A Brief History of Barnaby Druthers Part III (The First Adventures)

The first adventures were the Duchess’s Judas Window, the Chuzzleby Carbuncle and the MouseTrap.

The Duchess’s Judas Window was notable as it introduced the character of the Viscountess, portrayed by the exceptional voice actor Lana Peck. The Viscountess is a wonderful source of information who could always be counted on saying, “I do not gossip”, before relating information pertinent to a case. Also of note, AJ Lin’s first role in Druthers is in this episode as she portrays the title character, the Duchess. AJ Lin took on the role of directing all episodes in season 2.

The Mouse Trap is a fun story involving an American magician played by Paul Starybrat, and his assistant Valentina, played by Eastlynd Bates. In hindsight, I would have titled the story differently as “mousetrap” is rather well-worn in its overuse in the mystery genre. The story brings back “Smythe” from the Grey Gryphons, played by David Macharelli, thus establishing the character as a major supporting character, and Jason Kulas as Gregson. Gregson was an extremely minor character in Doyle’s short stories so I made him the prominent “Lestrade-like” character for Barnaby. Kurt Boucher plays “Pemberty” and begins a run throughout the Barnaby series as the voice of a thousand characters.

I wrote the Chuzzleby Carbuncle because I liked the word “Carbuncle”, after all, Sherlock Holmes’ famous Christmas story was titled “The Blue Carbuncle”. Jason Kulas performs as Alistair Chuzzleby, and Christiane Olson takes on the role of Lady Chuzzleby. Kurt Boucher returns, this time as Jenkins. We asked the actors to bring period-costuming to the station. In March 2020, we recorded the episode and took promotional photos; it was the last time we got together face-to-face in the station for over a year. The week later, the station shut down visitors due to quarantine precautions and the entire country began to come to grips with the COVID-19 virus. The station would not open up for guests until late summer 2021.

After Chuzzleby, all Barnaby Druthers episodes were recorded remotely and as the world changed, so did we.