There are three decades worth of old time radio shows out there for Madison to visit. Some which boast literally hundreds of episodes. So why is Madison revisiting Sherlock Holmes?
As it turns out, by pure chance we released the Year One episode of “The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” in the birthday month of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Sherlock community was very enthusiastic about Madison stepping into Dr. Watson’s shoes, asking for more. One fan even requested an autograph from our Sherlock, Albert Garnica, to add to his extensive collection of autographs of actors playing Sherlock across all media platforms! Such a warm reception!
The Year One Sherlock I adapted came from a collection of scripts on the Generic Radio website which I used a lot in the early episodes of Madison. Finding actual written scripts of OTR saves a huge step in production, but I very quickly found the choices limiting. There isn’t a large collection available, which means some of my favorite shows like “Rocky Jordan” aren’t represented, and, as with my choice of “The Scandal in Bohemia” script for the Year One Sherlock, many, many old time radio fan groups have produced that same script multiple times. In fact, David Pinion, who plays our announcer in that episode, said he’d already played the announcer in that very script with another OTR group! That made me feel like the script wasn’t that… special. It was actually “The Shadow” (the episode immediately following the first Sherlock) that I did my first transcription, which I pretty much exclusively do now. So this gave me the opportunity to find a new Sherlock script that maybe wasn’t as familiar to fans and OTR groups.
I will say, I tried to find a “Moriarty” script since he is such a fabulous villain and adversary to Sherlock. But as I listened to episodes from the radio series, I realized they like to REFERENCE Moriarty, but he is kept at a distance. A mystery that always stays a step ahead of Sherlock and does not actually appear in any scenes. There is one episode that was written separately of the “New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” series where Orson Wells plays Moriarty and he and Sir John Gielgud as Sherlock have epic monologues, chewing up the dialogue and clearly enjoying themselves. However, there is no plot! Nothing for Madison to do. (Here’s the Wells episode if you’re interested: The Final Problem) But that’s when I stumbled across “The Accidental Murderess” which had Dr. Watson heavily involved in the plot. Perfect!
So, perhaps a tradition has formed? A new Sherlock each May? The show and characters certainly are a lot of fun and Madison going all the way back to the 1890s is full of discoveries and possibilities. I especially like the dual storyline with Madison telling the story to our poor hapless announcer, and her in the story itself with Sherlock. Let us know if you enjoy the Madison and Sherlock teaming up. And if you have a Sherlock script you like, pass it along! We may do it for Year Three.
