Alan Whitby's ten favourite radio plays
One of the difficulties in listing my top ten plays is
that other members have already beaten me to it. A
few years ago, Rod Beacham's "Inter-City Contract"
was listed in an article, and I would have
automatically have included that amongst my own
favourites. Someone also included John Mair's
"Never Come Back" in their list with its anti-hero on
the run - Richard Hannay as a rat. That, too, is a play
I come back to repeatedly. So I have to cheat
really. This list is my top twelve - those and ten
others!
1. "The Day Of The Triffids" (serial in 6 parts, 2
Oct to 20 Nov., 1957).
I am indebted to contacts in the VRPCC for
obtaining a copy of this vintage serial. As a 12-year
old, I hung onto every word when it was first aired.
My schoolfriends were hooked on "Journey Into
Space" but that passed me by. However, I made a
date with "Triffids" each week and it sent me to the
book by John Wyndham. Listening to it today
(compared with more recent versions) it still has an
impact.
2. "The Hollow Man" : Saturday Night Theatre
10.1.1959
The fairly recent series of Gideon Fell mysteries
starring Donald Sinden have had their moments,
although the last suffered from the restrictions of a
55 or so minute time slot. John Dickson Carr's plots
have enough twists and turns to fill 90 minutes
without any difficulty. However, from the opening
jokey music, the Sinden versions are played
somewhat tongue-in-cheek. The original rendition
of this play from 1959 with Norman Shelley as Fell
was played straight and, apart from a slight touch of
the "theatricals" in one or two places, stands up well
today. My Saturdays in the late 1950s always
involved playing out with friends in the daytime, a
quick early tea and out to the local flea-pit cinema,
and finally home to bed with the valve portable radio
by the pillow listening to "SNT" in the dark. This
sacrosanct routine was soundly trashed when the
BBC in its wisdom brought the starting time for SNT
forward from 9.15 to 8.30 - at that stage of life, the
cinema won!). "The Hollow Man" with its background
of convicts escaping from buried coffins and
not one, but two, 'impossible' murders (both
observed by independent witnesses but with a
rational explanation at the end) started me off as a
collector of Carr's fiction, which I read avidly for
years. John Dickson Carr was a prolific writer of
radio plays himself in the 1940s, and some of his
playscripts have been published in recent years.
Sadly, very few tapes have ever surfaced.
3. "You Have Been Warned" (serial in 6 parts, 19
Feb. to 26 March, 1958)
Another John Dickson Carr tale from the novel "The
Reader Is Warned", this time from his output as
Carter Dickson. A man named Herman Pennik
claims that he can cause people to drop dead just by
thought (which he calls "Teleforce") and apparently
succeeds in doing so. A named victim is seen to
twitch and fall over with no-one touching him, and
there are no signs of foul play when the body is
examined. Needless to say, Pennik is nowhere near
at the time. How could it happen? Who would be
next? Could it be used to eliminate Hitler or
Mussolini? (The play was set in 1939). As the play
appears to have been lost, I only have memory to go
on, but the concept was that there you are at home
listening - and, horror or horrors! - Pennik could
choose YOU next! The user of Teleforce -
ultimately more victim than villain - was played by
Irish actor Patrick Magee. His voice of subtle
menace always brought back memories of "You Have
Been Warned" when he turned up in various films
over the next 25 years.
4 "He Wouldn't Kill Patience" (Saturday Night
Theatre 4 4.1959)
A final Carr thriller, again from the Carter Dickson
stable, and again one that seems to be lost.
Patience is a small tree snake. Her keeper
apparently commits suicide. The room in which he
gasses himself is locked from the inside and
completely sealed up from the inside, even down to
sticky paper over cracks in doors and windows. But
- Patience the tree snake also dies in its cage in the
room. Even if he had committed suicide, he
wouldn't kill Patience…so, how was it done?
Felix Felton had another rich fruity voice akin to Norman
Shelley's, and played amateur sleuth Sir Henry
Merrivale, who was a slightly more humorous version
of Gideon Fell.
Carr wrote over 20 novels under the Carter Dickson
banner. To my knowledge, apart from the two
above, only those under Carr's own name seem to
have been taken up by dramatisers. They would be
well worth some enterprising adapter to consider.
5 "The Last Renaissance Man" (Saturday Night
Theatre 14.6.1986)
A nicely moving thriller by T.D. Webster about fake
antiques and murder, with a stirring bit of Vivaldi as
the theme music. For some reasons this has
become a generic comfort blanket in our household,
so if someone takes to their bed with 'flu, this play
invariably makes the playlist.
6 "The Wench Is Dead" (Saturday Night Theatre
21.3.1992)
John Shrapnel played Morse in 3 excellent radio
versions of Colin Dexter's novels in the 1990s. It is
a great shame that there were not more. These
adaptations were far more faithful to Dexter's novels
than the TV series with John Thaw. (There was a
feeling of déjà vu when Shrapnel turned up as a
main character in one of the TV episodes opposite
John Thaw in "Death Is Now My Neighbour").
All 3 plays - "Last Seen Wearing", "The Silent World
of Nicholas Quinn" and "The Wench Is Dead" - are
excellent. I have chosen the last-named because
the TV version seemed to stray even further from
the novel than usual, even eliminating Sgt. Lewis.
The main plot device (policeman stuck in hospital
solves ancient crime) is a steal from Jospephine
Tey's "The Daughter Of Time", which was turned into
another excellent play starring Peter Gilmore as
Inspector Grant.
7 "The Speckled Band", 1992.
This Conan Doyle story is a token of the Carleton
Hobbs/Norman Shelley partnership as Holmes and
Watson. A grand staple of "Children's Hour" until the
adults complained that it was on too early for them.
A simple production, which depended enormously on
the projected voices of the actors. It was
apparently recorded on several occasions by Hobbs
and Shelley with different supporting casts. My
version is that issued on the BBC's Radio Collection.
8 "Enquiry" (Hi-Fi Theatre 19.10.1979)
From the very opening words of actor Tony Osoba
"Yesterday, I lost my licence", this adaptation of a
Dick Francis novel rumbles away at a fast pace, and
the 90 minutes speeds by. They must have had
great fun in the recording studio staging the fight
with the hero's demented nemesis at the end. Our
off-air recording was almost worn out by the time
the BBC issued it with "Bonecrack" - another
excellent play starring Francis Matthews - in its Radio
Collection.
9 "Daughters-in-Law" (Saturday night Theatre
2.9.1961)
This stands for the entire Henry Cecil output. His
books had pages of humourous dialogue which
translated effortlessly into radio drama. A
protracted legal case about a borrowed lawn-mower,
starring two veteran actors, Cecil Parker and
Naunton Wayne.
10 "A Shilling For Candles" (Saturday Play
5.12.1998)
Strictly speaking, this play should illustrate much
what is wrong with modern radio drama. Pared
down to just under an hour, with much of Josephine
Tey's novel jettisoned, this free adaptation changes
both the murderer and the explanation for the title
in the original - just minor details, really..!
However, in spite of this, it trundles along with much
good humour, including several references to
superior drama on "the wireless", and a number of
set pieces that could have featured in an Alfred
Hitchcock film. Hitchcock in fact filmed this novel
as "Young & Innocent" in 1938 and also took drastic
liberties in his version. But, taken on its own, it is
a modern play that I have enjoyed hearing again and
again.
A personal delight when compiling this review has
been to dig out all the plays (where available) and
listen to them again. It also reminded the family
that, while reading tastes might include "great
literature", our listening tastes remain more limited.
As long as the play featured a murder or mystery of
some sort, and ideally included a policeman or
detective in the cast list, we would be sure to listen
in and tape it.
Alan Whitby
(reproduced by permission of Roger
Bickerton, editor of "The Circular Note", the VRPCC
newsletter, where this piece originally appeared - many thanks Alan, and Roger.)
