by Andrew Ramage

Twilight Zone Radio Dramas – A Review

Rating System: E=Excellent   S=Satisfactory   N=Nothing Burger

“The Twilight Zone” was produced as a radio series by Falcon Picture Group. The series had a production lifetime of ten years (2002-2012) and was produced for the British digital radio station BBC Radio 4 Extra, airing for 176 episodes, although many affiliate radio stations in the US aired a good many of the episodes, with some affiliate stations perhaps airing them all, from 2002 until some indeterminate date (some may still be airing them occasionally). It was indeed a bonafide reboot – virtually the whole series was covered.
Carl Amari was the principal producer and director. Roger Wolski shared these credits with him for most of the episodes, but some others stepped into the co-producer/co-directorial role as production progressed. The starring actors were an eclectic group of talents that ranged from A-list actors like Jane Seymour and Lou Diamond Phillips, to legendary voiceover artists like Stan Freberg, up through and including comedians such as Fred Willard and Mike Starr. Also included were some of the least likely folks you might expect to be associated with something like “The Twilight Zone” including John Schneider and Don Johnson. A number of actors from the original series starred in episodes, including Shelley Berman, Bill Erwin, Mariette Hartley, Morgan Brittany, H.M. Wynant and others, but they were not cast in the same episodes that they originally appeared in. Some of them starred in more than one episode.
Of the 155 episodes originally produced by Cayuga Productions, 154 were produced for radio by Falcon. (“Come Wander With Me” was the only episode to be excluded for reasons unknown, and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” was not originally produced by Cayuga Productions – it was acquired by the production company as a “solution” to a budgetary shortfall.) The now-defunct DVD production company Image Entertainment, Inc. released only 30 of the radio dramas as bonus tracks on their Definitive Edition DVDs (regular and blu-ray.) Falcon released 13 volumes of 10 episodes each on CD, and in no particular order (i.e., the pilot episode “Where Is Everybody” was not the first episode released on radio.) That ceased at some point, with the final 5 volumes (bringing the total to 18) only available for digital download. Eventually all the episodes were available for purchase on a piecemeal basis, as digital downloads for about $2 apiece. Eventually, online sales were discontinued and Archive.org is now housing all the dramas, and they can now be heard in their entirety for free. https://archive.org/details/twilight-zone-radio-dramas
The radio dramas series includes roughly 20 other episodes/dramas, which were not related to the original series at all, save for a few of the “lost” TZ episodes.* These included “Free Dirt” by Charles Beaumont, “Pattern for Doomsday” by Beaumont, “Who am I?” by Jerry Sohl, “Gentlemen, Be Seated”, also by Beaumont, which were purchased by Cayuga but never produced. Again, the starring actors were varied folks including Sean Astin and John Rhys-Davies (both of whom were semi-fresh off “Lord of the Rings” at the time). The prototype for the original series, “The Time Element”, was also included. About 90 percent of the dramas were adapted by the well-known horror/fantasy writer Dennis Etchison (1943-2019), who was occasionally joined by another writer on the adaptation. A handful of other freelance writers also contributed. The adaptations usually ran about 40 minutes, plus or minus a minute or two. The adaptation of “Probe 7 – Over and Out” ran over 57 minutes. There was both expansion and contraction – the 24 minute (Seasons 1,2,3,5) TV episodes gained about 16 minutes, and the 52 minute (aka hour-long Season 4) TV episodes lost about 12 minutes. This worked better in some cases and not as well in others. *Most TZ fans know that Ray Bradbury, Arch Oboler, William Froug, and even Richard Matheson and Earl Hamner submitted scripts to Cayuga Productions that were never produced. Apparently the radio producers could not get ahold of them or they were lost, as they were not produced on radio.
The results of the re-release on radio were mixed. The series was not widely reviewed, nor critically reviewed at the time of the original broadcasts over its 10 year production lifetime (versus TZ’s five year run from 1959-1964 on CBS). Most of the revamps were some form of average, with a few outstanding ones and a handful that were, as Rod Serling called the lesser episodes of the original series, “real turkeys.” Rod also said, after the series ended, “I can walk away from this series un-bowed.” The same can most definitely be said for the Falcon Picture Group project. The primary difficulty that many of the actors doing these dramas obviously faced was the most obvious one in the world…they had to act, and not read, the parts they were given. There were a few definite cases of miscasting, but overall the casting choices were about like the productions as a whole – some form of average. There were some surprisingly good performances, a handful of outstanding ones. There were also some surprisingly good alterations of the original scripts, a handful with much-welcomed and unexpected changes. The common element that most of them
suffer from is the lack of the most obvious thing – the TV screen. Or, failing that, the visual aspect. And in most cases the radio adaptations were such that they don’t conjure up a lot of visual imagery other than what was presented on the original series. Further, TZ was never particularly good on special effects but they usually out-did themselves and created some incredible ones when they were needed. But even things like 22nd century houses and people turning into dust before our eyes and Coke-bottle eyeglasses shattering and a dinosaur outside an airplane window were a big part of what made TZ so memorable.
In general, the radio versions were very well sound-engineered, and mostly used stock music cues from the original TZ episodes, and very effectively at that. Also a testament to how good the original music was on TZ – that it could literally be recycled amongst many different episodes of the series. Even those that weren’t especially great revamps were not a bad listen. Of the 154 TZ installments plus “The Time Element” (we did not check out the other 20 or so), only about six of them were very hard to get through because they were so far away from the originals that even with the obvious envelope pushing required, they were not up to par.
And…the narrator. Stepping in for Rod Serling was none other than Stacy Keach, who did fine, but generally he was too soft. Part of the beauty of every episode of the original series was Rod’s hard-edged, matter-of-fact, often gritty narration – including the stories he didn’t write. Even for the more pleasant of TZ episodes, and the hour-long episodes where he did not film the narrations on the sets, the intensity of and sincerity of Rod Serling was an integral part of the program. Incidentally, Keach did the leads in four of the dramas. H.M. Wynant (who was recruited for 3 of the dramas) would’ve made for a good narrator of the radio version. He obviously had a significant connection to the original series, so having him narrate would have been a more sensical choice. Doug James served as the announcer for the vast majority if not all of the dramas, reading off a list of the credits at the end of each one.
The earliest-released episodes were sponsored by various companies including The Hollywood Celebrity Diet. They may have sponsored individual episode costs, or they may have sponsored the US radio station affiliates airing them.
The most frequent non-starring role performers/background voices were as follows:
Meg Falcon, Jeff Lupitin, Doug James, and Christian Stolte along with producer/director Carl Amari as well as Amanda Amari, C.J. Amari, Vince Amari, and Roger Wolski.
If there was to be a “Roddy” Award for Best Actress in these radio dramas, it would definitely go to Kate Jackson for an unexpectedly splendid rendition of  Nan Adams in Serling’s “The Hitch Hiker”, which itself was adapted from a radio play by Lucille Fletcher. Kim Fields is runner-up for her superb performance as Norma in Serling’s “The Midnight Sun.” For Best Actor – Bill Erwin, who at age 90 played the lead in “Ninety Years Without Slumbering” (originally starring Ed Wynn, who didn’t do even half as well with the part of Sam Forstmann). Bruno Kirby takes runner-up for his entertaining performance as Jerry Etherson in Serling’s “The Dummy.” I think Rod Roddy would’ve approved, too. Like Serling, Roddy also had a voice that was, as writer John Furia, Jr. called it, “as sweet as maple syrup.” H.M. Wynant’s three episodes, “The Trade-Ins”, “Death’s Head Revisited”, and “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville” were all superb thanks to him – but it would be hard to single out the best of them. So, we’ll give him a Silver Globe instead. Or maybe a Platinum Globe. Platinum is better than gold anyway.
But this wasn’t quite the first issuance of TZ episodes in audio-only format. In the early 1990s, a handful of episodes were produced by Harper Collins publishing company as audio book versions of Serling’s “Stories from the Twilight Zone” (some of his TZ scripts published many years earlier in story format), with TZ actors performing either the episodes they originally starred in, or other episodes. Roddy McDowall starred in “The Odyssey of Flight 33”, Theo Bikel starred in “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street”, Lois Nettleton starred again in “The Midnight Sun”, Jean Marsh starred again in “The Lonely”, Cliff Robertson starred in “Walking Distance”, Fritz Weaver starred in “The Mighty Casey.” Each actor also portrayed the other characters in the stories. These were all very well produced, although they did not have a wide distribution. They were only available as “books on tape” and not broadcast elsewhere. Apparently the project was scrapped after only these six episodes, which is a shame, because there were many more episodes that worked well in the format and a lot of TZ actors who worked on the original series were still around.
The radio versions have been rated objectively after a single listening, followed by brief remarks.
Rating Key: E = Excellent ; S = Satisfactory ; N = Less than Satisfactory.
*Episodes are listed in alphabetical order. For a listing of the episodes as they appeared in volume-by-volume release in the radio reboot, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Zone_(radio_series)
RATING
EPISODE
COMMENT
S A Game of Pool The nail-biting suspense of the pool game in the original can’t be duplicated.
S A Hundred Yards Over the Rim You need to be out in the Lone Pine desert for this one to work. Jim Caviezel was an odd choice for the lead and doesn’t seem to portray a character from the 1840s traveling west in a covered wagon.
S A Kind of Stopwatch Richard Erdman was great at playing nerdy, annoying characters like Patrick Thomas McNulty. Lou Diamond Phillips is just too sexy to play annoying men. This was one of those episodes from the original series that, for some odd reason, really resonated, despite the script being at about a C-level. They definitely could’ve made this one A-level on radio.
E A Nice Place to Visit Surprisingly good! A-level, while the original was definitely no more than C-level. Nice sound effects, and some elements were much better than the original, where Larry Blyden was totally annoying for most of it and Sebastian Cabot was about the only good thing about it.
S+ A Most Unusual Camera Entertaining! Not bad. But you wonder where Jean Carson’s buzzsaw voice is.
S- A Passage for Trumpet The Frank Capra element (“It’s a Wonderful Life”) is totally missing. Definitely not the worst adaptation but this was one of the greatest of the original series and sadly they weren’t able to make it work well on radio.
S A Penny for Your Thoughts The rather ingenious coin-landing-on-its-edge causing the telepathy was the main component of the original. It was a quirky thing that set up the whole episode, which was kind of star-packed. On radio, these elements are obviously absent.
S A Piano in the House Mildly entertaining compared to the original. The concluding party scene isn’t bad, but can you have this particular party without Marvin the butler played by the one and the only Cyril Delevanti?!
S A Quality 0f Mercy Neither here nor there. Part of what made this one so great on TV was Stockwell’s being able to do Japanese as well as he did American.
S A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain Blah, much like the original. Ruta Lee made the original more entertaining; she’s obviously not here now.
S A Stop at Willoughby Very similar in some ways to the original, down to the music and delivery of lines. The original was a superclassic; no real way to duplicate the snow flurries outside a train window and a passenger dreaming about of ending his own life.
S A Thing About Machines The original relied on the persnickety, acerbic portrayal by Richard Haydn to make a bland storyline work, and the visuals of the vengeful machines. Obviously, that’s missing this time around.
S A World of Difference Nobody can match the burning intensity of Howard Duff and Eileen Ryan and David White in the original and the extraordinary direction by Ted Post. Interestingly, this one came in at a short 32 minutes, versus the 40 of most others.
S A World of His Own More or less bland, but it’s adequate. Not as funny as the original though, although not everyone finds the original funny.
S- An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge The original was so visual and had such a sonic atmosphere with its natural sounds (rushing water, boots on the bridge, gunfire), that making a story out of it with lots of dialogue didn’t work.
N And When the Sky Was Opened Sounds like a bunch of old guys, instead of three strapping young males, as astronauts usually are. Why did they re-name the X-20 spacecraft as X-6??
E Back There Dashing performance from Jim Caviezel, and a pretty darned good adaptation of the original. I always felt Russell Johnson was way too stiff in the original.
E Black Leather Jackets Very inviting performance from Marshall Allman and the young lady who plays Shelley Fabares’ part in the original does fine. Some nice sound effects and nice ending. The original was so flawed and cheezy that ANY improvements to it were welcome. It worked even better on radio actually. Perhaps “BLJ”‘s fate was radio, not TV?
S+ Caesar and Me Pretty good! One of the best things about the radio re-tread was their improving on some of the weaker original episodes. Performances of Jason Alexander as Irishman and the girl who played Morgan Brittany’s part in the original are quite fine. Jason is a versatile talent, but it’s hard for many to see him playing anything other than George Costanza. I never liked “Seinfeld” and haven’t seen more than about ten episodes of that series, so I’m seeing Jason in unjaded form.
S+ Cavender is Coming Very good, given that the original has always been considered among the 5-10 weakest episodes in the anthology. The actor who plays Cavender sounds more elfin than Jesse White did but the actress who plays Carol Burnett’s part is uninteresting.
S- Dead Man’s Shoes Blah. The woman playing Joan Marshall’s part sounds old. Joan was really the best thing about the original, so someone of her caliber was needed again to carry the somewhat limp script. The re-tooled intro with Daggett, and a new opening narration, are silly.
S- Death Ship Again, the intensity is missing. John Schneider, and whomever else, in the leads were no match for Jack Klugman, Ross Martin, and Frederick Beir. The original was corny in some ways, yes. Paintings of a crashed spaceship and kooky sets (by today’s standards) and stock footage. But the ACTING superseded all of this. The actors acted. Actually the one thing that was not kooky was the flashback scene with the Carter home, which was extraordinarily convincing. So these are the things you can’t help but think about when you hear the script being produced in another medium.
S Death’s Head Revisited The gripping tension of the original can’t be duplicated, even with really good actors like H.M. Wynant. Good actor with German accent playing Schildkraut’s part.
S Dust The original was pleasant but drab, but this isn’t drab, it’s just rather boring. Some of the actors say “Gallegos” phonetically. It’s “Gy-yeggos”!! Either you read the script, or you act the part with correct pronunciation.
S Elegy Good intro in the first couple minutes, which were primitively corny in the original with process shot of rocket “gaining atmosphere and landing.” Some very good additions including the guys swimming in a lake. But the “acting” is pretty one-dimensional all around. Where’s Don Dubbins when you need him?!
S Escape Clause This one definitely had the possibilities for an improved version of what was a relaxing, ho-hum original script of Rod Serling’s but it just comes off as rather boring. Whenever you’re working with The Devil in a tongue-in-cheek didactic tale like this, you can make it funny. Mike Starr (oh, the irony!) appears in his first starring (Starry?) role of about 15 of these radio rediscoveries.
N Execution The change of opening with the courtroom turned out rather lame. Nobody beats Albert Salmi as far as playing Jesse James-type outlaws. Nobody plays nerdy professors like Russell Johnson, either…except maybe Wally Cox.
N Eye of the Beholder You can’t do this episode in the present day with a sexy-sounding actress. It just doesn’t work. IGHHHH!! And is that Mike Starr yet again playing another Bronxian New York guy – this time the doctor?
S+ Five Characters in Search of an Exit This is actually a good one for radio. “Let us out!” “Who are we?!” It works, although you can’t help but miss William Windom and Murray Matheson.
S+ Four O’Clock Stan Freberg playing Theo Bikel’s part was a good choice! Serling’s script is not all that interesting but Stan brought Oliver Crangle to life like Theo did originally. They seriously should’ve hired Theo for this project. He was a legendary voicethrower as Stan was.
S From Agnes – With Love Ed Begley Jr. playing a lisping nerd. He sure did it on “St. Elsewhere” for enough years, as Dr. Victor Erlich of St. Eligius Hospital operating room alongside Dr. Mark Craig (William Daniels…now HE would’ve been a good one to cast in one of these dramas – after all, during all those years of St. E he was also the voice of Kitt on “Knight Rider.”)
S+ He’s Alive Marshall Allman and Peter Mark Richman do well in the roles of Dennis Hopper and Ludwig Donath in the original.
S+ Hocus Pocus and Frisby Shelley Berman did well as Frisby but nobody matches Andy Devine and the cast of unintentionally funny character actors of the original. Some good fun to be had in this revamp though.
S I Am the Night, Color Me Black Not bad, but the original script wasn’t great either – but it was one of those TZs that had so many great actors that they made it work. This time it’s just sort of another ‘e pluribus unum.’
S I Dream of Genie Not bad, but the original script wasn’t great either. Howard Morris slept his way through the part in the original, and Hal Sparks does do a better job this time around.
S I Shot an Arrow Into the Air A more lifeless version of the original. Like some others, it sounds like some old men sitting around reading a script. They should’ve had Marshall Allman and maybe Hal Sparks and some younger guys playing the parts.
N I Sing the Body Electric Stupid. “Grandma” in this production sounds like 35, not 65 like Josephine Hutchinson was in the original. Dee Wallace apparently still sounded the same age playing Grandma as she did when she played Elliot’s mom in E.T.! An actor who sounded a bit like Don Murray (who was not a good actor) played the dopey dad that David White did in the original. I wonder if Ray Bradbury ever heard this?
N In His Image The young women they used for most of these dramas sound mostly the same – very 21st century. This episode only works with Grizzard and Kobe. Nobody else could’ve done it better. This one feels way rushed at only 40 minutes vs. 52 for the original. And with the original being a highly visual episode – with the Alan Talbot and Walter Ryder characters, doing it in some other medium was all but impossible.
S In Praise of Pip If it had Klugman in it, it was automatically great. Anyone else – no. Fred Willard was legendary, but he was badly miscast in these radio dramas.
S+ It’s a Good Life Better than expected. Good move making Anthony even more bratty than Mumy was in the original. The kid who played Anthony, Zach Leipzig, never did any more acting after his childhood years from what I can tell but according to his LinkedIn, he went on to a good career as a logistics expert and he is “known for his excellent communications skills.”
S Jess Belle I’d give this higher marks if they hadn’t had a man strumming a guitar doing the “Fair was Elly Glover” folk song. The rest of the production isn’t too bad actually.
S+ Judgement Night Surprisingly good! Some good sound effects and good actors playing the parts.
S Kick the Can Good, but just too long at a whopping 46 minutes. How long was the “Kick the Can” segment in TZ: The Movie? Not 46 minutes.
S+ King Nine Will Not Return Much of the original was like Bob Cummings was reading off a script. He had a few good minutes but most of it was just too dry (no pun intended.) This radio version is definitely an improvement, with Adam Baldwin doing a much better job of it.
S Little Girl Lost The original was, by comparison, not that great but for some reason it became popular. Nothing too great here but it’s passable. These “35 year old soccer moms” they cast for most of these dramas – whomever they are – all mostly sound the same. Some good usage of incidental music clips from the original series.
S- Living Doll This sounds like something that might’ve been done on the 1980s TZ.
S Long Distance Call Not too bad – it sounds like a 21st century version of what they did in 1961. Once again, they hired an actress to play a scatterbrained 35-year old soccer mom.
S Long Live Walter Jameson Better than expected. Lou Diamond Phillips was an odd choice. He usually underplays, and his performance is, like many other segments of these dramas, a little on the side of stiff. Of course, the visual effects of Walter turning to dust, and McCarthy and Edgar Stehli’s incomparable performances as a pair of professors is what makes the original extraordinary.
S- Miniature Lou Diamond Phillips does surprisingly well in the lead but the other actors all stink. Let it never be forgotten that the main reason why TZ was so consistently good was because they cast legendary character actors like William Windom, Barbara Barrie, Pert Kelton, and Lennie Weinrib (who was also a writer) in the parts.
S- Mirror Image An actress who knew how to play “spooky” versus “panicked” was needed for this part. Most of it is just irritating. I would have given it an ‘N’ but they did some creative expansion of Serling’s script.
S+ Mr. Bevis Bruno Kirby was a wonderful choice for the lead. Good fun! Orson Bean, who was usually a very funny guy, somehow was unfunny in the original. It would’ve been great to have him play Bevis again after all this time in a new and improved form!
S Mr. Denton on Doomsday Nothing great. The original was rather star-packed with a truckload of great character actors, and Martin Landau and Dan Duryea. Hard to match that in any form.
S+ Mr. Dingle the Strong Some funny stuff in it. Tim Kazurinsky was a good choice for the lead. I think producer Carl Amari did the voice of Jason Abernathy, the TV reporter, originally played to perfection by James Milhollin. Milhollin was a one-trick pony who always played the same dour men, always made every episode of TV better because he was in it….without him it’s not as funny. And Serling needed all the acting help he could ever get in his comedy scripts.
S Mr. Garrity and the Graves About the same as the original.
N Mute A soccer mom replaces Barbara Baxley this time around. Why they hired so many soccer mom types for these things, I’m not quite sure. But I think this is one where you had to do it on TV. A telepathy story on radio doesn’t quite work. Ann Jillian *acted* in the original. She didn’t just do voiceovers. Obviously, that whole element is now totally missing, and it pretty well kills it.
S+ Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room Surprisingly pretty good, given that the original is a superclassic. I never liked William D. Gordon’s performance as George in the original, he was too suave and not menacing enough; the guy who does the part in this drama is better.
S Nick of Time Interestingly, they used Mr. and Mrs. Marshall Allman for the leads. Somehow though it’s just too hard to picture anyone other than Shatner and Breslin playing the parts. They should’ve changed the names of the main characters, given that this was obviously a 21st century piece and not a mid-20th century piece.
S+ Night Call A more updated version of the original with Mariette Hartley. You can’t ask for too much more, although Mariette is such a youthful person it’s hard to picture her playing the elderly Gladys Cooper’s part! Addition of a ‘+’ due to Sarah Wellington’s utterly convincing performance in Nora Marlowe’s part as Miss Finch.
S Night of the Meek The original was one of those episodes that was star-packed with great character actors. Even without Art Carney, it would still have been a classic. This is a good re-make, although nothing too interesting.
S Nightmare as a Child They needed a “nerdier” schoolteacher than the actress in this one portrays. Janice Rule wasn’t even a great choice for the original but at least she was convincing and you believed she was playing a schoolteacher named Helen Foley.
S Nightmare at 20,000 Feet It works out. Some good sound effects. John Schneider was never much of an actor but he did ok with Shatner’s part. But Chris(tine) White was such an integral part of the original that without her, or someone as good as she was, it doesn’t make a splash.
E Ninety Years Without Slumbering Far better than the original. Great as a radio play, actually. Bill Erwin is far better than Ed Wynn was in the lead. Wynn was paid thousands of dollars in 1964 for his appearance. Erwin was paid about $500 in 2005 to do this radio performance. Interestingly, he was probably paid about the same sum for a week’s work on TZ in 1961 when he shot “Martian Please Stand Up?”; TZ was one of the better-paying shows at $500-600 per week for minor parts similar to the one he played. But…no small parts, only small actors!
S No Time Like the Past Pretty similar to the original, with some good sound effects. Nobody beats Robert Cornthwaite and Dana Andrews with the confrontational “I take offense to armchair warriors like you” dinnertime speech in the original, about the United States growing stronger in proportion to the filling of its military cemeteries.
S Nothing in the Dark Not sure why the actress playing Gladys Cooper’s part wasn’t credited alongside Marshall Allman who plays Robert Redford’s part. They did the same thing with most of these radio episodes actually – they only listed one star in most cases and then at the end, the announcer just read off the names of the other people in the cast and they didn’t mention the names of the characters they played.
S Number 12 Looks Just Like You Not all that different from the original. Well, good that they didn’t have another soccer mom playing Lana but JEEZ how many times does Mike Starr appear on these radio dramas?!
E Of Late I Think of Cliffordville H.M. Wynant did wonderfully well in Albert Salmi’s part! In most respects it’s about the same as the original but this is a good new spin on it. The original is one of the least-memorable episodes; in fact, Serling’s script comes from a fascinating lengthy short story by Malcolm Jameson – so it definitely needed an hour to do on TV because it was so dense, but this compacted 40-something minute radio play works very well and is a nice addition to the catalog.
S On Thursday We Leave for Home Long time no see, Mike Starr! It’s pretty similar to the original. This is actually a good episode for radio; it was a rotten one for TV. The sets of the original were awful, with the papier mache mountains and moon rocks (and the double-sun that they used in a few other Serling scripts). Other than Daniel Kulick as Jo Jo and Tim O’Connor as Col. Sloane, the performances weren’t all that great. And that ending…ighhh! So, this was a little better.
S One for the Angels Even 20 years ago, Ed Begley Jr. was too young for the part of an old man. Did they hire him because, like Ed Wynn, he had a lisp? The guy who plays/reads Mr. Death was no match for Murray Hamilton in the original.
S One More Pallbearer Similar to the original, which was rather cold-blooded. It works, but not a pleasant script.
S Passage on the Lady Anne Similar to the original but the actress playing Joyce Van Patten’s part lacks Joyce’s dramatic flair. The old English actors obviously aren’t here this time either.
S- People are Alike All Over Blair Underwood can’t match the tragedy in Roddy McDowall’s performance which of course, came directly from the script.
N Perchance to Dream Mike Starr co-stars again. This time he’s playing a psychiatrist. Fred Willard was hilariously miscast in the lead, a man who is supposed to be dying of an incipient coronary. Fred was such an animated comedy actor – not a dramatic actor. Check out the Neal Israel film “Moving Violations” (1984). That was some of Fred’s best work.
N Printer’s Devil I always thought this was Burgess Meredith’s finest hour on TZ – literally, an hour, versus 40 minutes on radio. But Mike Starr is no substitute for Burgess Meredith, no matter how you slice and dice it.
S Probe 7 – Over and Out Wow – this one ran almost an hour – maybe they used Rod’s original script, which according to Ted Post, “was so long that I took many pages out of it because there was dialogue that went on for pages.” So this time, they basically “used all the pages.” Despite the length, it’s actually passable.
S- Queen of the Nile Mike Starr stars. Starring Mike Starr. Mike the Star. This is getting almost comical. The original was not a strong episode by any stretch, and neither is this.
S- Ring a Ding Girl Bunny and Hildy sound like two modern day soccer mom housewives talking, not an ugly duckling and her movie star sister, which is mainly what made Hamner’s story so good. Not bad otherwise but the different ending they used was awful!
S Shadow Play A somewhat stronger one. Some good elements. Dennis Weaver was so good in the original though, that it’s one of those that is hard to imagine with anyone else playing the lead. And again, a soccer mom plays the main character’s wife. Anne Barton, in the original (playing Harry Townes’ wife) was far from a soccer mom, with Wright King and Harry Townes (who were good friends offscreen) in the co-starring roles. Thankfully.
S Showdown with Rance McGrew Pretty similar to the original, as a rather daffy story about how phony Hollywood really is.
N The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine Morgan Brittany playing Ida Lupino’s part? This was a piece about a washed up actress and Morgan was too young for the part. She did much better playing Joanne Linville’s part in “The Passersby”. Truth be told, she would’ve done well playing Janice Rule’s part in “Nightmare as a Child”.
S Sounds and Silences Funny stuff; this was one of the least popular episodes of the original series, mainly because it sat in storage for the first 20 years of its lifetime. The original was fairly abrasive and this is not quite so much.
S Spur of the Moment About the same as the original when all is said and done. This episode has been criticized over the years for giving away the punchline in the beginning. Actually, it was shot almost exactly as Richard Matheson wrote it.
S Static About the same as the original, but some nice added old radio clips (the producer Carl Amari is a radio historian and authority.)
S Steel They set this in 2040?? Weird. Not too bad though.
S Still Valley Surprisingly good. It compares somewhat favorably with the original, but as the original – like so many episodes – relied so heavily on visuals, namely frozen soldiers…
S- Stopover in a Quiet Town Another Barbie doll actress reading a script, and an uninteresting male lead. The reason the original was so good is because Nancy Malone, a native New Yorker in a story about New York, was outstanding in her co-starring role.
S+ The Seventh is Made Up of Phantoms Good! Nice compliment to the original. Where are the counterparts of Warren Oates and Randy Boone? Imitated but not duplicated. Many years ago I discussed this episode with someone who said “It’s not the worst episode but it’s pretty far down there.” Nonsense. Episodes like this were Rod’s bread and butter. He really knew how to write platoon talk in a way that was vastly entertaining because he’d lived it himself. US Armed Forces episodes were always some of his best.
N The After Hours One of the worst ones they did, sadly. This was one of the few episodes that absolutely could not be done on anything other than TV. And that’s why it remains one of the finest half-hours in TV history, like any of the best TZ’s. And…again, James Milhollin wasn’t appropriately replaced.
S+ The Arrival Surprisingly decent, compares somewhat favorably with the original.
S The Bard Pretty similar to the original, only with Cliff Claven aka John Ratzenberger playing Jack Weston’s part. Odd casting choice.
S The Bewitchin’ Pool The story by Earl Hamner was one of his best that he did for the series but it was completely botched in the original series as most people know. The radio version is better than what was done on TV but not by a large margin. Georgia Simmons, who played Aunt T in the original, never got credit for doing the fine job that she did in the role. In this radio version, the actress who plays Aunt T wasn’t as good.
E The Big Tall Wish Great performance from the kid who plays Steven Perry’s part in the original, and nice performance of Blair Underwood and the actress who plays Kim Hamilton’s part in the original.
S The Brain Center at Whipples Stan Freberg playing Richard Deacon’s part…well, ok. It passes. But it was Ted DeCorsia who was the real star of the original and without that heart-attack inducing speech of his, “MEN HAVE TO EAT AND WORK!!!”…it’s pretty well paralyzed. And…Mike Starr is in this one too. Interesting change of ending from the original.
S+ The Changing of the Guard Pretty nice! Very odd though that so many of these scripts feature people smoking and flicking lighters…then again, the writer who adapted most of these episodes for radio was a heavy smoker.
S The Chaser This episode had a number of very good sets, particularly the library of Professor Daemon. Obviously we don’t get any of that here. It’s about like the original, all things considered.
E The Dummy Great stuff. The one tiny weakness of the original was Cliff Robertson’s voicethrowing of Willie (off camera). It just sounded too nasal. Great casting of Bruno Kirby who definitely had a good feel for these kinds of nerdy TZ characters.
S The Encounter The original script by Martin Goldsmith was very abrasive, so this radio adaptation was not gonna be any more cheery. Stacy Keach plays Neville Brand’s part of Fenton and Byron Mann plays George Takei’s part of Taro.
S The Fear Wow, then-husband-wife duo James Keach and Jane Seymour teamed up for an episode! Richman and Court were a little stiff in the original and this was a tad better.
S- The Fever Stacy Keach plays Everett Sloane’s part and doesn’t do badly. Kathy Garver in Vivi Janiss’s part…mehhh. Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Gibbs were supposed to be at least in their 50s and Ms. Garver sounds about 28. The way they revamped the ending was kind of depressing.
S- The Four of Us Are Dying Yet another example of an episode where the intensity simply can’t be matched on radio. The original, you might say, flowed elegantly because every single actor in it, down to the smallest parts, did perfectly. It wasn’t anywhere near the greatest, but it was a case of the talent making the material way better than it inherently was. This time…that didn’t quite happen.
S- The Fugitive The girl who plays Susan Gordon’s part is nowhere nearly as good as Susan was, but the actress who played the wicked aunt Agnes sounds a lot like Nancy Kulp. Stan Freberg in J. Pat O’Malley’s part…it doesn’t really work, despite Stan being legendary.
S The Gift The guy playing Geoffrey Horne’s part is that same guy from other episodes who sounds like he smokes 8 packs a day. Interesting choice of a woman to play the doctor. I think just about anything beats the original, which was one of the worst.
S The Grave About the same as the original. This is one that they probably could’ve done a nice new take on but instead, they played it safe.
E The Hitch Hiker Kate Jackson does a bang-up job in the lead. What a great new spin on the old warhorse by Lucille Fletcher! Thankfully they actually used a real actress for this superclassic episode.
S- The Howling Man Fred Willard was a very bad choice for the lead in this superclassic. They should’ve cast him in the role of Mr. Bevis, or perhaps Harmon Cavender!
S+ The Hunt Shelley Berman was a good choice for Hyder Simpson. However, Karen Black is rather unmemorable in Jeanette Nolan’s part.
S- The Incredible World of Horace Ford Well…it’s another Mike Starr show. Actually in this case he was a good choice for the part. The original is 52 minutes long – and literally felt like one of the longest episodes of the five seasons. By the time Horace goes back to Randolph Street for the third time, it’s just too much. It feels weird listening to a 40 minute version of it though, with so much taken out.
S The Invaders Very interesting adaptation of Matheson’s original – this was one that producer-director Carl Amari originally hadn’t planned to do, for obvious reasons, but it works out ok even with a ridiculous tail-ending. It somewhat reminds of “Cry of Silence”, an episode of The Outer Limits, with June Havoc and Eddie Albert.
S+ The Jeopardy Room In a sense better than the original as they either used Russian actors, or people who could do Russian accents. Bob Kelljan and John Van Dreelen were not all that great in those parts; it was basically a Martin Landau show.
S The Jungle They could’ve done much more with this one I think, as it is one of those really good but underrated stories of TZ. Casting Ed Begley in the lead was not a good choice, as the character of Alan Richards wasn’t a nerd, he was a very worldly engineer.
S- The Last Flight One of the best-acted and best-written episodes of the original series. One of those “Emmys all around” shows…except it didn’t even get nominated for an award of any kind. There was just no good way to match it on radio. Charles Shaughnessy clearly did not have the acting chops to carry it half as well as Kenneth Haigh did. And Mike Starr drops by for a visit. Again.
S+ The Last Night of a Jockey Good! Nice compliment to the original, which was overly abrasive and just sorta badly produced.
S The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank About like most of the others. But who can play a village idiot better than James Best or Warren Oates or Andy Devine? Not many people.
S The Lateness of the Hour Fair-to-middlin’. You might say Jane Seymour was playing a modern day version of what Inger Stevens did in the original. The Night Gallery episode “You Can’t Get Help Like That Anymore” written by Serling and starring Cloris Leachman, Henry Jones, and Lana Wood, was similar to “The Lateness of the Hour.”
N The Little People Stupid addition of female ship computer control voice. This time Rod rolled over in his grave. Daniel J. Travanti of “Hill Street Blues” fame (yes, he was very famous at one time) guest stars.
N The Lonely Mike Starr again? What does that make, like 30 episodes he’s been in now? Was he the Robert L. McCord III of the radio series?! (McCord appeared uncredited in over half of the TZ episodes.) The gal playing Alicia, whomever she was, doesn’t even sound remotely robotic.
N The Long Morrow Terrible. The lead “actress” sounds like she’s reading off a page. I know they didn’t want to use the old actors, but I would’ve liked to hear Mariette Hartley play her old part again.
S- The Man in the Bottle This makes about 5 episodes for Ed Begley Jr. now? The character of Luther Castle wasn’t a nerd, he was a borderline-impoverished junk shop owner.
S- The Masks Is this The Mike Starr Show or The Twilight Zone? As “The Masks” (the original) was about actual ugly masks that we can see – well, this production doesn’t really work.
E The Midnight Sun Very good decision to put an African American actress in the lead. Most people know Kim Fields as Tootie on “The Facts of Life” but she did splendidly as Norma. A rare case where the revamp was as good as the original…well, in a different way but still a very high quality production. I think Rod would’ve liked this.
S+ The Mighty Casey Entertaining! The original is a bit lacking in energy, probably because everyone other than Jack Warden had to film it twice.
E- The Mind and the Matter Quite a difference from what was filmed in the original but very entertaining for the most part!! Hal Sparks was well-cast in the lead.
S+ The Mirror Similar to the original but less abrasive. This is one of the least-mentioned episodes of the original and could’ve benefited from a different spin, although Serling’s script is now just dated.
S+ The Monsters are Due on Maple Street Surprisingly good! Sounds like a bit more up to date version of the original.
E The New Exhibit Nice! The original was no more than average and this is a fresh new spin. But the great, the spooky, the inimitable Martin Balsam…replaced by a guy named JoBe Cerny??
S+ The Obsolete Man Haha! “George Costanza” as Romney Wordsworth. Not a bad idea. Always nice when they hire real actors for these parts…they probably had only budget for a few like Jason Alexander. He used an accent that somewhat reflected the very old world accent of Burgess Meredith.
S The Odyssey of Flight 33 I guess the visual of the dinosaur and 1939 World’s Fair was just too much to hope for. Daniel J. Travanti stars again. Rather unmemorable, sorry to say.
S- The Old Man in the Cave A bunch of bad actors. John Anderson and James Coburn were such an amazing counterpoint to each other in the original that they’re impossible to beat. This just sounds like Mike Starr and some guy who sounds like a jerk playing Coburn’s part. Ok, Coburn’s part was of an arrogant jerk but Coburn was indeed acting.
S The Parallel Lou Diamond Phillips doing Steve Forrest’s part – interesting casting choice. They used a good number of the same stock music clips from the original episode, which works to good effect.
S+ The Passersby Morgan Brittany does a fine job playing Lavinia – but the guy playing Jud seems too old for the part, even on radio! Morgan is kind of a US history buff so the part suited her well.
S- The Prime Mover Blah. This was one of the really good non-superclassic episodes that they could’ve done a lot more with, but unfortunately it just didn’t come off.
S The Purple Testament About like most of the others, but this episode is all about ominous lights and reading faces in the midst of a war….not envisioning them, but actually seeing them.
N The Rip Van Winkle Caper The acting is far too soft to be convincing. Tim Kazurinsky was the wrong actor for the part – I actually think Mike Starr would’ve been good for this particular one!!
S The Self Improvement of Salvadore Ross The late Luke Perry plays Don Gordon’s part and does it quite well. But replacing Gail Kobe and Vaughn Taylor was a tall order.
S+ The Shelter Good change to a cast of black people. The original is one of the weakest in the series. Lamont Johnson, in a phone conversation I had with him in 2004, agreed about this one. He said, “I think Rod was just pissed off when he wrote that one.”
S The Silence Listen to how often the actors “spark up a smoke” (with sound effects) on some of these radio dramas, and these weren’t written in the original scripts. Just an aside about how these radio dramas can’t even remotely match the originals, and comparing them isn’t even worth doing really. Listen to the way Franchot Tone, Jonathan Harris, and Liam Sullivan deliver their lines…their diction is perfect. You don’t find that today in actors.
N The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine Morgan Brittany playing Ida Lupino’s part?? How about Mariette Hartley? Morgan did far better playing Joanne Linville’s part in “The Passersby”. And you know, she would’ve done well playing Janice Rule’s part in “Nightmare as a Child”!!
S- The Thirty Fathom Grave The guy playing Mike Kellin’s part was not good and Blair Underwood, playing Simon Oakland’s part, was too soft. The original felt more like a didactic educational filmstrip so this was one that needed a different spin.
S+ The Trade-Ins In some ways better than the original, which was just stiff and boring. Peggy Webber and H.M. Wynant do very well in one of Serling’s comparatively blander scripts. And it got a good radio adaptation. Rumor has it that this was Rod’s favorite TZ script of the ones he wrote. Interestingly, two of the three parts Wynant played on the radio dramas were those portrayed by Joseph Schildkraut in the TV series.
S The Trouble With Templeton Boring. Michael York (“Logan’s Run”) was too soft in the lead. This was one that they were probably not going to have much luck with. It was one of the best scripts in the TV series and trying to remake it on something other than television… The original was seriously like a short film. That’s how large-scaled it came off. And yet…it’s almost never mentioned on the list of TZ superclassics.
S The Whole Truth Entertaining! About like the original. But why did they change the name of the lead to “Hennycutt” vs “Hunnicutt”?? “Get a Honey From Hunnicutt!”
N Third From the Sun Fred Willard was, again, a very bad choice for the lead. How can you imitate the nail-biting nervousness of Weaver and Maross in the original? And the sliminess of Edward Andrews as the government stooge who thinks he’s going to kybosh their plans to leave the planet? You can’t.
S Time Enough at Last Well, you can’t match the original no matter how hard you try, and everybody is going to think about Burgess Meredith, but Tim Kazurinsky does a good job of it.
S To Serve Man Some good changes. It works. One of those that is particularly hard not to compare to the original.
S Twenty-Two Andrea Evans doesn’t do a bad job of it! The original was rather cold. This version is a little warmer.
S- Two The guy playing Charles Bronson’s part was not good. Oh, it was Don Johnson. Somehow it barely passes.
S Uncle Simon I will take credit for “casting” Beverly Garland in this segment. I’ve still got the thank you letter from her manager, a man named Gene who was also her significant other in later years. This was the only one where they used two actors from the original series in the same drama.
S Walking Distance Fairly good revamp of the original with Chelcie Ross doing a good job in Gig Young’s part. Nothing really changed up or much expanded in this one though.
S What You Need Bruce and Bruno Kirby star in the roles originally played by Ernest Truex and Steve Cochran. While they do have more energy than Truex and Cochran did, it doesn’t really make for a better episode.
N What’s In the Box I’d have given it an ‘S’ but they blew the ending. They could’ve made this one far more entertaining. The script was weaker but wasn’t without its merits.
N Where is Everybody John Schneider is not an actor capable of serious roles and once again it sounded like he was reading a script. This was the episode that SOLD the series! Use a schooled actor who has done his share of Shakespeare and Beckett and Thornton Wilder, not Bo Duke-type parts!
S Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up? Most of the actors sound like they’re reading a script, but a good adaptation by Chas Holloway.
S You Drive Some interesting changes. I think the lady who played Oliver Pope’s wife Lillian was in a few other of these radio revamps playing similar characters. The thunderstorm visual at the end of this and “Ring a Ding Girl”, both Hamner scripts, made those episodes even better than what was on the printed page. Without it…not the same. And you absolutely can’t do this one without the inimitable Edward Andrews.
S Young Man’s Fancy Tony Plana, who played America Ferrera’s dad Mr. Suarez on “Ugly Betty”, was the wrong choice for the lead. He was a better choice for “The Mirror” earlier. Good change on the ending – the one of Matheson’s script was weaker.
S The Time Element Mike Starr…who else…plays Martin Balsam’s part of the psychiatrist. Nothing really different or better about it than the original, which was of course the prototype for TZ. The starring actor is someone I’d never heard of. It would’ve been good if they’d had an A-lister like Lou Diamond Phillips.