Beyond the Silver Screen

1970s Polish radio comedy series

Have you seen any good movies lately? Well, Jedrek certainly have. And he is willing to share the story with you... among other things.

Maniek and Jedrek have one thing in common - they like movies, although... in completely different way. Jedrek watches a lot of them and likes to talk about them, while Maniek is more of a... passive consumer of the art. And prefers the ones that have "moments" in them (meaning nudity). When they meet Jedrek always opens with "I saw a good movie yesterday" and then moves on to describing the content of the movie in... rather complicated way. He keeps digress, he picks only bits of the plot, he rarely tells the story from the beginning, not to mention he sometimes puts scenes in different order. But Maniek doesn’t really mind, as long as there are "moments" or the story sounds good he enjoys those meetings.

Beyond the Silver Screen was one of the series that formed radio program called "60 minutes per hour" between 1973 and 1981. Written by Andrzej Zaorski and performed together with Marian Kociniak, it was unusual offering, in a style a bit similar to what Smith & Jones were later doing in their programs. It was just a rather short dialogue (about 6 to 9 minutes long) between two friends, who just bumped into each other and one tells the other story of a movie or TV show he saw previous day. They were not often aiming to put a lot of jokes into it, but small puns and entertaining way the stories were told made the episodes interesting.

Overall 88 short episodes were produced for radio. The special episode, Return to Eden, was published in 1986 on audio cassettes, which has slightly difference structure. While in radio show both characters from time to time mentioned bits from their private lives, in this special episode their private stories and plots from Australian soap opera Return to Eden intertwine and create a more complete offering.

Overall it was not a great show, it wasn’t the funniest, it wasn’t the most entertaining, but it’s unusual style and good performances from both actors made it memorable radio experience.

Rating	6.0
Funny	5 / 10
Entertaining	4 / 5
Characters	4 / 5
Nonrepetitive	2 / 5