Always Listen to Your Orchestra

Mysterious Stranger sent me some links to old-timey American radio adaptations of the end of Scott's journey, from a series called 'SUS-PENSE!' The slow trudge to oblivion may be tragic and intense, but I don't know whether its inevitability lends much to the idea of 'suspense.' Anyway. They are amusing, in that '50s radio play kind of way, with the added humour inherent in calling Captain Robert Falcon Scott ('Con' to his friends) by the name of ... BOB. (Bob!) There's also some highly inappropriate spark plugs commercials in one of them. But my favourite thing (and I say that in an ironic way) is the orchestra: I appreciate that they're trying to find a way of breaking up the journal entries but playing a big scary menacing chord every five minutes is not a good way of suspending disbelief or building tension ... at least I got a drawing out of it.

If you want to catch the radio play, there are two nearly identical versions: 1952's, with spark plugs, and 1956's, without, and with 66% less 'Bob.'