Half-Hour Dramas from the BBC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 732, 24 July 1953, Page 6

Half-Hour Dramas from the BBC

T must have been quite a change for Sam Costa to make his entrarce in a radio show without the famous ‘"\Vas there something?" of Much-Binding days. But Sam has addod straight actor to the two other callings-cerooner and variety comedian-which made him famous. In %/ho’s Your Lady Friend? a BBC mystery drama, he plays the lively _ detective-sergeant who has a hand in , unmasking a murderer. | Written by Peter Fraser, Who’s -Your |Lady Friend? is one of a, BBC Series entitled Thirty minute Theatre, scheduled to begin soon from YA and Commercial stations. Originally broad- | cast in’ Britain’s Home’ and: Light pro. | grammes, the series covers the range | of*radio drama from macabre mystéiy to sentimental comedy. It «should not | be confused with the Austrelian series of the same name at present being heard. from 2YC on Satirday after- |; noons. | # Sam? Costa’ is not the only well-known _ comedian to appear in the broadcasts. | Wilfred’ Pickles plays the commercial traveller in Autumn Holiday, a comedy story Lady with a

Dos. With him will be Victoria Hopper as the little grass widow. A radio doctor with an approach quite different from usual will also ap--pear during the series. He is the medico of Alicia Ramsey and Rudolph de ‘Cordova’s

Regency period play Dr. Abernethy. Noted fur the extreme bluntness of his bedside manner Dr. Abernethy kept the Prince of Wales waiting while he attended a non-paying patient, and later informed the First Gentleman of Europe that he was not a future king at all, but a mere "stomach." The good doctor had a theory that most diseases arose from over-eating (in that day of gargantuan meals he had good reason to think so), and as a result he prescribed for most of his patients a dry biscuit The Radio Times describes Dr. Ahernethy as "one of the best radio plays ever written,"

and recalls that after a pre-war broadcast in America the co-author received letters addressed to ."Dr. Abernethy, C/o Rudolph de Cordova." Other broadcasts in Thirty-minute Theatre include: Summer Rain, the Quinteros’s little lightweight drama about a crotchety old couple on a park bench who rediscover a 50-year-old romance; The Private View, Stefan Zweig’s moving story of a blind artlover whose prints are sold to ward off poverty and replaced by blank sheets of paper; Fame Without Spur, Frank Weston’s comic portrayal of a Roval Academician’s unconvertional rise to fame; Mr. X, the tale of the remarkable change in mousey little George Tapping which was brought about when thes mysterious Mr. X came into his life; and There’s An Alligator on the Landing, Ross Cockrill’s queer story of an elderly sinner with a disconcerting knowledge of Voodoo. Thirty-minute Theatre starts from 2ZA at 7.45 p.m, this Sunday. July 26, and from all YA stations at 8.30 p.m. on Saturday, August 29. It is scheduled to begin from 4ZB on September 13, 3ZB on September 27, 2ZB on October 18, and 1ZB on November 22.