The Yard

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 466, 28 May 1948, Page 9

The Yard

WAS interested in 4ZB’s new series | Secrets of Scotland Yard, more especially as it starred Clive Brook, nor, when I listened to the first instalment, did it let me down. Certainly the programme gains a great deal by the presence of Clive Brook, whose wellmodulated, restrained voice adds dignity to what otherwise would be just another crime series, At the same time attempt is made to give listeners a slight acquaintance with the methods employed in bringing criminals to justice. I shouldn’t imagine the Yard would allow its top secrets to be broadcast for the benefit of future criminals, and the amount of technical information available to listeners will probably amount to approximately as much as the tech-1 nical medical information revealed in films about popular young doctors, so that for all critical purposes we must agree that the main interest in this series lies in the appeal to the listener’s | deductive instincts, and the of the chase when one is comfortably settled on the side of law and order. The first episode lived up to the highest requirements of a good thriller pro-gramme-the gory remains in the trunk at the left-luggage department, the piecing together of slender clues and slight snippets of information by a persistent police force, the trap into which the none-too-bright criminal easily falls, and the final triumph of justice. Combine all this with the narrator’s suave voice, the well-managed production, the careful build-up of mounting tension--could the thriller-addict ask for more?.