Calfkiller BBC

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This blog is in the process of moving to a new location to be combined with other Calfkiller blogs in a central location. You can find it by clicking here.

Times Past

Here is recent post:

"If you’ve listened to the dramatisations recorded by the Old Court Radio Theatre Company on TimesPast or on the Sherlock Holmes Society of London’s website at www.sherlock-holmes.org.uk, you’ll recognise the name of Dennis Rookard, whose expertise as producer and technician gave them a professional polish. No more, alas, because Dennis died on 2 March aged sixty-eight. A radio man through-and-through, he had worked as a journalist, presenter and producer for the BBC, LBC, Essex FM, the Forces Broadcasting Service and others. Hosiprog, the name under which he made and provided original drama for hospital radio throughout the world, was just one of his many, mostly unpaid, retirement activities.

The Old Court Company and Essex Audio Theatre are continuing to produce and record original material for Hosiprog, with John Rhodes as recording engineer. For extremely practical reasons - plus the fact that we love TimesPast - we're moving the Hosiprog archive to this site. It will take some time, so please be patient.

Anyone is welcome to listen to the recordings, or to download them, and they may be broadcast freely by voluntary and community-run radio stations.

Enjoy!" by Magersfontein

You can follow the posting in the new group "HOSIPROG" on our sister site TimesPast. The group is open to the public.

Sample Post

"In recent years, plays about the Master have abounded. Roger Johnson’s “The Great Detective” is, however, far superior to most of these efforts because it is firmly grounded in Canonical and Doylean reality. Instead of putting words in Holmes and Watson’s mouths that they would have never said or turning Holmes into a 20th century neurotic, Johnson constructs his play primarily from Watson’s and Doyle’s own words -- an ingenious interweaving of portions of several cases and excerpts from Doyle’s writings.

"While experienced Sherlockians will find no surprises in the script, they will appreciate its clever construction and delight in the magic of Holmes, Watson, and Doyle. For novices, the play is a superb introduction to the joys of the Canon and should motivate them to delve more deeply into the Sacred Writings."

[from a review in "The Serpentine Muse", journal of the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes]

The prolific American actor David Ian Davies (no relation to the the eminent British Sherlockian David Stuart Davies) asked me if he could record "The Great Detective", which I wrote and directed for Chelmsford Theatre Workshop in the late 1990s. The idea of adapting the play for audio appealed to me, so of course I said yes. Then David asked if I knew anyone who could act as sound engineer...

This production, in which David Ian Davies plays every character, is a transatlantic collaboration. David recorded the script in California, Dennis Rookard edited the recordings, adding music and sound effects, and I performed some of the functions of a director.

The Great Detective 01.mp3

The Great Detective 02.mp3

older post

Friday, December 25, 2009

Rapidshare Links

Sunday, August 9, 2009

A Life of Bliss

George Cole and Petula Clark at the microphone recording A Life of Bliss.

A Life of Bliss, a new radio sitcom, was introduced by the BBC on the 29th of July, 1953 starring George Cole as awkward, absent-minded bachelor David Bliss. In the early episodes Nora Swinburne played Bliss's sister and Esmond Knight his brother-in-law, playing a married couple, Robert and Pamela Batten, with Rosalind making an appearance in a 1954 as Marie. Later their parts were taken over by Diana Churchill and Colin Gordon.

Listen and download shows here: COTR Archives

Monday, July 6, 2009

American in England, An

An American in England was the story of Norman Corwin's visit to wartime Britain. He had been asked by CBS to observe and report on the character and hardships of a nation under siege.

The US Government arranged for CBS and the BBC to collaborate on this series, intended to give Americans a better understanding of our Ally, Great Britain. Corwin was sent to Britain to create and produce the programs, to be sent via short-wave and rebroadcast in America over CBS. Edward R. Murrow and the CBS staff in London helped a great deal.

In his four months in England, wrote Corwin,

"I did not once interview a high government official. The main objective of the series was to establish the character of the British people and not disseminate the handouts of the Ministry of Information. The people were soldiers, sailors, workers, miners, the theater manager, the elevator man, Police Officer Gilbert, the Everingtons, the Westerbys, Betty Hardy the actress, Henry Blogg the lifesaver, Mary Seaton the newspaperwoman, the RAF officer who handed me a dish in the mess and explained, 'This sausage is made of two ingredients--paper and sawdust'; the navigator, just returned from Wilhelmshaven, who said wistfully, 'Somehow we're always first in over the target'; the woman in Swansea who went to the Guildhall one morning following a severe blitz and turned in two suits of clothes, both nearly new, saying she had bought them for her two boys, killed in the raid."

Ten shows aired under the AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND banner, broadcast in 2 series. The first were 6 shows aired from August 3, 1942 through September 7, 1942. They were created in England and were broadcast via shortwave to the US as well as broadcast from US stations. The second series consisted of only 4 shows, produced in the US after Mr. Corwin's return, and aired December 1, 1942 through December 22, 1942. One of those 4 was a repeat from the first run. All shows were approximately 30 minutes in length.

The seventh show of the series, "Cromer", was re-broadcast May 9, 1944 as the 10th show in the Columbia Workshop: Columbia Presents Corwin series.

All Shows

An American in England.zip

Single Shows

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Thriller: Michael Jackson's Masterpiece

Captured from a Free-To-Air broadcast from BBC Radio 2

Trevor Nelson tells the story of Michael Jackson's classic album Thriller.

In December 1982, two of the music industry's biggest stars - artist Michael Jackson and producer Quincy Jones - came together to produce what would become the biggest-selling album in history.

The album would turn Jackson into the world's biggest superstar and the elaborate, accompanying music videos would become a world-wide phenomenon.

Twenty-five years after this album first went on sale, Trevor Nelson discovers how the album tracks came to be, what role MTV played in the process and how it all nearly fell apart.

This special program features all nine album tracks and exclusive interviews with Quincy Jones, MTV founder Bob Pittman and Moonwalker Jeffery Daniel.

(right click and "save as")

Thriller: Michael Jackson's Masterpiece

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Big Audio Drama

Big Audio Drama is a blog I truly enjoy and thought would pass along the link for others who might like to visit. It has a great selection of BBC content from the past available for download, and I am sure you will find something of interest.

Below is a preview of of some of the content Big Audio Drama has available. Just click on the page ## to view and look over the selections. Click on a selection title to go to download page. Some pages have at the top a download link and password for the selections on that particular page.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Secrets of Scotland Yard (OTRR Certified)

In an earlier time, just prior to and following the Second World War, the general public was fascinated by the subject of crime. Numerous magazines of "True Crime Stories" filled the newsstands. Radio also helped fill the need with fictional heroes such as Johnny Dollar and The Saint. Few true crime dramas, other than Gangbusters or Dragnet, sustained long term success on radio.

The Secrets of Scotland Yardwas a successful crime drama series, initially airing internationally between 1949 and 1951. Selected episodes finally came to a US radio network for a brief run much later in 1957 over the Mutual Broadcasting System.

The series boasted well over 100 episodes, one of which, "The Bone From A Voice Box", apparently served as the prototype for another well remembered Towers Of London dramatic series, The Black Museum. In both series, well known actors were employed as host / narrator, Orson Welles in The Black Museum and Clive Brook here. In fact, the shows were so similar that some of the same actual Scotland Yard cases were dramatized for both series (with totally different scripts, and casts).

The Secrets of Scotland Yard was an independent production of the Towers of London syndicate in England for world wide distribution. Each week, an audience of anxious radio-listeners tuned in to hear these true crime stories of the London Metropolitan Police unfold, as the detectives at the Yard investigated some of England’s most famous criminals. Their trials have become legendary.

Stories presented in the series include the theft of the British crown jewels by Colonel Thomas Blood; the story of a man who finds an armless and legless body wrapped in ribbons and lace; or the strange story of two close brothers who love one another enough to contemplate the murder of a brother’s affluent, yet unsightly and ignorant, wife.

Murders, forgery, and robberies all get a through review on the program. Each time, Scotland Yard detectives are afoot to solve the crime mystery!

The Secrets of Scotland Yard was initially hosted by Clive Brook, probably for the first year or so. To add to the air of authenticity, Brook sometimes discusses matters with Percy Hoskins, a 1950s crime expert and reporter for the London Daily Express. Hoskins knew every nook and cranny in London’s seedier districts and personally reported on many of the major crimes of the day. A student of crime, Hoskins was also one of the founders of the Saints and Sinners Club of London, an educational organization dedicated to true crime investigation methods and results.

Brook had his own Scotland Yard experience previously when he played retired naval commander Stevenson in the 1936 film, "Scotland Yard Commands". American audiences will however probably more familiar with Brooks’ portrayal of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes in the 1932 film of the same name. Brook was eventually replaced by an actor portraying the character Superintendent X of Scotland Yard.
(From the Old Time Radio Researcher's Group)

Download Secrets of Scotland Yard (OTRR Certified) here.
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Saturday, May 30, 2009

Atlantis

Marine archeologist Jack Howard may have found the key to uncovering Atlantis, the legendary sunken city purportedly built by a flourishing culture. A scrap of papyrus discovered in an Egyptian desert, which may contain a secondhand account of the lost city, sends Jack scrambling to assemble a team, including Costas, an MIT- and Stanford-trained expert in "submersible technology" and Katya, a beautiful Russian Atlantis specialist. Once prepped and in position in the Aegean Sea, Jack and company find themselves caught up with Kazakhstan terrorists and a multicountry fight over a missing Soviet nuclear submarine—and that's before they've uncovered the ancient secrets of the lost city.

David Gibbins (born 1962) is an underwater archaeologist and a bestselling novelist. He was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, to English parents who were both academic scientists. He travelled around the world with them by sea as a boy, including four years living in New Zealand, before returning to Canada. He attended the University of Bristol, England, where he was awarded a First Class Honours Degree in Ancient Mediterranean Studies. He then went to Cambridge University as a Research Scholar of Corpus Christi College, where he completed a PhD in Archaeology in 1990. Gibbins learned to scuba dive at the age of 15 in Canada, and dived under ice, on shipwrecks and in caves while he was still at school. He has led numerous underwater archaeology expeditions around the world, including five seasons excavating ancient Roman shipwrecks off Sicily and a survey of the submerged harbour of ancient Carthage. In 1999-2000 he was part of an international team excavating a 5th century BC shipwreck off Turkey. His many publications on ancient shipwreck sites have appeared in scientific journals, books and popular magazines. Most recently his fieldwork has taken him to the Arctic Ocean and to Mesoamerica.

This is his first novel.

Visit David Gibbins official website to find out more about the author and his books.

Found these links on Mediafire:

Atlantis part 1
Atlantis part 2
Atlantis part 3
Atlantis part 4
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Calfkiller BBC

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Huffduffer: calfkillerotr Links tagged BBC

Friday, December 25, 2009

Rapidshare Links

Sunday, August 9, 2009

A Life of Bliss

Monday, July 6, 2009

American in England, An

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Thriller: Michael Jackson's Masterpiece

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Big Audio Drama

Monday, June 1, 2009

Secrets of Scotland Yard (OTRR Certified)

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Atlantis

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