The sound of the Signature Tune “The Devils Gallop” and the radio announcers’ call of “Dick Barton - Special Agent” inspired up to 15 million British listeners to tune into their radio sets each weeknight in the late 1940s.
Dick Barton – Special Agent originally starred Noel Johnson as Dick Barton, Duncan Carse as Snowy White and Gordon Davies as Jock Anderson.
The series ran on the BBC Light Programme between 1946 and 1951, and featured nightly struggles against the world of criminal masterminds and espionage.
Dick Barton - Special Agent Rediscovered In The Archives
Many episodes of Dick Barton – Special Agent have been conspicuous by their absence in the BBC audio archive because they were junked shortly after their original broadcast.
Thankfully Australian radio producers were taken with the idea of producing Dick Barton - Special Agent for the overseas market and in 1949, several Dick Barton adventures were re-recorded for transmission in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Over 300 episodes from this series were rediscovered in Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive in 2009 and two adventures; Dick Barton and The Paris Adventure and Dick Barton and The Cabatolin Diamonds have just been released as two compact disc sets by AudioGo.
Douglas Kelly Is Dick Barton in New CD Release
Dick Barton and The Paris Adventure was written by Edward J Mason and starred Douglas Kelly as Dick Barton. Using the original BBC scripts these re-recording’s are the closest listeners are ever likely to hear to the original broadcasts.
In Dick Barton and The Paris Adventure, Dick, Jock, Snowy and Jean join forces with the French police to thwart an international smuggling operation. Dick finds himself up against the worst kind of caricatured villains here, including a crazed professor intent on killing him, a murderous man with a lisp, a bad tempered dwarf and a smuggler with a missing thumb called Spider Kennedy.
Douglas Kelly’s portrayal of Barton is dynamic and ideally suited to the role. The only drawback of the collection is its failure to credit the other cast members featured in the production.
Download Dick Barton and The Paris Adventure Direct To your iPod
Dick Barton and The Paris Adventure comprises four compact discs, with approximately four hours total running time. Each disc is split into chapters allowing the listener easy to access return points if requiring a break in listening to the story.
The collection is also available to purchase as a download to an iPod Nano or equivalent MP3 player via iTunes or AudioGo’s website.
The recordings have excellent sound quality and show how resourceful the actors and sound technicians of the 1940s were at creating authentic radio drama.
