Paul Temple: The Complete Radio Collection: Volume One: The Early Years (1938-1950)

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By Timothy, it's good to hear this early BBC Paul Temple which, according my little friend Mr Wikipedia, was first broadcast from October to December 1942 (right in the middle of the War, of course). Created for the BBC radio serial Send for Paul Temple in 1938, the Temples featured in more than 30 BBC radio dramas, twelve serials for German radio, four British feature films, a dozen novels, and a BBC television series. A Paul Temple daily newspaper strip ran in the London Evening News for two decades. [1] Overview [ edit ] Paul's hunt for Dr Belasco takes him from London's Soho to a dangerous rendezvous on the Great North Road. The 52 episodes, made over 4 seasons, were co-produced with ZDF, a West German television station based in Munich. This made it practicable, in terms of the show's budget, to film location scenes for the series overseas (i.e. in Munich and other cities in West Germany). The episodes were subsequently dubbed into German, using German voice artists, for broadcast by ZDF to German audiences.

Now it's the turn of Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair from 1946, in which Paul and Steve come to the aid of a baffled Scotland Yard in pursuit of a deadly and mysterious criminal mastermind. Not only has the recording disappeared but also the scripts of Episodes 1, 2 and 6. This new production is made possible by the recent discovery by a colleague in Norwegian radio of a complete set of scripts in an old store cupboard in Oslo.

Searching for Julia's killer, a fortune teller in Brighton warns the Temples they're in grave danger. From 1938 to 1968, Francis Durbridge's incomparably suave amateur detective Paul Temple and his glamorous wife Steve solved case after baffling case in one of BBC radio's most popular series. Sadly, only half of Temple's adventures survive in the archives. The radio series was a collaboration between writer Francis Durbridge and BBC producer Martyn C Webster, both of whom worked all of the radio broadcasts aired over the thirty years from 1938 to 1968. Durbridge was still at college when he approached Webster, who was then with the BBC Midland Region, with his proposal for a mystery series about a gentleman detective. [6] April 1938 saw the transmission on the BBC's Midland Regional Programme of a thriller serial called 'Send for Paul Temple', written by Francis Durbridge. For the next thirty years, until 1968, the incomparably suave private detective and crime novelist Paul, together with his glamorous Fleet Street journalist wife Steve, solved case after baffling case in one of BBC radio's most enduringly popular series. Unfortunately, recordings of many of the early series are lost to the archives. Perhaps the biggest trope of all: the mystery writer who actually solves actual crimes. Durbridge didn’t create it, of course, and he certainly wasn’t the last one to do it.

Peter Coke, who in 1954 took over the lead role, had a small part in this serial "Obituary: Peter Coke", the Guardian, 4 September 2008 Peter Coke: Voice of radio sleuth Paul Temple". The Independent. 13 August 2008. Archived from the original on 25 May 2022. Unfortunately, about a third of the earliest original radio broadcasts have been lost over the years, mostly due to BBC cost-cutting measures (“Hey, we can tape over these!”), with all the surviving original shows released by the BBC Radio Collection, and in the 2000s, they began re-recording and airing the remaining episodes with new actors, using the original sound effects and theme music when possible, all in an effort to retain as much as faithful as possible to the original broadcasts. ABOUT THE AUTHORTemple is a mystery author turned private eye (and shit magnet–trouble just seems to follow him), who is frequently “sent for” by Scotland Yard to “help out.” Aiding him in almost all of his investigations is his faithful journalist wife, Louise, known to one and all as “Steve,” after her writing pen name of Steve Trent. Also frequently lending a hand is Sir Graham Forbes of Scotland Yard, who would join the couple at the end of each show to offer a post-mortem of sorts on the case at hand. Peter John Coke ( / k ʊ k/ "cook"; 3 April 1913 – 30 July 2008) was an English actor, playwright and artist. [1] Early life [ edit ] Following Peter Galino's tip-off, the Paul Temple and wife Steve search for clues in a London club. Coke lived with his partner Fred Webb, a theatrical lighting engineer, and they collected shells in France and Italy for many years until Webb died in 2003. [2] Coke died aged 95 at Sharrington Hall on 30 July 2008. [13] Plays [ edit ] One thing that fascinated me as an 11-year-old in 1938, prior to being evacuated out of London to where no radio was available , was the music. Both the intro and ending were awesome, hair-raising stuff… I never forgot it.”

Paul Temple's Triumph (abridged remake of radio serial News of Paul Temple) with John Bentley as Temple and Dinah Sheridan as Steve. Initially the serials were broadcast on the service in the BBC Midlands Region service. As they gained in popularity, they were aired nationally instead on the Home Service. However, in 1945, they found a new permanent home on the Light Programme, which too was a national station, where they remained (save for occasional repeats on the Home Service) until the last serial in 1968. The introductory and closing music for the majority of the serials was Coronation Scot, composed by Vivian Ellis, though the earliest serials (those aired prior to December 1947) used an excerpt from Scheherazade by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. [7] Repeats of some serials continued to be heard on the successor to the Home Service, Radio 4, during the 1980s, and as late as 1992 (when The Spencer Affair was repeated to celebrate Francis Durbridge's 80th birthday). [5] I am old enough to recall when the Australian Broadscasting Commission transmitted Peter Coke's Temple at 10.00 at night. For me, Paul Temple was often accompanied by cries from my mother:The net is closing on Dr Belasco, but the sleuth and his wife are now in danger from an unexpected quarter. Stars Gerda Stevenson. During 2011–12 all four Paul Temple movies were released by Renown. A DVD box set of three was released in November 2011; the fourth film, Paul Temple's Triumph, was released singly, initially to Renown Club members only, in March 2012, but has since become generally available.