Written criticism
The Critic’s Circle
Short signed pieces on the series worth an argument. Written by people who have listened to the runs rather than read the summaries, with a surviving recording attached to every essay so you can disagree in good faith.
Marion Hale · on drama
The Machinery of Dread
Twenty years of CBS thrillers, and the trick was never the twist. It was the silence the orchestra left behind.
The best-made thriller series in American radio, and the quietest.
Read the essaySuspense · 29 minMarion Hale · on drama
Far Away Places, Cheaply Made
CBS never gave Escape a sponsor or a decent time slot. It made the most adventurous half-hours on the network anyway.
The most literate adventure series of the era, made on nothing.
Read the essayEscape · 29 minPeter Craddock · on crime
The Boredom That Works
Jack Webb's great innovation was to make police work sound like a job, and to trust that this would be interesting.
The programme that taught drama to be ordinary on purpose.
Read the essayDragnet · 29 minPeter Craddock · on crime
A Laugh and a Cheap Lesson
Pulp with the pulp left in. Silly, occasionally sadistic, and the most confident opening in broadcasting.
Ridiculous, relentless, and still the definitive radio villain machine.
Read the essayThe Shadow · 29 minMarion Hale · on drama
The Adult Western, and What It Cost
The best-written American series of the 1950s, and the one that sounds least like entertainment.
Radio's finest western, and one of its finest dramas full stop.
Read the essayGunsmoke · 29 minAda Nwosu · on speculative radio
A Magazine on the Air
NBC bought the best science fiction being written and adapted it honestly. It is still the model nobody follows.
Science fiction taken seriously, half an hour at a time.
Read the essayX Minus One · 24 minAda Nwosu · on speculative radio
The Writer's Medium
Arch Oboler wrote for the ear the way nobody else did, and Lights Out is where he found out how far it would bend.
The most inventive horror writing radio produced.
Read the essayLights Out · 30 minLen Harker · on comedy
The Art of the Pause
Thirty years of a man being cheap. The joke is never the joke; it is the timing, and the company he kept.
The most sophisticated comedy construction in American broadcasting.
Read the essayThe Jack Benny Program · 30 minLen Harker · on comedy
The Closet and the Craft
A sound effect became a national institution. The reason it kept working is everything around it.
The best-engineered domestic comedy of the network era.
Read the essayFibber McGee and Molly · 19 minAda Nwosu · on speech radio
The Microphone in the Street
Before polling, before the vox pop was a cliché, someone pointed a microphone at strangers and let them talk.
The most valuable rough recordings in the archive.
Read the essayVox Pop · 29 min
