more radio!

As I’ve previously mentioned, I’ve been listening to old radio shows.  I’ve been spending a lot of time lying down in bed because of a process of recovering from a physical problem.  These old radio shows have helped make that time a little more enjoyable.

I started off with The Six-Shooter, and it’s still my favorite.  I’ve grown to enjoy Tales of the Texas Rangers quite a bit, too.  It’s fun to hear the recurrent voices and some of the predictability and repetitious format is somehow smile-inducing.

I’ve almost finished listening to all the Tales of the Texas Rangers episodes.  Kinda sad.  So, I started thinking it would be fun to find something similar.  Dragnet is a very similar format, and I’ve started listening to it.  I’ve only listened to a little and I like it, but it doesn’t thus far have quite the charm of agent Jayce Pearson and his horse Charcoal.

There’s one called X Minus One that is often pretty darn good.  It’s not a serial with continuity or recurring characters but, instead, stand-alone science fiction stories told in half hour shows.  It’s well done…solid acting, good sound, and good stories a lot of the time.  It is often a bit Twilight Zone in feel, but not always.  Like many of these shows, there is some serious want of female characters and perspective.  That’s a disappointment.  It’s a real shame there isn’t a feminist time machine.  While dramas from the golden age of radio probably wouldn’t be the most urgent target of such anachronistic aid, it would make for much better shows.  

Unsurprisingly, it’s not just the perspectives of women that are largely missing from these shows, but pretty much those of anyone who is not a straight white male.  There are exceptions, of course.  For example, I just listened to an episode of CBS Radio Workshop called Sounds of New York, an anthropological-esque look at the city that featured a refreshing array of diversity.  And there are numerous science fiction stories from the era that deal with the ills of inequality.

I’ve also come across another series of stand-alone stories called Escape.  It features stories from all sorts of authors adapted to radio.  I’ve listened to stories by Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Rudyard Kipling.  All the stories, which range from social commentary to historical fiction to pulp adventure, have some sort of “action” element.

Another I’ve listened to several episodes of is Frontier Gentleman.  It focuses on the character of J.B. Kendal, a journalist for the London Times.  He travels around the old west, having odd adventures, meeting often eccentric characters, and sending stories back to the Times.  This series is cool in that it stresses narrative continuity from one episode to the next and has a bit of historical detail.  However, individual episodes are much more hit or miss than some of the other serial dramas to which I’ve listened.  Some episodes I’ll find pretty good, while a few are so much in need of that feminist time machine as to be unenjoyable.

I’ve listened to several other various shows…CBS Radio Workshop has lots of short stories adapted for radio.  I listened to some Ray Bradbury stories from that show, for example.  I’ve listened to some odd episodes from some of the more dark or macabre shows.  One of these was pretty good; the others not so much my taste.  I tried another western that turned out to be terrible!  But, really, most of what I’ve listened to I’ve found quite enjoyable.

There is a large segment of the golden age of radio into which I have barely delved: the shows aimed primarily at a young audience.  I’ve listened to a few episodes of Speed Gibson of the International Police and one or two of Space Patrol.  They are fun, and I think I would have really liked them had I been a kid in the ‘40s.  I think I’ll likely listen to a few more.  I would like to find a science fiction serial with recurring characters that I really enjoy.