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Post by Nalkarj on Aug 13, 2023 19:53:38 GMT
This isn’t the best section for this topic, but I couldn’t find a better one and it’ll do.
So—what radio plays are you listening to? I love old-time radio, along with its last, lingering modern remnants (the BBC still releases a lot of modern radio drama, thank God… and I guess some podcasts are bringing it back, in a way).
Back at the old board I was always touting BBC 4’s James Bond adaptations, which I love. The From Russia with Love and Goldfinger adaptations (available on YouTube) are splendid, and Toby Stephens is actually my favorite 007 after Sean Connery.
I was just listening to adaptations of John Dickson Carr’s Gideon Fell books. It’s great to have some adaptation of these books (baffling that they still haven’t been adapted for television), but the first episode I listened to, The Blind Barber, wasn’t that great, unfortunately.
Donald Sinden as Dr. Fell is fine, but one cast member turns in a horrible performance—I know the book and still suspected this character as the killer because the actor’s emoting is so bad. The mystery plot was simplified, of course, but worse, the adapter decided to scrap all of Carr’s comedy—which severely hurts the story, whose tone is half-Wodehouse and half-Marx Brothers. Oh well.
Now I’m listening to the adaptation of one of my favorite Carrs, He Who Whispers… Hope this one’s better!
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Post by Stammerhead on Aug 13, 2023 21:25:33 GMT
I usually listen to podcasts but had this one waiting on my phone after finishing the last podcast in my queue.  |
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Post by Nalkarj on Aug 14, 2023 15:08:13 GMT
Now I’m listening to the adaptation of one of my favorite Carrs, He Who Whispers… Hope this one’s better! It wasn’t. The adapter left out all of Carr’s atmospherics and added stuff that makes the murderer obvious (the performance doesn’t help). Also—no mention of the twist that defines, and explains, Fay Seton’s character! Grr. Too bad, especially because Donald Sinden is a perfectly fine Dr. Fell. I don’t even know whether to listen to any more episodes. |
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Post by yggdrasil on Aug 15, 2023 8:23:21 GMT
I have one of Stephen King's "Mist" to listen to, but mostly just listening to old "Handcock's Half Hour" at the moment.
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Post by Nalkarj on Aug 23, 2023 18:18:15 GMT
I did end up listening to a few more Carr adaptations. The best by far is “House in Gallows Lane,” the adaptation of Carr’s Till Death Do Us Part (1944). The adapter’s handling of one clue is a bit clumsy, but some other clues are fine, and the acting is better than any of the others I’ve heard. The book is based on a radio play Carr wrote for Suspense (“Will You Walk Into My Parlor?”), so it’s a good fit for radio. And it’s got the increased suspense-building and character tension of post-World War II Carrs. Not perfect, not as good as the book, but the best of these adaptations by a considerable margin.
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Post by Nalkarj on Dec 29, 2023 21:46:50 GMT
Listened to the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Thunderball, with Toby Stephens as James Bond, from the series that I mentioned in the OP.
It’s fine—not as good as the adaptations of From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, and Dr. No, but considerably better than that of Live and Let Die. Stephens’s Bond is as excellent as always (I like his concurrent toughness and humanity), and Janet Montgomery (an actress I don’t know) as Domino matches him in every way. Montgomery’s performance is better and more affecting than Claudine Auger’s and Kim Basinger’s in the film adaptations of Thunderball.
That said, Tom Conti is a rather boring Largo (the character is boring in all three adaptations of this story, despite Adolfo Celi’s cool eye-patched look in the 1965 version), and Alfred Molina is a disappointment as Blofeld. Molina’s not awful, and Blofeld has a small part in this story, but he’s even less memorable than Christoph Waltz’s Blofeld.
The best part is the beginning, with Bond in the health clinic, but then that was the best part in Ian Fleming’s book as well. The story always seems to go slack in the Caribbean scenes, and here those parts are particularly slack because the radio format means the underwater scenes have to be narrated rather than described by Bond or shown.
Still, the radio play is entertaining, and I was delighted by Stephens’s and Montgomery’s performances. Here’s hoping Molina’s Blofeld is better in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (which the BBC adapted first, for some reason, even though Bond doesn’t know of Blofeld in this Thunderball).
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Post by PaulsLaugh on Dec 30, 2023 9:01:30 GMT
I can’t handle radio plays. I go to sleep to easily.
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Post by yggdrasil on Dec 30, 2023 12:00:52 GMT
Listening to the BBC John Le Carre adaptions at the moment.
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Post by ant-mac on Dec 30, 2023 13:20:25 GMT
I really enjoyed this audio play when I first heard it.
Must give it another listen to.
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Post by Flying Monkeys on Jan 2, 2024 22:08:51 GMT
Can't help you with this one - haven't listened to radio since the mid 90s.
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Post by Stammerhead on Jan 3, 2024 0:45:37 GMT
Can't help you with this one - haven't listened to radio since the mid 90s. There’s this new thing called YourTube and it contains a lifetime’s worth of radio plays. |
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Post by Flying Monkeys on Jan 3, 2024 0:55:18 GMT
Can't help you with this one - haven't listened to radio since the mid 90s. There’s this new thing called YourTube and it contains a lifetime’s worth of radio plays. Sorry don't care. Radio is old to me. |
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Post by Stammerhead on Jan 3, 2024 11:36:48 GMT
There’s this new thing called YourTube and it contains a lifetime’s worth of radio plays. Sorry don't care. Radio is old to me. I don’t listen to the radio either (unless someone else has it on) but I do download radio stuff. |
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Post by ant-mac on Jan 3, 2024 15:21:37 GMT
There’s this new thing called YourTube and it contains a lifetime’s worth of radio plays. Sorry don't care. Radio is old to me. So are books, comics, film, TV and music... Even the internet is technically no longer in its infancy. |
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Post by Carl LaFong on Jan 8, 2024 17:12:21 GMT
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