Walk Softly, Peter Troy

December 10, 1963 – November 24, 1964 · 51 broadcasts

Walk Softly, Peter Troy is a curiosity of the airwaves: a London-set, hard-boiled detective drama made not in Britain or America but in the Durban studios of Herrick Merril Productions for South Africa's Springbok Radio. Beginning in December 1963, each half-hour sends private eye Peter Troy -- "London's fast, lady-killer detective" -- through a self-contained case in the noir manner, all fast women and faster trouble, with episode titles that read like a gallery of the women who cross his path: the Vulnerable Vixen, the Doll with the Dreamy Disposition, the High-Pressure Harpy. Tom Meehan stars as Troy, a natural fit -- he had already played Leslie Charteris's Simon Templar, The Saint, on Springbok for nearly six years -- with John Simpson and Merle Wayne in support. Sponsored by Irving & Johnson (who took over the slot from Gunsmoke, then disliked the show and dropped it), the series moved to the SABC English Service as the first program there from an independent production house rather than the SABC itself, running through November 1964. Forty-eight of its fifty-one catalogued broadcasts survive today, preserved by the Old Time Radio Researchers -- a rare, listenable window on South African radio noir.