So, back in autumn, I found the collection of BBC Radio's
Saturday Night Theatre someone had
put on the Internet Archive (also originally here with often slightly better audio at
OTTR), ranging in date from the 1950s to the 1990s and with the help of the
BBC Genome to identify things, downloaded all the Martin Jarvis ones, all the David Collings ones and a couple of bonus plays while I was at it. Ever since I've been slowly listening to them, although as I did them chronologically, and Mr Collings didn't get going on radio till the 80s, it's been mostly Mr Jarvis.
I've been wanting to talk about these because a lot of them were really easy and enjoyable intros to interesting or well known mid-century novelists and playwrights that I had never read/seen and probably never would have any other way, and that was just really nice. I ended up writing these and being all "I enjoyed this!" Which is frustrating, because that doesn't generate conversation, but I do want to talk audio plays and I did enjoy most of them a lot.
Martin Jarvis was mainly a lot of young officers who were either nice or messed up in some way. I feel like they were all called Peter or Paul or Michael, but I'm not sure that's true.
1.
Journey's End (1970) - adaptation of Sheriff's play, with Martin Jarvis as Stanhope. I was very excited for this one, as I wanted to familiarise myself with the play because James Maxwell played Osborne (apprently very well) on stage in the early 70s (with Peter Egan as Stanhope), and this made for a very accessible way for me to finally do it. It's set in WWI and it's very good. It's had a more recent film adaptation, so people probably know of it anyway. (Richard Hurndall was also in it, because obv Richard Hurndall is just obligatory at this point. I was not at all surprised to hear him. I'm only surprised he didn't turn up again.)
2.
A Question of Fact (1970) - an original radio play, set in the 1950s, where Martin Jarvis a teacher at a boys' public school, who discovers shortly before his marriage that he's adopted and is the son of a murderer and starts worrying about bad blood and whether he should have married his wife (whose parents don't approve of him anyway) and if he should still be teaching etc etc. The sound on this one wasn't that great (although ok!) and I was worried about where it was going, but once his birth mother turned up, it all went to places I didn't expect and had a rather good ending, and I enjoyed it. I'd have enjoyed it more if I'd known that was where it was going and not had to worry what the 1970s-written, 1950s-set thing was going to give me.
3.
The Wind Cannot Read (1971) - adaptation of
Richard Mason's novel. This one was really interesting! I hadn't heard of the author before and had to go and look him up, because the story was actually pretty unusual. It turns out the book is still in print and there was also a
film version and that he wrote a few other novels - I might see if I can read some one day.
It was set in WWII in the far east. Martin Jarvis is an injured soldier sent to learn Japanese for intelligence work, who falls in love with the teacher, a Japanese woman who is helping the Allies, and who suffers a lot of prejudice and suspicion directed at her. It's a full on weepy, so you can guess what happens, but it immediately felt unusual for the era and sympathetic enough to catch my interest, as I said.
Not (sadly) 4.
The Twelve Maidens (1971, 6 pt occult drama serial) - this one was not a SNT but it caught my attention going through the MJ Genome results, because I do like a bit of dodgy 1970s village of evil type stories. It may exist (or at least partially; an episode or something was returned to the BBC Archives relatively recently), but whatever the case, it is not available to me on the internet. It was also adapted shortly after in teh 1970s for German radio (ironically this DOES still exist and IS on the internet archive for download, so if you speak German, it's yours), but the writer turned it into a novel as well, and I got hold of it! It did get a bit preachy (the author was a founder member of the UK Wiccan religion and keen to explain it all in his novel), but most of it was so dialogue heavy, those parts had to be straight out of the radio play and it gave a really good idea of the plot and characters and how the audio aspect would have been handled - its origins were so clear that someone else who reviewed online basically said "this would make a great radio play." It also immediately struck me as possibly being one of the sources that fed into Chris Boucher's
Image of the Fendahl - the general tone, and opening with the scientists, and in particular Martin Jarvis's character Peter being a similar combination of sceptic-despite-overwhelming evidence-BUT-still-helpful to the end as Colby that I've not seen anywhere else (although of course, maybe the ur-Peter-Colby figure comes from some more famous example of the genre, because, being a horror-wimp, I haven't even managed
Quatermass yet so what do I know?)
I loved that Peter was basically bewitched twice, witnessed several performances of magic and probably killed the baddies by magic and remained entirely sceptical. Even the security guy was into white magic before the end, but not Peter. EVeryone else was just: Peter is an idiot, but he's our idiot, and you can't keep casting spells on him.
This is the ending, so you can see how delighted I would be to listen to this one if I could. I would probably write fic, too:
( Cut for my pics of the last 3 pages for the delectation of my readlist )Plus, I want to know if all the nudity is in the actual serial or was just part of the extra sexy bits added to the book. (I'm just amused at radio nudity. The easiest kind of nudity for actors to play! No need for any fuss or worry or catching chills in a draughty studio! lol)
4.
Mutiny on the Bounty (1973) - adaptation of the famous novel, fictional version of historical events, I don't need to tell the story. Martin Jarvis was Fletcher Christian. He did some mutinying and disappeared off with his ship. I enjoyed it. The sound was a bit questionable.
5. & 6.
The Prisoner of Zenda &
Rupert of Hentzau (1973) - adaptations of the novels with Julian Glover as Rudolf (both), Hannah Gordon as Flavia, Nigel Stock as Colonel Sapt and Martin Jarvis as Rupert of Hentzau. This was as much fun as I'd hoped. I did once read or try to read Zenda and I was not keen on it at the time. (I was a teenager, I was very unimpressed with the lack of stuff for the women to do and I couldn't be bothered. I think I ended up skimming through it and rolling my eyes.) This was a great way to actually find out the story without having to attempt any more reading of the series (other than watching
The Androids of Tara, of course! XD) Obviously, if your no. 1 priority is sword fights, you can only listen to these, which I suppose must be a drawback (although you can amuse yourself imagining probably true images of Julian Glover and Martin Jarvis doing their own sound effects with cutlery or similar.) Anyway, it was good and I enjoyed it much more than trying to read the book back in the day. Rupert is a terrible villain, though; he keeps just running off and ruining his and other people's evil plots because he gets fed up and shoots the wrong people.
7.
Strode Venturer (1974) - adaptation of a Hammond Innes novel. This one I didn't enjoy so much, but tbf, that was probably because the audio quality was poor AND it featured a lot of storms, helicopters and modern ships, so I spent most of it trying to work out what was going on. But John Shrapnel was looking for Martin Jarvis, which was a lot of effort because Martin Jarvis kept going off to different hard to find islands in the far east, so Martin Jarvis was lucky John Shrapnel was patient enough to do it. Eventually John Shrapnel had enough of looking for Martin Jarvis and went back and married his sister instead, who was much easier to find and less inclined to be trouble and wasn't called Peter. or Paul. Or Michael.
8
The Road to Gretna Green (1975) - historical drama based on a true story, in which Martin Jarvis was a bounder who abducted teenage Rosalind Ayres (his rl wife) out of school and tried to take her to Gretna to marry her and that is a sentence that does weird things to my head thinking about it and listening to it happen. But it was good! It's just actors have peculiar lives sometimes. (It's not as bad as Karen Archer and David Collings, but we won't go back to the whole sex on the radio thing until next time David Collings turns up in one of these in the 1980s. /o\)
That is not even all of the 1970s Martin Jarvis
Saturday Night Theatre installments I have listened to! But it is enough for one post.
Anyway, in short, if they interest you, they are all good adaptations/plays and the only hang up is that a couple of them do (understandably, as older off-air recordings) have poor audio.
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