WOOOOO-WEEEEEE-WOOOOO-WOOOOOO

I love how the Whistler, the narrator of the series, continually torments the protagonist of each episode. "You thought you were safe, didn't you, John? You thought the police would never find a clue connecting you to the murder of Laura . . ." yada, yada, yada

I don' think this show had any episodes that really stand out as classics, yet it was one of the most consistantly good shows in radio history.

An interesting episode is The Oriana Affair, as the main character's action to prevent him from being implicated in a murder actually ends up getting him caught, in a rather roundabout way.

If there's one episode which has absolutely no redeeming traits, it would be The Brass Ring. As well as having a situation that wasn't even remotely plausible, the crime was done in a sloppy and inept manner, rather than a slick one where all the bases were covered except for one so obvious it got overlooked. Interestingly, this was apparently based on a previously published story, which just goes to show that the writers should have stuck with their own material.

Ever heard "A Matter of Odds?" A crook always figures the odds about what he is doing--ripping off his friends, marrying a heiress, etc. At the end, he has shot one of his ex-friends and is trying to escape. He crawls off holding onto some wires that run over a cliff. The wires start to break--he has to decide whether to turn back or keep going. Instead, he stays where he is, trying to figure out the odds. He takes too long and he ends up falling...right onto some big rocks that were...ta-dah, smack dab in the middle. If he had either went back or kept going, he would have fallen into a river.

That isn't really a great episode; there is little dramatic context, the ending is poorly done (I would have actually shown him falling), and the dialogue is hack. But I really like it--it seems very Hitchcockian.

That must have been an early episode. I understand that the early ones had the Whistler sum up what happened in the end. After a year or so of this, the production team figured it would be more effective if the ending was actually acted out. Smart move.

Actually, it isn't even the Whistler summing up up, it's just two bit players that do the whole "Hey, look at this body" thing. That's what really gets me. There's nothing more aggravating than having an interesting story grind to a halt for extraneous dialogue.

"A Law of Physics" is a cool episode too, which gets to make use of the then-innovative idea of a car phone.