Brick), his father, retired Captain Patrick Scott, Sr. (Patrick Fraley), or another family member or police officer as they try to solve a puzzle generally involving a crime. The set up will generally be a single scene (or two) where clues are gathered and then the listener is given about a minute of “mystery-solving music” to think about it and/or discuss the case with others who are listening before the solution is revealed.

The mysteries are decent brain teasers. There’s some humor that’s amusing, if not laugh out loud hilarious. The stories  are all fairly clean at a G or PG rating level. The mystery-solving music is pleasant, usually a bit of soft jazz, though they do mix it up a bit, particularly in three episodes that feature an Irish informant who makes the police solve his riddle in order to get clues.

Scott and Fraley are both old pros at the voice acting game and have recorded hundreds of audiobooks. Fraley (who also wrote the production) did a lot of voices for animation, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. From my childhood, he was the voice of Wildcat on Talespin and many characters on the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon including Krang the Conquerer and Baxter Stockman. Fraley was a regular fixture as an animation character actor as so many of his credits are for “additional voices.” All that to say, both are top people in the voice acting profession and delivered the performances you’d expect. Brick’s Patrick Scott, Jr. sounds exactly like the ex-Private Eye he’s supposed to be and the narration is flawless. Meanwhile, Fraley’s Senior is endearingly irascible and fun to listen to.

Beyond the leads, this is very much an ensemble production with actors having to switch from one role to another frequently and without making your characters sound all the same and everyone did a good job of that. There was only one character that seemed off, but given the sheer number of mini-mysteries in this set, that’s a good average.

The last twenty minutes or so of the disk feature a Q&A session with Frank Muller, a pioneer in the audiobook world who’d recorded books for many authors including Stephen King. Muller had just recently passed away and this was offered as a tribute to him. To me, it was an interesting insight into how good audiobook narrators ply their trade. If that doesn’t excite you, then you may not get much out of that portion.

Overall, this is an interesting release. It’s well-acted with good sound, although minimalistic, and is good for short diversions. It’s best to listen to one or two mysteries at a time when travelling with kids and looking for something to do in the car. With that approach, the more than two and a half hours of puzzle mysteries will last a good while.

Rating: 4 out of 5

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Audio Drama Review, Golden Age Article

Audio Drama Review: Black Jack Justice, Season Nine

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Season Nine of Black Jack Justice sees Jack (Christopher Mott) and Trixie Dixon (Andrea Lyons) back for six more investigations. The ninth season continues the same high standard. It offers everything you come to expect: The opening monologue that introduces a well-worn aphorism as a basis for the case, the clever banter, and the solid mystery stories you come to expect.

Jack’s status as a newly married man has a small impact on the series. Had there been romantic tension between the two lead characters, it would have been much more major. However, unlike in most detective fiction, where statements of contempt hide passionate love, the statements of contempt between Jack and Trixie reflected that they didn’t much like each other personally but had a good working relationship. However, Jack’s mood is less dour than in past seasons as he’s enjoying conjugal bliss. One episode, “Home for the Holidays” saw Jack getting involved in solving a crime in a small town so Jack could get home to his wife.

The series had limited appearances from the recurring guest cast. Jack’s wife is seen and not heard after appearing in the previous two seasons. King the office dog and Freddy the Finger are far less present than in previous seasons.

The episodes are all good. I particularly liked the contrast between the last two episodes of the season. In “The Big Time,” Jack and Trixie get an unexpected opportunity to take on a big case for an insurance company with a big payoff. This is followed by, “The Learner’s Permit” where they agree to help a writer do research for his new detective story, and then bungle their way into a murder investigation where they should be able to tell the police everything needed to solve the case and provide photographic evidence, but instead have bungled it so badly that someone else has to step in and solve the case. Creating a contrast between a high water mark and one of their most embarrassing moments business is a clever take by writer Gregg Taylor.

While I did miss some of the recurring characters, this was still a fun listen. If you enjoyed any of the past Black Jack Justice seasons, Season 9 is well-worth listening to.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0

Black Jack Justice Season 9 is available to listen to for free at Decoder Ring Theatre.

Book Review, Golden Age Article

Book Review: Silent are the Dead

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Silent are the Dead is an original Flash Casey novel by George Herman Coxe. It 1941, it was originally serialized in Black Mask Magazine (where Casey made his debut in 1934) in three parts, and published as a standalone novel in 1942.

In it, ace photographer Flash Casey has to get pictures of a disgraced lawyer after his camera case is stolen and his film exposed. When he goes up to the lawyer’s apartment, he finds the lawyer dead and himself in a case that grows ever more complex.

Flash Casey is an interesting character. He bares little resemblance to the character who’d arrive on radio the next year and less to the hotheaded goofball of the film Here’s Flash Casey. Casey is a decent sort. He’s got a nose for news but he’s neither heartless, nor unethical. He’s got a hard boiled edge to him, but this never goes over the top. He also takes a great deal of pride not just in his own work, but in the profession and its status, which motivates his actions in the final act of the novel.

This is a solidly written mystery novel. The plot is complex and intriguing with twists around every corner. The story is well-plotted, and well-paced. My interest never lagged from start to finish. I appreciated how photography was used in the novel to make this story distinct from the countless tales of private eyes, lawyers, and mystery men that dominated the fiction shelfs of the day. I’ve experienced a few stories from the old Black Mask magazine and compared to them, this book is above average. 

The characterization is not a huge strength. With one exception, the other characters feel mostly functional. They’re not unrealistic, over the top, or badly written, but as individuals, they’re surface level and blend quickly into a sea of newspaper employees, gangsters, damsels/potential femme fatales, and cops without much personality to distinguish them. Still, with Casey being well-written, he’s an anchor that keeps the story interesting.

In terms of quality, I’d consider it similar to the best Michael Shayne books.  It’s not a genre classic by any means, but it is a good example of a pre-War detective novel with hard-boiled flavor. In addition, its photographer hero makes it stand out from most of its mystery peers. It’s also a nice read for those who enjoy the Casey, Crime Photographer radio series and are curious about the hero’s literary origins. 

Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0

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