Father Brown

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 345, 1 February 1946, Page 8

Father Brown

(CHESTERTON’S priestly detective, whom he once described himself as an "officious little loafer,’ with nothing better to do in his holy office than to loiter around where murders were being committed, is a figure particularly well adapted to radio drama. The stories in which he figures are usually simple as to incident but eloquent in a rich, nonrealistic way as to dialogue and speech, and greatly dependent on, atmosphere ahd genuinely poetic. uncanniness. However, I only know of two dramas made from the Father, Brown tales: one, which I heard some years ago, was a rather unsuccessful version of his "The Man in the Passage," ruined by an apparent belief that the Father habitually spoke like the Private Secretary; the other was "The Purple Wig," broadcast _as part of the Dickson Carr "Appointment with Fear" series. This tale is not only a superb hair-stiffener, but a lovely satire on Liberal newspapers in the nineteen-hundreds. The Carr manner harmonised well with and subjects itself admirably to the Chesterton manner, The only complaint I have is that the Father was a little man, and the radio voice was that of a large one, But I recommend to any skilled radio dramatist out of a job that he instantly go to work on the Father Brown stories. There are about fifty of them.