This radio drama uses AI-generated writing, voices, music, sound effects and artwork. All spoken performances in this edition use ElevenLabs V4.

A letter signed by men who call themselves the Brigade says an Istanbul hotel was telephoned a warning at ten past twelve, well before its wing came down. The switchboard operator who took the call swears it was half past. Which of them is right about the time?

Read the story and the full transcript: https://matezz.com/episodes/the-cuckoos-hour-istanbul-confidential/

Stories, transcripts and the schedule: https://matezz.com

🎭 Directed Edition — every role cast for this story and every line performed with full voice direction.

Istanbul, the summer of 1946. The morning after a wing of the hotel comes down, its switchboard operator, Leyla, climbs the stair to the rooms above a glass-roofed arcade where the detective Kemal Arslan lives with Captain Haluk Demir, a stranger's spittle still on her sleeve. Every front page carries a letter from men who call themselves the Brigade, claiming that they telephoned the hotel at ten past twelve; the wing fell at twelve thirty-five. Leyla's clock, set every morning by the Ankara wireless, read half past when the call came, and she was given five minutes. Arslan says he believes her clock. Beneath the broken wing the police Komiser, Rüstem, who insists that Istanbul wants one quiet week, would rather the famous detective went home, while a Babıali reporter, Muazzez, keeps finding holes in his cordon. Back at the switchboard Leyla admits to a detail she never mentioned to the Komiser because it sounds like nonsense: under the caller's voice, a cuckoo called three times. On the front steps Rüstem recalls the noon when customs shut the hotel's Sultana café and its manageress, Naciye, swore that every one of them upstairs would pay. The hotel's lodgers are kept behind his rope. Arslan has a letter, a clock and a cuckoo that cannot count. Who was the man on the line?

From the series Istanbul Confidential: a real event of the 1940s reimagined as a classic noir radio mystery, performed by a full multi-voice AI cast with an original score and sound design.

Loosely inspired by a real event of the 1940s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including a hotel switchboard operator, a café manageress, a newspaper reporter, the hotel's guests and employees, the officials who worked in the wing, the victims and survivors, the rebels named in a newspaper letter, the investigators and the police — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. Where a real city, state, public body or newspaper is mentioned, its part in this story is invented; the hotel, its café and the offices named in it are invented too. This is a work of fiction, not a factual account of any real person or institution. No real person is portrayed, and no real individual, company or organisation is accused of any act shown here.

Setting: Istanbul — summer 1946.

Writer v2.7 — the studio's newest writing process: the plot is planned and checked by an AI story editor, then each act is drafted with the whole story in view and edited before a word is voiced — and then cast and performed with our new casting and voice direction.

Chapters:
0:00 Leyla Climbs the Stair Before Eight
1:54 Beneath the Broken South Wing
3:45 Plugs Still in Their Rows
5:17 A Smoke on the Front Steps
6:45 Naciye Under the Customs Paper
8:29 Tea in the Komiser's Canvas Tent
10:22 A Cord Between Her Fingers
11:50 A Lobby Turned into a Pen
13:50 Dusk on the Roof Terrace
15:01 Statements at a Table by the Main Stair
16:22 An Army Envelope Under the Lamp
17:53 Wet Stone and Lamp Oil at Sirkeci
20:17 Past Midnight, Back on the Roof
21:34 The Next Day, Climbing Behind the Komiser
23:17 A Bare Table at the Emniyet
25:23 Down the Corridor, a Pace Behind

#MonoNoirRadioDrama #NoirMystery #AudioDrama

This radio drama uses AI-generated writing, voices, music, sound effects and artwork. All spoken performances in this edition use ElevenLabs V4.

A night nurse in Houston telephones Baker Street the day a young woman dies, asking Sherlock Holmes to come before the burial; by breakfast the dead woman's father has sent his own lawyer across the Atlantic to ask for Holmes too. Houston has police and pathologists of its own, so why do they want a London detective?

Read the story and the full transcript: https://matezz.com/episodes/the-case-of-the-spoiled-cream-pastries-sherlock-holmes-the-new-cases/

Stories, transcripts and the schedule: https://matezz.com

🎭 Directed Edition — every role cast for this story and every line performed with full voice direction.

London, May 1967. The city has not seen a dry pavement in a fortnight, the gas fire in the sitting room at Baker Street ticks like a patient clock, and Watson, who has laboured an hour over his club's chess problem, is told by Holmes, after a single glance, to give up the queen. Then the telephone rings with the hiss of a transatlantic line. Sister Avril, a night nurse ringing from Houston, Texas, has not been to bed: a young woman she nursed died that morning, and she would like Holmes there before they bury her. She is not kin and not police, and Holmes will not cross an ocean on one nurse's unease, until Watson points out that hardened nurses do not telephone London over one patient. At breakfast Mrs Hudson brings up Edmund Thaw, wet to the knees and off the night flight from Houston, an attorney who acts for the father of Delphine Frayne, the young woman who died; he has brought the nurse's complaint and a bakery bill from her kitchen table. In Houston, Holmes and Watson are received in a drawing room curtained against the afternoon, where a lamp burns above her portrait because, her husband says, she hated a dark room; in a small clinic's ward of six beds, one stripped bare; in a bakery shuttered for the night, where Hollis Pike lets them in by the side door; and at police headquarters, where Inspector Vance introduces himself as "Vance, homicide." Bette Larch, the dead woman's companion of twelve years, asks Holmes to go gentle with her. Holmes has crossed an ocean with a nurse's complaint, a bakery bill and one question from the dead woman's father: why?

From the series Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases: a real crime of the 1960s reimagined as a classic Sherlock Holmes radio mystery, performed by a full multi-voice AI cast, with sound design and a light score that stays under the story.

Loosely inspired by a real event of the 1960s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the dead woman, her husband, her father and his lawyers, her friends, the doctors and nurses who treated her, the investigators and the police — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. Where a real city, state, public body or newspaper is mentioned, its part in this story is invented; the family home, the clinic, the bakery and the streets named in it are invented too. This is a work of fiction, not a factual account of any real person or institution. No real person is portrayed, and no real individual, company or organisation is accused of any act shown here.

Setting: London and Houston, Texas — May 1967.

Writer v2.7 — the studio's newest writing process: the plot is planned and checked by an AI story editor, then each act is drafted with the whole story in view and edited before a word is voiced — and then cast and performed with our new casting and voice direction.

Chapters:
0:00 A Wet May Evening and a Chess Problem
2:42 Breakfast and a Caller Wet to the Knees
4:29 A Drawing Room Curtained Against the Afternoon
5:47 A Ward of Six Beds, One Stripped Bare
7:28 A Bakery Shuttered for the Night
9:01 The Homicide Room at Police Headquarters
10:38 Bette Larch Beyond the City Limits
12:22 A Glass Partition and Clattering Typewriters
14:33 A Hotel Sitting Room Above the Street
15:29 One Bulb Burning Over the Counter
17:03 Sister Avril Before Her Shift
18:25 Near Midnight on the Night Ward
19:33 A Missed Morning Flight
21:09 An Apple Held Out on a Flat Palm
22:45 Past One in the Morning, Notebook in Hand
23:43 The Portrait Lamp at Evening
26:40 Rain on the Glass and a Letter From Houston

#MonoNoirRadioDrama #SherlockHolmes #AudioDrama

This radio drama uses AI-generated writing, voices, music, sound effects and artwork. All spoken performances in this edition use ElevenLabs V4.

Her daughter's letter home from Bavaria says everything is fine. So why is her mother sure that something is wrong?

Read the story and the full transcript: https://matezz.com/episodes/letters-from-bavaria-velvet-shadows/

Stories, transcripts and the schedule: https://matezz.com

Prague, 1992. A school cook, her kitchen apron still on under her coat, comes to the back office of a bookshop in Malá Strana. Her daughter Jitka went west to Bavaria with her young man, swearing she would write the day they arrived, and a letter did come: cheerful, typed, saying every word a mother wants to hear. The police shrugged and gave it back. Antonín Zima reads it aloud and starts to agree with her: everything in it is right, and that is what's wrong.

From the series Velvet Shadows: a real 1990s Czech crime reimagined as a post-communist Prague noir radio mystery, performed by a full multi-voice AI cast, with sound design and a light original score that stays out of the story's way.

Loosely inspired by a real Czech case of the 1990s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the missing couple, their families, the landlady, the suspects and the police — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. This is a work of fiction, not a factual account of any real person or institution.

Setting: winter 1992, Prague.

Directed Edition: the same story, newly performed line by line with a directing pass for every voice: each actor's delivery is chosen for the moment, from a dry aside to a held breath.

Writer v2.7 — the studio's newest writing process: the plot is planned and checked by an AI story editor, then each act is drafted with the whole story in view and edited before a word is voiced.

Chapters:
0:00 The Back Office in Malá Strana
2:06 Four Floors and No Lift
3:54 The Kapitán Keeps His Coat On
5:38 Soup for Three Hundred in Nusle
7:07 Three Empty Rooms in Žižkov
8:48 The Copper Pot at Two O'Clock
10:29 A Heater Under the Kapitán's Desk
12:26 A Door on a Chain
14:02 Picks Under One Bare Bulb
15:35 Flat Beer on Kovářská Street
16:39 Outside the Landlady's House
18:02 Coffee as Thick as Mortar
19:48 When the Stair Light Goes Out
20:49 A Thursday in Žižkov
22:48 A Kitchen with a Cold Stove
25:01 The Chair She Once Refused

#MonoNoirRadioDrama #AudioDrama