What are the best pre-television radio serials?

January 16, 2005 3:57 PM

I'm looking to expand my knowledge of pre-television radio serials. What are some of your favorites?
posted by pxe2000 to Media & Arts (14 answers total)

I'm guessing you're talking about radio programs whose structure parallels, say, movie serials like "Buck Rogers" and "Commander Cody," with exposition at the beginning and a cliff-hanger at the end of every episode. Is that not so? If not, you have entered the world of OTR (old time radio) in general, and there is plenty to listen to, beginning with this man -- the alpha and omega of old time radio.
posted by Faze at 4:17 PM on January 16, 2005

Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man?

The Shadow knows...

(A ha ha ha ha ha ha)
posted by AgentRocket at 4:41 PM on January 16, 2005

Response by poster: AgentRocket: Yes, indeedy. I do loves me some of The Shadow, particularly the Orson Welles period.

I'm looking for OTR serials, particularly of the suspense/mystery ilk. It seems like there's a lot of chaff through which to sort, and I'd love to know some good stuff.
posted by pxe2000 at 5:12 PM on January 16, 2005

It's not a serial per se, but I love Bob Hope's old radio shows. There are some good collections of Hope's Pepsodent shows here, on which site you should be able to find pretty much anything you need.
posted by Dr. Wu at 5:18 PM on January 16, 2005

Journey Into Space is pretty good for getting a 1950s perspective on The Future. Coincidentally, BBC7 is running the second JIS series (The Red Planet) right now. The first couple of episodes have already passed--let me know if you want them.

"Suspense" is probably the most popular program for, well, suspense. They are stand-alone episodes though, not serialized. "X Minus One" is similar, but puts a Twilight Zone/Outer Limits scifi spin on things.
posted by Galvatron at 5:33 PM on January 16, 2005

I'm a big OTR fan, but don't listen to many serials and for some reason I can't stand most of the OTR comedy shows. If you're open to other things though, I recommend
Dimension X and X-Minus One (both sci-fi)
Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and Suspense (detective/mystery/crime)

I once listened to part of the Superman radio serial and thought it was pretty terrible. Here's a list of some radio serials.

A question though: There are many sites that sell decent mp3s via CD of OTR. Is this stuff commonly available as well via p2p/torrents? (I'm not really part of that world at the moment.) I know one can get single shows here and there, but if, say, I'm looking to get the complete run of Dimension X and X-Minus One should I just fork over a few bucks to a reputable CD seller?
posted by gluechunk at 5:51 PM on January 16, 2005

pxe2000: Is 'serial' the proper term here? In regards to silver screen, it refers to a story told over multiple parts. The OTR suspense and mystery shows that I know of were more like the 'Twilight Zone,' typically one story per episode.

Anyhoo, I used to collect OTR shows on cassette, and the SF/mystery/scary stuff was the most enjoyable for me. I really enjoyed shows like "Arch Oboler's Lights Out, Everybody," "(Tales Calculated To Keep You in) Suspense," and "Inner Sanctum." The Rathbone (or was it Gielgud?) Sherlock Holmes stories I found to be nearly as intriguing as the Welles Shadow stuff. You will probably want Welles' "War of the Worlds" if you don't have it already. There were a lot of other 1 hour adaptations of popular novels and movies, too, with many of the film adapatations featuring at least some of the movie's stars.

An awful lot of the comedy of the period is great. I suppose having been that close to the vaudeville days and not having visual humor to rely on helped make the comedy stronger. That, and possibly by its being so old, a lot of the comedy comes across as fresh. Enjoy!
posted by kimota at 5:51 PM on January 16, 2005

I assume everyone knows about The Mercury Theatre on the Air website, but for those who don't it has MP3s of pretty much all the shows they did.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 6:02 PM on January 16, 2005

Speaking of Welles, has anybody heard The Adventures of Harry Lime radio series that Welles did after The Third Man? I've found a place that sells it, but I'm not sure it's worth buying (particularly since I'd rather just download the thing, since the people selling it aren't the rights holders anyway).

Piggyback: are there any BT sites or P2P networks that are particularly good for this kind of stuff? EDonkey and Soulseek have both been fairly disappointing...
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 6:45 PM on January 16, 2005

"Life of Riley" and the "The Bickersons" used to play on a weekly retrospective radio show about twenty years back -- I still recall many of those vividly.
posted by RavinDave at 8:38 PM on January 16, 2005

There doesn't seem to be a lot of OTR floating around on P2P networks. There are a couple of binary newsgroups, but it seems like the best way to expand a collection is to shell out a few bucks for CDs or FTP access at a reputable OTR site. And when I say "a few bucks" I mean that literally--you can get a lot for very little expense.
posted by Galvatron at 10:21 PM on January 16, 2005

The Green Hornet.
posted by davidmsc at 10:39 PM on January 16, 2005

The Adventures of Harry Lime?!

I had no idea. I'm happy to help hunt it down, though.

Who did you find selling it?
posted by kreinsch at 8:12 AM on January 17, 2005

If you want to preview the Harry Lime series, the Criterion DVD of The Third Man includes one of the episodes.
posted by cnelson at 1:11 PM on January 17, 2005