Sherlock Holmes Has Never Sounded Better!

It might be more accurate to say that Professor Moriarty's never sounded better, but I digress.

Anyone out there who might be interested in a "vintage radio drama starring John Gielgud, Orson Welles and Ralph Richardson?" And featuring the endlessly-portrayed yet still endlessly-fascinating Sherlock Holmes? You be your life I'm interested! (Is there someone out there who's not interested? And if so, can you please seek medical attention immediately?)

Here's the aforementioned trio doing just what I said, thanks to the folks at OpenCulture (and the Internet Archive). I highly recommend clicking through, because there are tons of vintage Holmesian shows to be heard. Just be sure you've got some time to burn, because it'll suck up a fair bit of it. (125 episodes will take a while, yes. You could download them and listen at your leisure, I suppose. If you're not compulsive, like me.)

The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, as it was called, took a lighthearted approach to the characters and, as one reviewer puts it, could feel “quite rushed,” with the actors given little time to rehearse. Although the original series has many merits, in the ‘50s, NBC decided to improve upon it, taking the radio transcriptions of the Conan Doyle stories and re-recording them with new actors. Which actors? In many episodes, two of the finest British stage actors of their generation: Sir John Gielgud as Holmes and Ralph Richardson as Watson. And in one episode, an adaptation of “The Final Problem,” the producers found to play their Professor Moriarty an actor whose voice dominated some of the most popular radio broadcasts of the age: Orson Welles.
Attribution(s): "The Final Problem" By Sidney Paget is in the Public Domain via Wikipedia.