@narnian78 I've heard my mum reminisce about racing home after school (in Australia in the 1950s) to listen to The Lone Ranger on the radio! There weren't any similarly popular radio dramas when I was little, though — at least not that I was ever aware of. But since moving to the UK, I've found that the BBC regularly airs radio plays, so they obviously still have a good following over here.

I haven't heard anything else by Focus on the Family (they're not a known "thing" in Britain or Australia, where very publicly religious organisations really aren't part of the culture), but The Secret Garden is another of my favourite childhood stories and I'd love to hear a radio play of that!

I did buy a very good audio drama version of A Christmas Carol on cassette when I was about 11 or 12, soon after I first read the book — I can't remember who produced this recording, but it was really brilliantly done. All the voice actors and sound effects were spot on, nearly every part of the narration and dialogue came word for word from the book, and the writer(s) condensed the story beautifully so that it left out nothing important while all fitting onto one cassette tape, so it must have been under 90 minutes (which was the absolute maximum length of an audio cassette back then). I used to listen to it every Christmas and can still hear those actors' voices whenever I read the book. I must see if I've still got that tape somewhere when I'm next visiting my parents... 

Focus on the Family is known via Christian radio here in NZ, and I have heard parts of a number of well-presented stories, some Biblical but most good stories and biographies.

 

I've heard the Focus on the Family audio dramas. Just LWW through VDT.  But they're definitely really good.

Probably some of the best voice acting I've heard anywhere...and Aslan's roar .... *chef's kiss*.

@glenwit

There was some discussion on the Facebook page of animating the dramas. Although it is an interesting idea, the cost  of such a project would be enormous.  It’s a neat idea though.  It has been done with the lost Dr. Who episodes.  Imagine watching the Radio Theatre instead of just listening to it.  Some cartoon animation would work well with the story, although I actually prefer the real people in the BBC Narnia.  🙂

Posted by: @courtenay

but The Secret Garden is another of my favourite childhood stories and I'd love to hear a radio play of that!

Focus on the Family has a well-done radio theatre production of The Secret Garden.  

And speaking of Focus, over the years, we have collected a decent chunk of all that they have put out in the Radio Theatre dep't:

the seven Chronicles of Narnia;

Bonhoeffer: the cost of freedom;

The Hiding Place (Corrie and Betsie Ten Boom);

Amazing Grace (the Equiano, Newton, Wilberforce era);

Screwtape Letters; CS Lewis at War (how Mere Christianity came to be);

Anne of Green Gables;

At Home in Mitford;

Les Misérables;

Ben Hur;

A Christmas Carol (Dickens);

Oliver Twist;

Silas Marner.

^ All excellent stuff! I listen to each one of these at least once a year when I'm working in the kitchen.

Over the next few years, I want to collect any Focus radio dramas we do not yet have. I am still hoping they will attempt The LotR or The Hobbit at some point. A huge undertaking, to be sure.

Aside from Focus, I have a few BBC radio dramas: The LotR; The Hobbit; and now I am beginning my collection of the BBC Dickens' stories: on Great Expectations now, having just finished A Tale of Two Cities; next on to Our Mutual Friend and then The Mystery of Edwin Drood. This large set was a gift for me for Mother's Day/my birthday this year from our kiddos ; next year (or possibly Christmas) they will add another 4-book CD set by Dickens, which includes Pickwick Papers.

Last year I purchase a number of James Herriot books on CD, which are, for the most part, priceless! We really enjoy having the full read-throughs by Jim Dale of each of the Harry Potter books. We also have random radio dramas on CD, which we also appreciate from time-to-time.

I hope you can hear the rest of the Chronicles sometime soon, @glenwit.  

Posted by: @narnian78

I have also enjoyed audio dramas of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.  The Hobbit was broadcast on NPR and The Lord of the Rings was created for the BBC.  I think Ian Holmes was the voice of Frodo Baggins and another actor, James Arrington, was Bilbo Baggins.  These dramas were made in the 1970’s and 1980’s, long before Peter Jackson’s movies.   If you ever get a chance to listen to the dramas I think you will be pleased at their accuracy to Tolkien’s books.  It takes a long time to listen to them since The Hobbit is on four CD’s and The Lord of the Rings is on twelve. But the programs offer much more from the books than any TV series or film.

Here is some more information on the BBC radio drama:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_(1981_radio_series)

Ooh, I missed this earlier in the thread! I didn't know there were radio plays of those as well. I might have to look out for them some day...  

Posted by: @jo

Focus on the Family has a well-done radio theatre production of The Secret Garden.  

Yes, it was Narnian78's reference to that production in a previous post that led me to mention I'd like to hear it! Good to see they have such a great range of other Radio Theatre plays that sound well worth listening to. I'd love to hear what they do with Screwtape...  

Screwtape is exceptionally done, as well ... with Andy Serkis as the infamous Screwtape!!!

Posted by: @courtenay

Yes, it was Narnian78's reference to that production in a previous post that led me to mention I'd like to hear it!

Wups, serves me right for skimming.  

 

Posted by: @jo

Screwtape is exceptionally done, as well ... with Andy Serkis as the infamous Screwtape!!!

Sounds preciousssssssssssss!!  

Out of interest, how do they handle the book as a radio play? The Screwtape Letters itself, as a book, is all in Screwtape's "voice", which means you could simply have one actor reading it aloud (I have been known to do this privately at home for the fun of it ) — but that would just be a straightforward audiobook, really, although it could have music and sound effects added here and there.

Does the FOTF version do that, or rewrite it as an actual play with other characters' voices included (e.g. Wormwood, "the patient", his mother, his girlfriend)? That would be interesting, but it'd change the tone of the story somewhat.

@col-klink

Col. Klink, I was wondering about something.

Do you have any favorite audio dramas of your own to discuss here? You wanted me to change the title of the thread and I did that.  I thought you might want to discuss the topic since you seemed quite interested in it. Instead of just correcting people (telling them to change the title of the topic) you could offer some creative discussion of your own.

@narnian78, I don't actually listen to the radio much, so I'm not sure why you think I'd have interesting thoughts, but I love a lot of the FOTF Radio Theatre dramas that have been mentioned in this thread. The Narnia ones are probably the best Narnia adaptations out there. Well, on the whole, that is. A few of performances from the younger actors could be better. Lucy is a little too over the top and Peter is rather stiff, especially in the scene where Mr. Beaver tells him the truth about Edmund. But most of the actors are great. The four leads in The Horse and his Boy are just about perfect in fact. 

My other favorite Radio Theatre dramas are The Screwtape Letters, A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist. (The voice actor for Oliver Twist himself is sadly kind of annoying, but everyone else in it is great. It's my favorite adaptation of that book.) A Christmas Carol BTW is an adaptation of both the book by Charles Dickens and the screenplay for the 1951 movie. I think they did a good job figuring out which were the best bits of each.

I have some problems with the Radio Theatre adaptation of Les Misérables, in the second half,

(For some reason, it's always in the second half that they change that story.) But a great voice cast makes it well worth a listen. It was probably a bad idea for the FOTF to adapt that book since it's a "progressive" book and they're a "conservative" organization, but it's such a great story that I don't blame them for wanting to tackle it. Sheesh, I'm much closer to their worldview than Victor Hugo's and I love the book. In general, the Radio Theatre adaptations tend to make a lot of changes that reflect their rightwing views, but I really don't think that makes them inferior to Hollywood or television adaptations since they tend to make changes that reflect their leftwing views. 

Posted by: @courtenay

Does the FOTF version do that, or rewrite it as an actual play with other characters' voices included (e.g. Wormwood, "the patient", his mother, his girlfriend)? That would be interesting, but it'd change the tone of the story somewhat.

Some of the letters are turned into conversations between Screwtape and Wormwood as they eavesdrop on the patient and the people around him. Others are the same as they are in the book. I was afraid at first that the "letters" part of the title would cease to make sense. But I think they included enough letters to still justify it. 

I'm glad the title of this thread was changed because it would be very annoying for people looking for audiobooks to glance at it, check out the titles recommended and find they were actually adaptations and not simply the books being read aloud.

Not me. I don't really enjoy audiobooks. There's a scene from an episode of The Middle where a character tries to overcome his addiction to reading by listening to audiobooks instead and ends up yelling, "he's emphasizing the wrong words!" That's how I feel. The actors in adaptations don't say their lines the exact same way they sound in my head either, but for some reason that doesn't bother me as much. Maybe that's because audiobooks are closer to books, so I expect them to capture the experience of reading better.

Speaking of which....

Posted by: @courtenay

I grew up knowing that the Narnia books came from Britain (like most of my favourite books), and the BBC TV series came out when I was 7-8 years old and I watched it again and again (on video... yes, I'm dating myself here ). So that's how I always hear the characters speak in my imagination,

I "know" that the characters have English accents, but when I read any books the characters always sound vaguely like me (an American) in my head. That's just how it is.  

Although I haven’t heard all of the dramas I think they did a decent job of having the accents sound British or Scottish as in the Narnia books and At the Back of the North Wind.   You feel as if you are in the places where the story is taking place.  There are some things which could have been done better, such as The Lion, and Witch and the Wardrobe could have been three hours long to accommodate more of the book. It is one of deepest books and deserves more time.  But I think for the most part the people who created these dramas did a wonderful job. There is excellence in every production.  I don’t think anyone has made better audio dramas than Focus on the Family, although Big Finish does really good work with Dr. Who.

Posted by: @narnian78

There are some things which could have done better, such as The Lion, and Witch and the Wardrobe could have been three hours long to accommodate more of the book. It is one of deepest books and deserves more time.

Interesting observation there... I know the book backwards and I didn't notice that the FOTF radio play left any really significant portions of it out. To be fair, I've only listened to it the once, but I don't remember getting irritated that they'd changed things! It's actually one of the shortest books in the series and probably the simplest, plot-wise — as in how many "threads" there are in the story and how much is going on at any one time — compared to the others. It definitely is deep when it comes to the ideas and messages it's getting across (they all are!), but I wouldn't say there's very much more that the radio play could have included in order to make it better, at least not without adding scenes and dialogue that aren't in the original book. Unless they did leave out some important bits that I've forgotten about? I'll have to listen to it again some time soon...

@courtenay

Interestingly enough, the BBC’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is about three hours long, and I don’t think they changed or added much to the story. So it does seem possible to make it longer. Probably some scenes in Focus on the Family were shortened a little, although I’m not sure which ones. So did that adaptation shorten the story too much? Probably some of the dialect was condensed . There is a difference in time, but both versions are very faithful to the book. Voyage of the Dawn Treader is about three hours long on the Focus on the Family CD’s. It is only about two hours on the BBC version, which I really liked,  but I thought it could have been longer. One wonders if some scenes like The Hunting of the White Stag and Mrs. Beaver’s sewing machine are essential to a movie or TV series.

@courtenay, they left out the robin and I think they may have left out some of the exposition in the After Dinner scene, mainly the part about the White Witch's ancestry, but I don't remember for sure. More annoyingly, they really cut down the scene of Mrs. Beaver calmly packing while everyone else is panicking. That's a great scene in the book, but on reflection, I feel like both the BBC TV serial and the Walden Media movie mess it up by making it seem like we're supposed to agree with the other characters instead of Mrs. Beaver. Cutting it is arguably better than doing it badly.

They also combined the first two conversations between Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. (The one at night about exploring outside in the morning and the one in the morning about what to do when it's raining.) Maybe that's something Narnian78 thinks could have been done better. But honestly I feel it was the right choice to make for adapting the book. It kept the pacing tighter and the writer (Paul McCusker?) did a great job blending the dialogue together. Maybe if they had added dialogue scenes of the characters talking to the professor and Mrs. Macready, keeping both conversations the same as in the book would have worked, but that would have meant having more dialogue that was totally original and that would arguably make it harder to capture the spirit of the book. As it is, this is the adaptation of LWW I'd most recommend to newcomers. If it doesn't include everything, that means they'll have some fun surprises when they read the actual book.

Posted by: @col-klink

More annoyingly, they really cut down the scene of Mrs. Beaver calmly packing while everyone else is panicking. That's a great scene in the book, but on reflection, I feel like both the BBC TV serial and the Walden Media movie mess it up by making it seem like we're supposed to agree with the other characters instead of Mrs. Beaver. Cutting it is arguably better than doing it badly.

You've just hit on one of my pet peeves in Narnia literary criticism — so many critics pillory Mrs Beaver for supposedly fussing and carrying on and delaying them all with her silly concerns about her sewing machine and so on. (And then some of them extrapolate from that to "prove" that Lewis had a problem with female characters, or even with women in general. )

Whereas if you read the scene in the actual book, Mrs Beaver is, as you say, calmly working out what things they'll need, calculating how much time they've got before the Witch can get there, reminding them that they can't outrun her on foot anyway, so secrecy and not speed is what will protect them, and even making sure that Lucy, as the youngest, has the lightest pack to carry. She comes across as the only one keeping a level head and thinking practically and usefully while all the others are largely jumping up and down and panicking. And yet nearly every interpretation just hits on the sewing machine remark and turns the scene into one where Mrs Beaver is the useless panic merchant who's delaying all the others, when in fact it's the other way around!!!    

I can't remember how the FOTF audio drama does that scene, but I don't remember it getting me riled up like the BBC TV version does. (They definitely get it wrong; Walden's I haven't seen since 2005 and don't remember a lot of details, but I do recall I didn't much like that portrayal of the Beavers in general. Even if they were a little more beaver-like and less bottle-like than the infamous BBC beavers. )

You're all just making me want to listen to the FOTF version again!! No time now, though — I've got a shift at work coming up.