In recent times, we hear, stars of TV serials such as Neighbours and Home and Away have been mobbed on arrival at Heathrow Airport, and recognized even in Finland – Australian production houses appear to have a talent for capturing on screen alluring fantasies and traumas for purveying to mass audiences, both home and away. The foundations for this sorely-needed export industry were doubtless laid in the 1940s and 50s, when Australian radio serials and drama were heard around the globe, at least in English-speaking countries (subtitles are difficult on radio). At home, hundreds of hours of drama were pumped out every year on ABC and commercial stations, and Richard Lane is surely right in saying that from about 1935 to 1955 radio drama was far and away the nation’s top-ranking form of entertainment. Vaudeville and circus were gradually declining, and theatre meant mainly imported stars and plays in a dwindling number of houses. The nation was glued to ‘the wireless’ on mantel sets and giant coachwood boxes for its daily fixes of comedy and adventure, weepies, and thrillers – as well as new Australian writing and the classics. Between 1936 and 1938 ABC Radio broadcasted all thirty-seven of Shakespeare’s plays on Sunday afternoons in winter – live to air, naturally, there being no other way – an achievement unthinkable in the present day.