If you caught our December 2022 holiday episode, there was a guest appearance by Olivia from the comedy sci-fi podcast, “Oz 9.” The original Wonder Woman script had the bad guy in a submarine barking orders at a female computer voice. Immediately my mind went to Olivia. In the vain of those subservient female computer voices sci-fi seems to repeatedly embrace, Olivia, on the other hand, is witty and snarky and definitely does her duties on her own terms. I knew she wouldn’t let that Nazi get away with anything! So I wrote her into the scene, hoping to capture Shannon Perry’s hilarious character. Shannon gave a big thumbs up, and became the first character crossover with “Madison on the Air.”
But Olivia was only in one short scene. Could we do a crossover with another show? If you’ve been listening to any of our episodes for these last two years, you’ll see I heavily favor detective noir radio shows. So, naturally, any time there are new audio dramas produced with noir detectives, I check them out. And through chats on Twitter, I discovered “Canary P.I.” I enjoyed J. Henry’s gritty detective, very much within the genre of the original noir radio shows and films. Always trying to give a unique approach to each of our Madison episodes, I reached out to see if he would be interested in Canary solving a case in Madison’s world. And, thankfully, he said yes!
If you’ve heard Canary’s show (which I hope you have or you will give it a listen now!) Canary, much like the original OTR, is stand-alone episodes. This is more rare than you’d think. Seems the majority of audio dramas out there tell one story over a season. So that made it a good fit for Madison. The main difference, is Canary often finds himself involved in more horror or supernatural storylines. But that was the fun of this crossover. I picked “Richard Diamond, Private Detective” because of all of the detective noirs of the 30s-50s, Diamond had more of a light-hearted tone. And then I found the episode, “To Guard a Seal” or also called, “Timothy the Seal” and OMG… a gritty, horror detective mixed in with Madison and a barking sea lion? Yes, please!
So I wrote the script with Canary’s voice in my head. Really, the same as I do with all of my shows, always trying to hear the original actors and keep that tone so I am true to the series. A lot of Canary’s lines are taken directly from the original show, but Richard Diamond is lucky enough not to have Madison trying to elbow her way into the case. That gave a great contrast between our two detectives, and made for a lot of fun (I absolutely had a BLAST with the Cheetos section). Then I sent it out to J. Henry to make sure I didn’t include anything he felt was against his character. He requested the “tell me what vexes ya” line, a staple for the opening of his episodes, and we were off and running. Like all of my actors, J. Henry recorded remotely and sent the recordings to me. I edited it, Jeremy gave it the final polish and music… and here we are!
I hope you enjoyed these two worlds coming together. And if you know of any other current audio dramas who might be a great mix with Madison and OTR, please feel free to reach out! MadisonOnTheAir@gmail.com
