Sunday, November 25, 2007

A Cry For Help

Funky Squad's been through several incarnations, from TV Show to slightly unsettling book, but it started life as a radio serial on Triple M, when the D-Gen team was taking care of Breakfast on that station. Each Funky Squad radio story is made up of five episodes (Monday to Friday) of approximately two minutes each. There's more info on this era over in Wikipedia, if you follow the link to the right.

Since I don't know broadcast dates for these stories, I'm blogging them in approximately alphabetical order, starting with:

A Cry For Help

Grant (Rob Sitch), Cassie (Jane Kennedy), Stix (Santo Cilauro) and Poncho (nobody in particular) are cruising a rough neighbourhood in the funky buggy.

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Grant: You know what the murder rate is here?
Stix: One per episode.

A hobo is found dead, and despite reluctance from Deputy Dismissive, Funky Squad are on the case. A string of unintelligibly funky talk from their hip to the groove street contact provides some less than helpful leads.

Stix: What did you make of that?
Grant: Nothing, as usual
Cassie: Man, we've really gotta learn jive talk.

A tip off from Father O'Cool of St Moderns leads them to the classically troubled youth Tito Spanola and his distressed mother.

"Twenty years een zish country and all I haff to show for eet ez zish accent! (sob sob sob) I'm sorry... I get like this when i have only one scene..."

They seem to be getting somewhere when The Chief (Tom Gleisner) puts his irrationally conservative foot down.

Chief: I'm not having you stand there and set up this episode any more Funky Squad. The case is closed, and tomorrow I want you to report for... Useless Duty!"

Funky Squad head off to talk to more incomprehensibly hip street types, but there investigations are curtailed when the Chief inexplicably turns up and slams some car doors at them. Over the banging, they learn that a big shipment of drugs is coming in tonight from Porto Hashish, that young Tito is the lookout and the dead hobo knew too much, hence his ending up with a chalk outline. Funky Squad are back in business.

Grant: Carlos! We have your warehouse completely surrounded!
Carlos: What do you want?
Grant: Throw your weapons out the window!
Carlos: But there are no windows.
Grant: In that case... we have the warehouse beside yours completely surrounded!

This episode later morphed into The Wrong Side of the Tracks when Funky Squad went televisual.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Ethel Great summaries - I love your commentary - so much better than an entire recap or even a straight script.

A few minor corrections (both in A Cry For Help):

1. Tom Gleisner voices the Chief, not Tony Martin.
2. Grant is the one who speaks through the megaphone to Carlos at the warehouse, not Stix.

I look forward to reading the rest!

Anonymous said...

You've gotta post the original radio plays as mp3s or something.
You've just gotta.
Pretty please?

Anonymous said...

Here are the links to the episodes that will feature on this blog.

A cry for help
http://www.mediafire.com/?5smrpew30u3

dance of death
http://www.mediafire.com/?8t02dfd94ml

framed
http://www.mediafire.com/?0emz2o14smx

hunted
http://www.mediafire.com/?co9ym0mtnic

in uniform
http://www.mediafire.com/?4kmzycjwin2

prophet of hate
http://www.mediafire.com/?cdcgigzdysg

the bermuda triangle
http://www.mediafire.com/?clxknmhjizz

the president must die
http://www.mediafire.com/?0sdw1gwcdc1

the cat burglar
http://www.mediafire.com/?4dr0dgdjamz

the haunted house
http://www.mediafire.com/?14jyumcljcy

the mad strangler
http://www.mediafire.com/?1wfcx4tehzz

the hijack
http://www.mediafire.com/?f5tzyylz2y1

keep reading this blog though, even after you've listened! And no this is not the author.

Smoke said...

Oh, ta for the correction! I am SO crap at recognising voices. I'll go fix it asaigam.

(As Soon As I Get A Moment).

And thanks to ananymous person for the links - I didn't have the connection speed or technical nouse to do it myself!

Smoke said...

The ananymous person also known as ANONYMOUS, of course. I can actually spell, just don't have the attention span to proof read...