I've been listening to a lot of old police/detective shows lately. The kind from America in the 30s to 50s, where most of them spoke in transatlantic accents (most, because there's the occasional English, vaguely Latin, and REALLY bad Chinese accents).
At first it was just a passing thing — I was looking for something to listen to while I worked because I'd get too distracted listening to songs I already knew, but I hated working in silence. I remembered Radio Garden existed, so I was just flipping through some stations until I saw that they had their own recommended stations.
That's where I found ABN Old-Time Radio, broadcasting from Antioch, IL. I thought it was a really fun gimmick; They would play various radio shows from the 30s to 50s, prioritizing episodes that were broadcast on the same day from yesteryear.
The wonderful thing about old radio shows is that (I assume) many of the episodes were made to be listened to without needing any prior context to previous episodes (with the exception of serials, which is precisely why I don't really listen to the Superman serial every time it came up, I had no idea what was going on most of the time). So a lot of the shows they broadcast were usually comedy shows (eg Abbott and Castello, Fibber McGee and Molly, the Great Gildersleeve, etc.), standalone dramas (eg The Whistler, Suspense, The Sealed Book, etc.) or even quiz shows (eg Quiz Kids [Pat is such a SMARTASS Information Please!, etc.).
I enjoyed all the shows as they came on, but I found myself more drawn towards the police and detective shows, which would come on every few hours. Every time shows like Dragnet, This is Your FBI, Calling All Cars, etc. etc. would start, I found myself genuinely listening to every word they said.
Most shows from this time had something to do with some kind of crime, but the cat and mouse that police/detective shows did was always more interesting. It scratched the same itch whodunnits do, shortened into 30-minute segments instead of entire novels or films.
Dragnet especially caught my attention. Since I was technically listening through a radio, all I could hear were the actors' voices, and because everyone spoke in the same accent, their voices tended to blend in for me. But with Dragnet, I could catch Sgt. Friday's voice immediately — I don't know why, but the actors here seemed to speak in a much more natural way than I was used to. Yes, they still had transatlantic accents, but like they were used for a more everyday context, and not the dramatized version that everyone was a lot more familiar with.
That definitely set it apart from the other police shows; They all claimed to be pulling directly from actual police files, but only Dragnet understood how to make these cases interesting without switching perspectives at all. They knew how to keep up the suspense, and make us think about the perpetrator's motives and such without having the perpetrator themselves take the reins.
At the same time, Dragnet only had Sgt. Friday as the sole perspective in every episode — the other police shows always had a different officer or agent for every episode (Broadway is My Beat particularly disappointed me in this regard; I got really attached to the protagonist of the first episode I listened to and was sad it wasn't still him in the next episode I listened to). This led to little moments of characterization for both him and his partner Sgt. Romero in each episode that I really enjoyed.
Detective shows were similar to Dragnet in those regards. They usually followed one private investigator and the different cases they deal with, sprinkled in some characterization for them every episode, and they definitely were full of personality. I enjoyed these shows, but they were always more focused on the detectives themselves instead of the cases, which what drew me to them in the first place. There was one show in particular that was kinda funny to me because of this: Richard Diamond, Private Detective always ended with the titular Detective Ricky coming home to his beau and serenading her with a song. It doesn't matter what grisly case he just finished or whatever, he would ALWAYS sing a love song at the end. I thought it was just a one time thing but then it just KEPT HAPPENING. It was the funniest shit ever.
Anyway, I'm fully aware I'm probably just consuming hours of copaganda, but honestly I couldn't care less because Dragnet is just a joy to listen to.
Don't have anything deep to say about this, I only wanted to share something I've been into lately, and to remind you that when it comes to smoking, to only buy mild-tasting Fatima, property of Chesterfields.