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Not a lot of people nowadays know that the first book was a novelization of the radio play
This would be my recommendation too. Hilarious and thought provoking in equal measure.
Of course.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mercury_Theatre_on_the_Air
The most famous is the War of the Worlds broadcast; that and others are available at the Internet Archive.
The most famous is the War of the Worlds broadcast;
Yarp, literally the only one I know off the top of my head.
Wasn’t War of the Worlds an extended radio drama?
War of the Worlds was originally a novel in 1898. A 1938 adaptation was made for radio as a single 60 minute episode of The Mercury Theater on the Air.
The radio episode was formatted as a series of increasingly frequent "news bulletins" that interrupted light jazz orchestra music. This caused some listeners to believe that New Jersey was actively being invaded by Martians.
The shadow knows.
Can't believe no one has said the dramatized version of LOTR broadcast by BBC in 1981! 12 hours plus of pure magic. Fun fact: Ian Holm gave the voice for Frodo in the radio version, the same guy who plays Bilbo in the movie trilogy.
Looks like it is on internet archive already: https://archive.org/details/lord-of-the-rings-10_202401 though I first downloaded it on high seas many years ago.
Of course there are lots of them. Lone ranger was a huge one.
Welcome to Nightvale is 13 years old. Does that count as a classic?
You know what, I'll count it. It had a big impact on me growing up.
Cracker Barrel used to sell old radio dramas on tape and CD. They had the original ads, too. Awful quality, but the illusion was there.
Having read the original Foundation Trilogy twice, I can give a heartfelt stamp of approval to the BBC radio play of it, apparently it's from 1977, I had assumed it was at least half a decade older than that. Hope you enjoy, I surely did.
If you've got a little while you could listen to [The Archers](The Archers - Wikipedia https://share.google/HNm6SzoUffXpgh18X) there are only 20,000 or so episodes though.
A 14 hour expanded radio drama of the Star Wars trilogy was done.
As others suggested, just go to Archive.org and search "OTR".
Maybe see if you can get a complete box set of the British series The Archers?
The Archers is hugely popular and I'm a big radio4 listener but have never got into it. I understand that twee is supposed to be part of the charm but it just doesn't gel with me.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy! As much as I love the 1981 BBC series, you can't beat the radio series.
Of course there are. Look up "OTR" on Archive.org.
Oh yes. Check out OTR Gold podcasts. They’re all classic radio shows and dramas.
I had a good time listening to Wolf 359.
ever heard of the Lone Ranger?
I don't know if it's still available, but you used to be able to download many Orson Welles radio dramas as podcasts. It was great entertainment when I worked for a moving company driving hours ever day
Edit: It was called Relic Radio. The last upload was 2023. Iirc the shows had a wide variety of audio quality
Not a drama but, The Firesign Theatre.
Came here to say this!
It’s also fun because it gets pretty meta about the whole form of a radio play: for example “The Further Adventures of Nick Danger” includes some fun jokes about drying wet clothes in the cellophane—which is what you’d crumple next to a mic to get the sound of a crackling fire.
The Adventures of Superman, Dick Tracy, The Green Hornet
CBS Radio Mystery Theater
You might check out episodes of Lux Radio Theatre. It ran for about 20 years, and every week they performed an hour-long adaptation of either a Broadway play or a popular movie; as much as possible, they tried to use the original cast as well. There's a whole bunch of them on the internet, at the Internet Archive and other sites. I downloaded a whole bunch of them back in the day; I used to listen to them during my commute home.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_radio_drama)
As a spiritual successor I greatly enjoyed the I Love Bees ARG. Its audio files effectively comprise a radio drama set in the Halo universe
Day of the Triffids.
Shout-out to WAMU's Big Broadcast. Sunday nights, three hours of old time radio. Lately they usually play Jonny Dollar, Guns one, a comedy, a feature length drama, and some shorter songs and variety pieces.
You can listen online.
Great radio show; I listen often.
Gunsmoke; Suspense!; Yours truly, Johnny Dollar; the Shadow; and I was a communist for the FBI.
Jumping off of that, I really enjoyed garrison kieler's spoof, "I was a Unitarian for the FBI"
That sounds great.
Is it this? https://www.prairiehome.org/story/2007/01/13/fbi-script.html
That definitely part of it, the tagline and musical stings for sure. My memory is that he got inside the church and saw them doing funny secular things, but I could be misremembering. 2007 was a long time ago lollll
If classic means old, aren't all radio dramas classic radio dramas?
I mean, afaik the genre of radio drama also includes fiction podcasts like Archive 81, Limetown, and Welcome to Night Vale
I see, I would say anything that first aired (actually aired) on radio.