Created by Martin Kitsch
The hero of Becker: House Detective, another CBC radio series,\clues us in on his lot in life:
“The Queen of the Rockies. A Grand Hotel. About the last thing you’d expect to find in the Rockies in 1923, but then I may be the last thing you’d expect to find in a Grand Hotel. I’m the House Detective. Becker’s the name. Just Becker.“
So he’s a 1920s house dick who, like the hotel, is a little out of place. It seems BECKER has a few surprises in his past: a fancy pants eastern education (which, even then, must have gone over real well in Alberta), a stint as a mountain guide, of all things, and a tragedy that haunts him. And so he throws himself into his work, trying to protect the hotel and its guests from all sorts of trouble. And oh what guests! Film stars, American senators, European explorers, con men, flappers and maybe, just maybe, a gangster or two. Through it all, Becker tries to keep as cool head.
Becker was a popular part of the CBC Radio’s The Mystery Project in the mid-nineties, a regular anthology that also hosted Midnight Cab and Flynn.
RADIO
- BECKER: HOUSE DETECTIVE
(1996, CBC)
13 episodes
Created and written by Martin Kitsch
Produced and directed by Martin Fishman.
Starring Andy Maton as BECKER
Stephen Haire as Dickey
and David Lorrainey as Francois
Hosted by Bob Boving
Period music arranged by Miles Jackson- “A View of Mount Von Relling” (April 6, 1996)
- “The Wicked World of Mary Hunter” (April 13, 1996)
- “Pearl” (April 20, 1996)
- “Hotels Are My Life” (April 27, 1996)
- “A Single Green Feather” (May 4, 1996)
- “A Friend From Chicago” (May 11, 1996)
- “An Expensive Bottle of Poison” (May 18, 1996)
- “Only Poetry” (May 25, 1996)
- “A Long, Long Trail” (June 1, 1996)
- “White Lightning” (June 8, 1996)
- “The Magistrate Arrives On Wednesday” (June 15, 1996)
- “The Hunt” (June 22, 1996)
- ‘The Kill” (June 29, 1996)
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- The CBC Mystery Project
Geoff Loker’s log of all shows broadcast from Novermber 1992 to July 6, 2002.
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Geoff Loker and Paul Dean who helped out with this one.
