Monday, March 02, 2009

Some people call me Maurice

A few posts back, Tom asked about podcasts and I figured I'd take a few minutes and write a little about what I'm listening to on the ol' Ipod these days.

First of all, it's important to note that I listen to my Ipod a lot. I walk over 2.5 hours a day (30 minutes to work, 30 minutes home, at least 1.5 hours of dog walks) and, as I almost always walk listening to something, I go through podcasts pretty quickly. I'm always on the look out for new and interesting podcasts to pass the time.

At Internet Radio Archive I've recently discovered a series of Sherlock Holmes stories produced in the early 1960s by the BBC. Carlton Hobbs makes an excellent Holmes. His dry, almost whimsical delivery anticipates the stellar performance of Jeremy Brett, who played Holmes on television in the late 1980s and is considered by many (myself included) to be the very best Holmes. Unlike the more well known radio series that starred Basil Rathbone, the Hobbs series is remarkably faithful to Conan Doyle's original stories. The only major change I've found in the handful of episodes I have is the inclusion of Watson in "The Lion's Mane," a late story which Conan Doyle has Holmes narrate himself.