Date with the Dithers

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 391, 20 December 1946, Page 10

Date with the Dithers

T is now quite a few months-the ‘better part of a year-since the BBC series Appointment with Fear began cheering the long evenings of NZBS J — SPA gees O28 yl

listeners. The tales differed very con‘siderably in quality; in spite of the title and the inaugural publicity they never attained to a Grand Guignol or "Horror" style; there were no ghosts worth mentioning and not a great deal of atmosphere; several devices, like the giant octopus, had whiskers on and cobwebs on the whiskers; for the most part they depended on suspense for their effect, which unless handled by a vir‘tuoso like Hitchcock, seems shopworn. But one listened regularly, partly for the vigour and distinction which John Dickson Carr brings to his most perfunctory themes, and partly for the admirable performance of an unknown actor who, in the role of the n in Black, introduced each broadcast in a few velvet-and-strychnine sentences. However, as time went on, it began to seem as if the Man in Black’s personality were overpowering the dramas he compéred. The latest Appointment heard apparently had nothing to do with Dickson Carr: by orfe Robert Barr, it was a rather dreary tale about the Danish underground chivvying a female quisling ~--undistinguished in plot and devoid of character. The Man in Black, however, gave of his best, with no other result than to make the whole thoroughly topheavy.