Post by AQUA SALZ! on Sept 24, 2021 4:00:58 GMT 1
Anyone else listen to this? It’s a series of mock-radio plays on HBO Max. It’s fun, but I kept thinking… Who on earth is the audience for this? I love radio dramas and think radio is a wonderful and now sadly underused storytelling medium, but—is a radio show really going to attract an audience?
Anyway, this show is half-comedic, half-serious, and at least in the first episode the mix works well. Jeffrey Wright voices Bats, and unsurprisingly for such a good actor he’s excellent in the part. Is he a Batman fan between this and his playing Gordon in the upcoming movie?
Because I’m a constant nitpicker, a few criticisms: This is never convincingly ’30s-’40s, not even in a spoofy, Nick Danger kind of way. (Listen to Firesign Theatre! They were amazing, like an American, drugged-out Goon Show.) The difference is that the Firesign guys loved old-time radio and hardboiled mysteries, so their parody was on-point and hilarious for exactly that reason. This episode sounds like writer-director Dennis McNicholas listened to a few Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar (a ’50s show, actually, but very ’40s in style) episodes for research and called it a day. And note to writers: If you’re going to make a character a big-band singer, give him big-band songs to sing. The song this character gets sounds like a modern pop tune.
Also, I’m not sold on the voice actors other than Wright. Robin, for example, is so clearly a girl that they just should have made the character female. Honestly, just because we don’t see the actor doesn’t mean we can’t tell. I like Rosario Dawson and would expect her to be a good Catwoman, but here she just seems to be hamming it up.
Worse, McNicholas’s plotting/storytelling skills seem severely lacking. Nothing quite builds up to anything, we just get one random event after another.
Still… Well, all the words I wrote on this should tell you that I enjoyed it. I’m just a sucker for Batman and for radio—so maybe, re: the audience, this show was tailored just for me?!
EDIT: Forgot to mention that McNicholas needs to realize that the narration doesn’t work.
EDIT 2: The first episode is also available on YouTube.
Anyway, this show is half-comedic, half-serious, and at least in the first episode the mix works well. Jeffrey Wright voices Bats, and unsurprisingly for such a good actor he’s excellent in the part. Is he a Batman fan between this and his playing Gordon in the upcoming movie?
Because I’m a constant nitpicker, a few criticisms: This is never convincingly ’30s-’40s, not even in a spoofy, Nick Danger kind of way. (Listen to Firesign Theatre! They were amazing, like an American, drugged-out Goon Show.) The difference is that the Firesign guys loved old-time radio and hardboiled mysteries, so their parody was on-point and hilarious for exactly that reason. This episode sounds like writer-director Dennis McNicholas listened to a few Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar (a ’50s show, actually, but very ’40s in style) episodes for research and called it a day. And note to writers: If you’re going to make a character a big-band singer, give him big-band songs to sing. The song this character gets sounds like a modern pop tune.
Also, I’m not sold on the voice actors other than Wright. Robin, for example, is so clearly a girl that they just should have made the character female. Honestly, just because we don’t see the actor doesn’t mean we can’t tell. I like Rosario Dawson and would expect her to be a good Catwoman, but here she just seems to be hamming it up.
Worse, McNicholas’s plotting/storytelling skills seem severely lacking. Nothing quite builds up to anything, we just get one random event after another.
Still… Well, all the words I wrote on this should tell you that I enjoyed it. I’m just a sucker for Batman and for radio—so maybe, re: the audience, this show was tailored just for me?!
EDIT: Forgot to mention that McNicholas needs to realize that the narration doesn’t work.
EDIT 2: The first episode is also available on YouTube.