Requiem

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 426, 22 August 1947, Page 9

Requiem

T is not often that the hardened listener pipes an eye at the conclusion of a serial. Usually he is not present at the obsequies, losing interest perhaps after the first 20 appointments, and thereafter restricting his appreciation to an involuntary, "What, still going strong?" if in the course of his knob-

: twiddling he should chance to hear the. once familiar voices. Yet final instalments are significant occasions in the radio listener’s life -- sometimes merely because they happen, like MHaley’s comet, only once in a lifetime, or so it probably appeared to followers of The Japanese Houseboy or Eb and Zeb. Less often a final episode is significant because it is in itself artistically satisfy‘ing and also because ‘its finality evokes in listeners genuine regret for the passing of something beautiful and significant in their listening lives.: 2YD’s Man of Propetty was such a serial, and its final episode the swan-song script-writers dream of but seldom achieve. Now we: are to hear Anne of Green Gablés, who will probably have a longer life and, in her own way, possibly as respected a one, But her harum-scarum youth provides at the moment too glaring a contrast to the epic stability which was lost to us with the passing of Old Jolyon.