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There's classic movies, classic plays, and classic tv shows. But are there classic radio dramas?

SkaveRat - 1day

Not a lot of people nowadays know that the first book was a novelization of the radio play

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Dalacos @lemmy.world - 1day

The most famous is the War of the Worlds broadcast;

Yarp, literally the only one I know off the top of my head.

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Eldritch - 2day

The shadow knows.

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sem - 1day

Mmmuhuhahahahaaa

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Reckless_Moose @ttrpg.network - 1day

The gem smuggling episode was fucked

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Broadfern @lemmy.world - 1day

Wasn’t War of the Worlds an extended radio drama?

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mkwt @lemmy.world - 1day

War of the Worlds was originally a novel in 1898. A 1938 adaptation was made for radio as a single 60 minute episode of The Mercury Theater on the Air.

The radio episode was formatted as a series of increasingly frequent "news bulletins" that interrupted light jazz orchestra music. This caused some listeners to believe that New Jersey was actively being invaded by Martians.

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DontNoodles @discuss.tchncs.de - 1day

Can't believe no one has said the dramatized version of LOTR broadcast by BBC in 1981! 12 hours plus of pure magic. Fun fact: Ian Holm gave the voice for Frodo in the radio version, the same guy who plays Bilbo in the movie trilogy.

Looks like it is on internet archive already: https://archive.org/details/lord-of-the-rings-10_202401 though I first downloaded it on high seas many years ago.

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sexual_tomato @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 1day

Assume 20 years is what it takes to make something classic. Go get classic plates for your 2005 Prius.

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Wugmeister - 7hr

You know what, I'll count it. It had a big impact on me growing up.

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muxika @lemmy.world - 2day

Cracker Barrel used to sell old radio dramas on tape and CD. They had the original ads, too. Awful quality, but the illusion was there.

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Rhaedas - 1day

A 14 hour expanded radio drama of the Star Wars trilogy was done.

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Endymion_Mallorn - 1day

Of course there are. Look up "OTR" on Archive.org.

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niktemadur @lemmy.world - 1day

Having read the original Foundation Trilogy twice, I can give a heartfelt stamp of approval to the BBC radio play of it, apparently it's from 1977, I had assumed it was at least half a decade older than that. Hope you enjoy, I surely did.

https://youtu.be/d2nls_jN1hw

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sem - 1day

One of the classicalest

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QuarterSwede - 1day

Oh yes. Check out OTR Gold podcasts. They’re all classic radio shows and dramas.

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user_name - 19hr

I love the 1979 US audio drama of The Hobbit

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Maiq - 2day

Not a drama but, The Firesign Theatre.

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user_name - 19hr

Came here to say this!

It’s also fun because it gets pretty meta about the whole form of a radio play: for example “The Further Adventures of Nick Danger” includes some fun jokes about drying wet clothes in the cellophane—which is what you’d crumple next to a mic to get the sound of a crackling fire.

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arctanthrope - 1day

ever heard of the Lone Ranger?

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moondoggie @lemmy.world - 1day

The Adventures of Superman, Dick Tracy, The Green Hornet

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pilferjinx - 1day

I had a good time listening to Wolf 359.

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einlander @lemmy.world - 1day

CBS Radio Mystery Theater

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quediuspayu @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 1day

If classic means old, aren't all radio dramas classic radio dramas?

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Wugmeister - 1day

I mean, afaik the genre of radio drama also includes fiction podcasts like Archive 81, Limetown, and Welcome to Night Vale

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quediuspayu @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 1day

I see, I would say anything that first aired (actually aired) on radio.

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glups - 1day

I don't know if it's still available, but you used to be able to download many Orson Welles radio dramas as podcasts. It was great entertainment when I worked for a moving company driving hours ever day

Edit: It was called Relic Radio. The last upload was 2023. Iirc the shows had a wide variety of audio quality

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aramis87 - 1day

You might check out episodes of Lux Radio Theatre. It ran for about 20 years, and every week they performed an hour-long adaptation of either a Broadway play or a popular movie; as much as possible, they tried to use the original cast as well. There's a whole bunch of them on the internet, at the Internet Archive and other sites. I downloaded a whole bunch of them back in the day; I used to listen to them during my commute home.

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sem - 1day

Shout-out to WAMU's Big Broadcast. Sunday nights, three hours of old time radio. Lately they usually play Jonny Dollar, Guns one, a comedy, a feature length drama, and some shorter songs and variety pieces.

You can listen online.

https://wamu.org/show/the-big-broadcast/

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Clay_pidgin - 1day

Great radio show; I listen often.

Gunsmoke; Suspense!; Yours truly, Johnny Dollar; the Shadow; and I was a communist for the FBI.

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sem - 24hr

Jumping off of that, I really enjoyed garrison kieler's spoof, "I was a Unitarian for the FBI"

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sem - 10hr

That definitely part of it, the tagline and musical stings for sure. My memory is that he got inside the church and saw them doing funny secular things, but I could be misremembering. 2007 was a long time ago lollll

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joe_archer @lemmy.world - 1day

If you've got a little while you could listen to [The Archers](The Archers - Wikipedia https://share.google/HNm6SzoUffXpgh18X) there are only 20,000 or so episodes though.

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njm1314 @lemmy.world - 9hr

Of course.

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davepleasebehave @lemmy.world - 1day

Maybe see if you can get a complete box set of the British series The Archers?

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einlander @lemmy.world - 1day

If you are looking for super modern stuff look into BBC Radio 4 Extra.

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Sharkticon @lemmy.zip - 9hr

Of course there are lots of them. Lone ranger was a huge one.

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