If You Please, Himan Brown’s Radio Mystery Theater

Welcome to If You Please, Himan Brown’s Radio Mystery Theater. On this series we are offering rebroadcasts of a select group of programs created by this legendary producer for CBS between 1974 and 1982. Brown reimagined radio drama for contemporary times. Our new series offers some of these exciting works again, and includes comments by John Slavney about each episode.

This week: The Old Ones Are Hard to Kill

Ada Canby is 77 years old, sharp as a tack, and nobody's fool. So when her boarder, Mr. Paulson, confesses on his deathbed that he killed a man for money a decade ago, she’s determined to uncover who ordered the hit. Soon, she figures out the players and the plot, and she plans to go to the police with the new information — although she still sets aside time to care for her new boarder, Stuart Winfield, who's dealing with an increasingly severe case of pneumonia... or something like it.

CUNY TV and the Radio Drama Network announce the launch of the archival anthology podcast series IF YOU PLEASE: HIMAN BROWN'S RADIO MYSTERY THEATER, premiering June 4

From CUNY-TV and the Radio Drama Network, upcoming archival anthology podcast If You Please: Himan Brown’s Radio Mystery Theater debuts on June 4, 2026. If You Please presents 26 episodes of Himan Brown’s legendary radio dramas from the CBS Radio Mystery Theater series, which ran from 1974 to 1982.

Radio producer Himan Brown created over 10,000 programs in his lifetime, with a vigor and intensity that kept him going for a century. He was an acclaimed producer in the Golden Age of radio, and then inventively reimagined radio drama for contemporary times. His CBS Radio Mystery Theater series offered a gripping array of compelling mysteries, supernatural chillers, and crime stories with a twist. They were crafted by leading writers in the genre, and always offered much more than their plots, featuring vivid characters, moral dilemmas, and gripping conclusions.

Blending forms between radio drama and curated artistic deep dive, each episode of If You Please is contextualized with an introduction by John Slavney, a Himan Brown scholar authoring the definitive guide to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater programs. In each episode, he shares behind the scenes details about each production before you enter the many worlds created by Brown, his authors, and his actors.

“I had the great pleasure of producing Audio Maverick, a nine-part documentary series about the life and work of Himan Brown,” says Sarah Montague, director, “And it was clear that Brown really lived most through his work, so it is wonderful to have the opportunity to share some of it with a new generation of listeners. As he said himself, ‘radio drama takes your imagination in, embraces the listener like nothing else in the history of theater.’”

Melina Brown, granddaughter of Himan Brown and president of the Radio Drama Network, shares what makes this podcast so important: “My grandfather believed in the power of imagination and storytelling. His dream was to have these shows released and played on the radio airwaves, but had he known about podcasts, he would have loved this format. Radio Drama Network is so happy to partner with CUNY TV in realizing his dream to have the shows playing again and people imagining the scenes.”

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