amedia: Curlicue of butterflies on black background (Default)
I was poking around on archive.org looking for some more old radio detective shows, when I stumbled across this set of free audio mysteries: http://archive.org/details/BbcThrillingStoriesOfTheRailway05Eps

I was going to go ahead and download them based on the description, which I'll copy below, and then I read the comments and learned that they are read by Benedict Cumberbatch! Who, according to the comment, does a splendid job. I clicked on the first one and by golly, that's who reads them. So now I'm *definitely* grabbing them!

Here's the description from the website, in case anyone needs more convincing:ExpandRead more... )
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(crossposted to [livejournal.com profile] commonplacebook)

The Sherlock Holmes Society of London has made a number of audio productions available for free on their website, here: http://www.sherlock-holmes.org.uk/world/radio.php

TODS and I listened to several of them on a recent long trip in the car and they were very enjoyable!
amedia: (Angry Artemus)
Legendary detective Sherlock Holmes owes much of his enduring popularity to writer and actress Edith Meiser, who worked tirelessly to bring adaptations of Holmes stories to radio in the 1930s,

I've seen this in several places on the Internet, with a longer description explaining how she persuaded broadcasters to run her series by going out and recruiting sponsors. I understand that I should be grateful, but there's just one problem ... the episodes she wrote are AWFUL!!!!

I thought that perhaps she just wasn't a very good writer when she was making up her own stories, but lately we've been listening to her adaptations of the Sacred Canon. While they are substantially faithful to the original stories, her habit of making Watson into an utter dolt persists, even to the point of altering events that made Watson look competent or Holmes look as if he gave a damn. ExpandCases in point: The Devil's Foot, The Three Garridebs )
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We were watching 77 Sunset Strip the other day, the episode "Hong Kong Caper." It was a veritable parade of stars!

First there was the villain, an extortionist named Run Run Lee, played by a very strange-looking actor who didn't *look* at all familiar. But his voice! He had a strange, sibilant voice with an unplaceable accent, and a strange way of moving his mouth when he talked. After a few minutes it clicked. He was the Andorian Ambassador in the Classic Trek episode "Journey to Babel"! He didn't look familiar because in the 77 Sunset Strip episode he wasn't wearing blue makeup, a white wig, or antennae. We looked it up and yep, there he was; the actor's name is Reggie Nalder.

We showed a few minutes of the ep to a friend of ours, a fellow Trekkie who stared at the ingenue guest and said, "We've seen her on Star Trek, too!" Her character, like Lee, was supposed to be Eurasian, and she had some strange eye makeup on, but suddenly I realized she was Eve from "Mudd's Women"! Despite the makeup, she was very recognizable in profile. The actress is Karen Steele.

The same episode featured a tourist couple from the Midwest. The wife was played by Kathleen Freeman, who plays the brassy middle-aged lady in just about *everything*. The husband, though, baffled us. Played by Willard Waterman, he didn't look a bit familiar - but as soon as he opened his mouth we knew we'd *heard* him somewhere! And not in blue makeup, either. My husband was convinced we'd heard him in a radio comedy, and we were trying to run through the ones we've listened to - he wasn't in Life of Riley, he wasn't in Fibber McGee - we were drawing a blank. I mentioned the name to my mom on the phone today and she said, "Willard Waterman? You mean, the Great Gildersleeve!"

So, very cool. The Andorian Ambassador blackmails one of Mudd's Women, to be foiled by our detective with the assistance of the Universal Brassy Middle-Aged Lady and The Great Gildersleeve. What an episode!

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