Roald Dahl’s Man From The South

A single room, a lighter, and a wager that feels too good to be true—Roald Dahl’s Man From The South still lands like a dare whispered in your ear. We unpack the story’s enduring power, from its razor‑clean setup to the way audio turns each click into a countdown. Along the way, we connect Dahl’s menace to the lineage of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the BBC Radio 4 run of Tales of the Unexpected, showing how a careful adaptation can make an old story feel newly dangerous.

You’ll hear why Tom Hollander’s narration matters, how broadcast dates and credits help preserve audio heritage, and why this specific 1979 airing still feels fresh. More than nostalgia, this is about keeping stories in circulation—offering new listeners a door into classic suspense and giving creators a toolkit for making lean, resonant work. If you love Roald Dahl, Alfred Hitchcock, BBC radio drama, or the craft of audio storytelling, you’ll find both context and inspiration here.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Creative Mission
• 0:41 Introducing Man From The South
• 1:44 Dahl, Hitchcock, And Adaptations
• 3:07 How We Make Our Radio Videos
• 3:51 Tales Of The Unexpected Background
• 4:15 Broadcast Facts And Tom Hollander
• 5:20 Filming At Sandbanks
• 6:02 Tom Hollander’s Career Notes
• 7:09 Access, Archives, And Copyright Limits
• 8:13 Why We Share These Stories
• 9:12 Season Two Wrap And Behind The Scenes
• 10:39 Where To Find Us And Work With Us
• 11:33 Future Plans And Research Notes

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello everyone. Welcome to Melancholy Mentor, the classic literature. It's the vibrant world of radio plays. I'm Fran and I'm joined by Evan from Mystery Method. Together, we're your guides on this creative journey. During each episode, we'll dive into stories featured on the Melancholy Mentor channel, allowing fresh ideas to flourish, inspiring you to dream big and unlock your creative potential. Get comfy, open your mind, and embrace curiosity. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_01: 0:40

Hello, I'm Fran. And I'm Evan. In this Melancholy Mentor podcast episode, we're highlighting an episode featured on the Melancholy Mentor YouTube channel, and the episode is Tao's From the Unexpected, and it's Man from the South, which is a story by Rald Dahl. Yeah. A mysterious stranger in a luxurious hotel entices a young man into a high stakes bed. Ten successful flicks of the lighter for a shiny car, but failure means is a spoiler alert sacrificing a finger. So as tension mounts, the man's sinister smile hints at a hidden agenda, blurring the line between thrill and terror. With each click of the lighter, the room is consumed by sense of impending dread. Man from the south is a short story by Rold Dahl. The story was originally published as a collector's item in 1948. It's been adapted a several times for film and television, including an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which was aired in 1960. And that was a bit of a tongue twister for me. Yeah. So here we go. It's a running theme about my pronunciation. You know, I'm I'm learning and growing every day and doing my best, is all I can say. So it featured in an episode of Alfred Hitchcock. I find that so hard to say, which aired in 1960. As mentioned in our previous episodes, Towers of the Unexpected is a British television anthology series that ran from 1979 to 1988. And it's still aired on TV today. Oh wow. Yeah, that's cool, isn't it? I think that Roald Dahl actually did the Towers of the Unexpected series, didn't he? Yeah.

unknown: 3:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 3:00

And then the the earlier kind of version similar was for Alfred Hitchcock. Yeah. Um so I usually go out with my tripod and my mobile phone and I film around Dorset and Hampshire in the UK because Evan and I are based in England, especially along the woodland and kind of coastal areas. Then Evan takes the radio drama, just takes it. They're out in archives, so it's public domain stuff, and you add the videos to it. And your channel is Mystery Mythos, which is mostly AI generated at the moment. So with Tao's The Unexpected, so the Man from the South, the radio drama that's featured on the Melancholy Mental channel. Evan, over to you. Have you got any other information about it?

SPEAKER_02: 3:51

Yeah, I've got some bits. So as been said, Tales of the Unexpected was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between 1979 and 1988. The series ran for nine. There's like there's like nine total of nine series with 112 episodes included. So it's a lot, isn't it? This particular one that we've got was narrated by Tom Hollander. And I've got that this particular episode was broadcast on March the 24th, 1979, and was the first episode of the series to be broadcast, apparently. Yeah, it's um 15 minutes long, so it's it's a nice little listen, isn't it? We've got 183 views, and the video was filmed by you at Sandbanks in Dorset.

SPEAKER_01: 4:50

So Sandbanks is also known as Millionaire's Row.

SPEAKER_02: 4:54

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 4:55

Beautiful golden sandy beaches, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02: 4:59

Lovely. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 5:02

So I've got a little bit more about uh Tom Hollander. So Thomas Anthony Hollander was born in Bristol in 1967 and grew up in Oxford. His dad is a Czech Jewish, though his family converted to Catholicism and his mum is English. So growing up, see when it gets even more spicy. Growing up, Tom was raised as Christian. When he was 14 in 1981, he landed a main role in a BBC adaptation of John Garfield's uh Leon Garfield, sorry, John Diamond. Tom has appeared in a variety of projects, including a 2005 movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, where he played Mr. William Collins. And Pride and Prejudice is a classic novel by Jane Austen, which was first published in 1813. And I would love some Jane Austen on the Melancholy Mentor YouTube channel, but alas we're not allowed to have any.

SPEAKER_02: 6:05

Alas, we couldn't get it. No, not radio drama. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 6:11

Not clear. So some of it, even though you know we're we're literature fans, aren't we really? And like sci-fi fans, and some things are just not accessible for us due to copyright, or they're not in they're not on the archives or anything like that. So we kind of get a little bit lost over time, I guess, some of it. So fun fact about Tom Hollander, he has lived in the same flat in Notting Hill, West London, since 2000, apparently. So his voice actually is quite a pleasure to listen to. So check out the radio drama Man from the South, which is voiced by Tom on our YouTube channel. And just to let you know, because I love saying about this, we're passionate about sharing timeless stories with new audiences, and even more passionate about igniting your creativity along the way. And that's what we actually do this for. So not only Arevan and I put in all the things together that we love, yeah, and doing the things that we like to do and creating the life that we like to have. We love sharing this as we go along. So a lot of these kind of radio drama adaptations, these stories, these verbal stories, they would be lost over time, wouldn't they? And we like to bring things to a new audience. Yeah. So thank you for joining us and be sure to explore the radio plays and dramas featured on our YouTube channel, Melancholy Mentor. If you're feeling brave, you can hop across to Mystery Mythos, where there's mostly sci-fi. And you can even find me. I was gonna say, I was gonna say us, it's kind of us really, but mostly me at the moment, on our other channel, which is melancholy coaching. So until next time, stay curious and keep igniting your creative potential. And that wraps up season two of the Melancholy Mental Podcast. Because season one went on and on and on and on and on, because we started it and just thought that we would have the energy to do it all the time, every week, a couple of times a week, and then I wanted to launch another channel which is melancholy coaching, and then you edit, you know, do all of the video and all of the putting together and all of the tech for this, don't you? And I'm off also coaching people, so I'm also a neurolinguistic programming coach, and I do a little bit of house sitting, which is what I'm currently doing at the time of this recording. So I'm looking after two beautiful dogs in a very remote area in the Hampshire countryside, and occasionally I'm a cabaret performer, so there's like other things that we do.

SPEAKER_02: 9:00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 9:01

You're there like fevering away, doing all the tape and put putting it all together.

SPEAKER_02: 9:08

Very time consuming. So anything like that is, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01: 9:12

Yeah, because we we do this with the upgrade of tech that we've got, and it's all done with the I say limited resources, but the resources that we currently have, which is why we record the podcast in the way that we do and we edit it and put it out in the way that we do. Um so we are we pay for the podcast platform itself, and then we also put it out on YouTube. Yeah. And you could probably find us if you delve deep enough in other places on the on the interweb, though predominantly our content is is YouTube and then our website. So you can find us at www.melancolymentor.com and that has other stuff mostly about the coaching and things like that on there, other ways of accessing us and following what we do. And maybe you want to come and book some coaching with me, or maybe you want to book a tech session with Evan, that's all okay as well. And maybe you even want to be on a podcast yourself. So on the Melancholy Coaching Channel, I interview people with inspiring stories and motivational messages. So if that's of interest to you, then come and be my guest.

SPEAKER_02: 10:27

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 10:29

And who knows when season three will air. Not sure yet. Can stay tuned and stay tuned and see what see what else we get up to. It's a mission of mine with this podcast to go through every episode that's featured on the Melancholy Mentor YouTube channel. So every radio drama that we've got on there, we want to at least highlight it and say a little bit about it, just to bring the information and the stories to new audiences. So by all means, anybody listening to this, do your due diligence as well. So we research this stuff and we do our best. Sometimes there's not a lot of information for us to find. So do your due diligence diligence on you know whether or not it's factually correct or whether there are any stories attached to any of this. And if there's anything that you think that's interesting and you'd like us to know, then come and comment on our channel or you know, send us an email or something like that. That would be exciting, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_02: 11:28

Yeah, I'd love that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 11:31

So until next time, keep igniting your creative potential. Really are going this time. Bye. Bye. Join us for season three whenever it is.

SPEAKER_00: 11:43

Yeah. Thank you for tuning in. Contact us at melancholymentor.com. Until next time, keep your minds open and stay curious.