A Call From Strahov · Velvet Shadows

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

While the alarm rang in a Prague gallery, the only police car on duty was sent to an empty street at Strahov. By morning four paintings worth one point four billion crowns are gone, the night dispatcher is waiting to be blamed, and his captain has locked the caller's words in a drawer. Who was the voice on the radio?

🎧 Full episode of Velvet Shadows: a modern noir detective audio drama set in Prague, a radio mystery performed by a full cast.

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, late autumn 1993. Kos, the night dispatcher at the local police station, comes in dripping wet to the back of a Malá Strana bookshop, where the detective Antonín Zima and the bookseller who tells this story, Pavel Hruška, are over their coffee. The robbery was last night. Kos is the man who sent the only car away on a radio call about a patrol in trouble at Strahov. The voice was shouting, he says, and out of breath. He fears the station will write him down as careless. His captain, Kapitán Novotný, took his log and told him to keep quiet. At noon Zima and Hruška climb to the gallery. Four empty hooks are all that is left of the Dorvanes, and Ester, the curator, who has stood in front of them every morning for twenty years, puts down a telephone as they come in. Later, at four, they sit down in Libuše's pub on the square, with Vávra at the taps. Libuše, who sleeps over the bar, heard the alarm ring out that night, and no car came. Novotný gives Zima three days before his report on the dispatcher goes up as it stands, and the Ministry wants a name by the end of the week. Three days, one police car on duty and a voice nobody can place: who was on the radio that night?

From the series Velvet Shadows: a real 1990s Czech 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 Czech case of the 1990s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the night dispatcher, the police captain and the officers of his station, the gallery's curator, director and staff, ministry officials, the landlady and staff of a pub, the investigators, and anyone suspected or accused of the theft — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. Where a real city, district, police station or other public place, or a real public body, is mentioned, its part in this story is invented; the gallery, the pub and the paintings 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 — late autumn 1993.

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 Wet Morning Behind the Bookshop
1:48 Floor Wax and Police Tobacco at Noon
3:34 Wet Gravel Behind the Gallery
4:51 The Corner Table at Libuše's
6:29 A Slot Under the Roof, Filled with Smoke
7:47 A Counter, a Telephone and a Hissing Radio
9:13 A Strip Light Buzzing in the Duty Corridor
10:34 Patience Cards by a Dying Stove
11:51 The Radio Room Behind the Night Desk
13:40 Sweeping the Step at Dusk
15:07 Chairs Going Up as the Fog Pressed In
16:25 Five in a Little Office Under the Eaves
17:55 Under the Four Empty Hooks
19:50 Circling the Plague Column in Fog
20:55 Police Before Ten in the Morning
22:49 Hops and Cellar Damp in the Back Room
24:58 One Bare Bulb and a Knocking Radiator

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