Three Thousand Metres Down · Velvet Shadows

This radio drama uses AI-generated writing, voices, music, sound effects and artwork. All spoken performances in this edition use ElevenLabs V4.

In Prague, four months after the freighter Kamenice was lost in the South Atlantic with six men aboard, a state insurer's claims assessor rings the detective Antonín Zima from a call box. Twelve crates of machinery, insured for a fortune, lie three thousand metres down, and someone above her wants the claim paid. What blew the Kamenice apart?

🎧 Full episode · full-cast radio drama, 28 min. Velvet Shadows: a modern noir detective audio drama set in Prague, performed by a full cast.
Hörspiel · audiokniha · rozhlasová hra (English audio, English captions)

Listen as a podcast, with full transcripts: https://mono-noir.transistor.fm/

Stories, transcripts and the schedule: https://matezz.com

🎭 Directed Edition — every role cast for this story and every line performed with full voice direction.

Prague, autumn 1992. The telephone rings in the cramped office behind a bookshop in Malá Strana, and the detective Antonín Zima answers it while the bookseller Pavel Hruška, who tells this story, goes back to his newspaper. The caller is Matějů, who assesses claims at the state insurer and is ringing from a call box, as if someone above her were listening. In the newspaper the freighter Kamenice is on page five, and the inquiry sits again on Monday. Next morning, at a steel desk four storeys up, she reads Zima the file: twelve crates, three thousand metres down, and a claimant named Kolář, who keeps a café across from the Finance Ministry. At half past three, in a corner office of the ministry, Deputy Minister Jedličková tells her to pay by Friday. That evening a young police captain, Kapitán Rys of the Criminal Police, meets them on the quay at the Holešovice port, beside the warehouse where the crates last stood on home ground, and walks them down the bay to the night watchman, Šebek, who keeps the nights. Nobody will ever open those crates.

From the series Velvet Shadows: a real crime reimagined as a post-communist Prague noir radio mystery, performed by a full multi-voice AI cast with an original score and sound design.

Loosely inspired by a real crime. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the claimant and his family, the ministers, officials and officers of a finance ministry, the staff of a state insurer, the police and their captains, the staff of a port warehouse, the crew of a freighter and their families, and anyone suspected or accused of any crime — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. Where a real city, district, street, public body, business, newspaper or shipping line is mentioned, its part in this story is invented; the ministry offices, the insurer, the police headquarters, the port warehouse and the café named in it are invented too. This is a work of fiction, not a factual account of any real person or institution. No real person is portrayed, and no real individual, company or organisation is accused of any act shown here.

Setting: Prague — autumn 1992.

Writer v2.7 — the studio's newest writing process: the plot is planned and checked by an AI story editor, then each act is drafted with the whole story in view and edited before a word is voiced — and then cast and performed with our new casting and voice direction.

Chapters:
0:00 A Telephone Behind the Bookshop
1:36 Four Storeys Up Among the Filing Cabinets
3:26 A Corner Office at the Finance Ministry
5:06 Roasting Coffee at the Corner Table
7:01 Dusk on the Quay, a Policeman Under a Crane
8:29 Footsteps Down a Bare Concrete Bay
10:15 The Policy, Read Out Like a Sentence
11:45 A Plank Hut and a Paraffin Heater
13:55 A Tin Stove Among the Unsold Books
15:07 One Desk by a Cracked Window
16:48 A Cup Already Steaming at Four
18:43 Back at the Insurer Within the Hour
20:34 Rys With His Coat Buttoned Wrong
21:55 Tea Nobody Asked For
23:18 Fog Over the Letná Plain
24:29 Ministry Overcoats at the Café
26:25 That Evening at the Bookshop Counter

#MonoNoirRadioDrama #NoirMystery #AudioDrama