What happens
Edmond Dantes, a young sailor, is arrested in Marseille in 1814 after a letter he carried is found to implicate him in a political plot. The king's prosecutor, who seems to be hiding a personal motive, promises him release but then has him held in prison. Dantes endures years of solitary confinement until a fellow prisoner, an elderly priest, tunnels to his cell and begins to teach him. The priest reveals the existence of a hidden treasure on the island of Monte Cristo. This episode is an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's novel The Count of Monte Cristo, presented on The Mercury Theatre on the Air series, first broadcast on October 1, 1939, with Orson Welles in the lead.
Marseille and the Chateau d'If prison, 1814; later the island of Monte Cristo, 1834
Characters: Edmond Dantes, Caderousse, Abbe Faria, Monsieur de Villefort, Mercedes, Danglars, Fernand Mondego
Listen for: The prisoner's account of years in solitary confinement and his tunnel to the old priest in the Chateau d'If
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.