Steven Thomas Oney

A great concept, poorly executed.

Retired police captain, Waverly Underhill, and his friend, Dr. Alexander Scofield, supposedly solve mysteries in and around Cape Cod.

Disc One: The Whirlpool
Capt. Underhill and Dr. Scofield are on vacation. They offer a ride to a park ranger called Angelina Rose. As they wait in their car to board a ferry, they are hijacked by an escaped murderer—Phillipe Gaspard. They become caught in a notorious area whirlpool known as the Old Sow and almost become fatalities until the tug boat comes to their rescue.

Disc Two: The Cobra in the Kindergarten
Capt. Underhill and Dr. Scofield are called in to help find a pet cobra that has escaped from his irresponsible, teenage owner. The duo tracks the snake to a nearby elementary school, but fails to find him. The snake eventually shows up on its own four months later.

The whole idea of a retired police captain and his semi-retired best friend wandering around New England, solving mysteries in an old-time radio show format is simply delightful. Unfortunately, the actual stories don’t live up to their promise.

Neither of the stories involves any real mystery.

In The Whirlpool, our protagonists are hijacked and—in spite of obvious opportunities—they fail to escape. They are then trapped in a dangerous whirlpool, and are only saved when the tugboat comes to save them. No real mystery to be had here.

In The Cobra in the Kindergarten, a dangerous animal is on the loose and is believed to be lurking somewhere in an elementary school. Capt. Underhill and Dr. Scofield never succeed in finding the cobra, and eventually give up and leave the task to the local animal control. We learn in the afterward that the animal ultimately shows up months later. No real mystery to be had here, either. Why this is referred to as the Cape Cod Radio Mystery Theater is beyond me.

The stories are poorly written, rather boring, and heavily padded.

The Whirlpool begins with an onerous, twenty-minute discussion of the whirlpools of the world, hydrodynamics, the geography of Passamaquoddy Bay, terrain, and currents. It was so tedious and uninteresting, I almost fell asleep.

The story itself is bookended by a couple of whiny children and their cantankerous grandpa browbeating Angelina the park ranger into telling them the story of her escape from the Old Sow Whirlpool, even though she clearly doesn’t want to. What could be less entertaining and more irrelevant than a couple of shrill children throwing a tantrum? Why did anyone think it was a good idea to include this?

When the escaped murderer appears on the scene, the whole story descends into the ridiculous. It’s pretty clear the convict has no intention of shooting anyone; yet—when the police show up searching for him—Capt. Underhill fails to take advantage of their presence to save the day. Then, for no logical reason at all, Angelina downright refuses to make a break for it when she has the opportunity. Later, when they are all trapped in the whirlpool, it is the tug boat that reluctantly comes to the rescue. Capt. Underhill never actually solves anything and is never even responsible for saving anybody. And, after about fifteen minutes of being victimized by the confessed double murderer, Angelina is madly in love with him. What? It was stupid and nonsensical. When Angelina’s and Phillipe’s ridiculously phony foreign accents are added to the mix, the story actually becomes physically painful to listen to.

The Cobra in the Kindergarten is bookended by an entirely unnecessary scenario at a diner in which Capt. Underhill and Dr. Scofield are eating with the representative of some organization poised to give Underhill an award. The representative has a grating Indian accent that roughly approximates the sound of nails on a chalkboard…Yikes! The three of them sit around spilling things on one another, exchanging banter with the homespun waitress, ordering more chowder, and talking about oyster crackers. What a nonsensical waste of time.

The story itself isn’t much better. Underhill and Scofield are called in to help find a poisonous cobra that has escaped from his owner. They determine the snake is probably at the elementary school, but they never do find it. Oh, well! They just decide to leave the task to animal control. Animal control never finds it either. Later, back at the diner, they reminisce that the creature finally did turn up amusingly four months later. So, once again, Captain Underhill never solves anything or helps anyone. As a detective, Captain Underhill is clearly ineffectual and just plain silly. As a mystery, the whole thing is kind of a dud.

I love radio programs & I wanted to love this mystery series. The sound effects are positively delightful on these cds. However, the stories are not very mysterious, not very suspenseful, and not very interesting. It’s sad because these could have been so much better.… (mehr)

There were 2 discs in this package.

I got through track 2 of the first disc before skipping the rest entirely; the discussion of whirlpools was simply never ending and I swiftly got bored.

The second disc was a bit better, but the story was unfortunately kind of boring. Based on a true story (a snake loose in a school) it dragged on and on as the characters searched for the snake in a kindergarten class. The recording seems to be of an amateur radio troupe, and they did ok. Often the recording was difficult to hear.… (mehr)