The Adventures of the Falcon recycled a lot of the supporting roles and tended to give the same actors similar roles in each episode. They didn't credit their casts, but I'm certain I heard William Conrad, Bill Johnstone, Jackson Beck, Everett Sloane and Raymond Edward Johnson multiple times (Sloane played a heck of a lot of cool, conceited crime bosses who were practically all the same character); Larry Haines seemed to be in most episodes as well.
Beginning with "The Case of the Proud Papa" (June 6, 1951), the Adventures of the Falcon began integrating their sponsor (Kraft)'s commercials into the drama as at the halfway mark, the Falcon would visit the show's announcer Ed Herlihy at a lunch counter and listen patiently as Herlihy extolled the virtues of Miracle Whip in making salads and sandwiches. It was pretty common for comedy programs to integrate their commercials into their routines but it's odd and unique to hear them inserted into a dramatic show!
By 1952, the series' standard - which had been pretty good - dipped a bit as NBC seemed to have slashed the budget, resulting in a lot more stock music from their library in place of the show's previously modest organ music. The whimsical Miracle Whip commercials were gone too, replaced with stolid public service announcements. Those later episodes of the Adventures of the Falcon are just okay. There is some minor interest in "The Cast of the Dirty Dollar" (June 8, 1952) when the Falcon declares at the episode's end that he's quitting the detective business-- Sgt. Corbett doubts it and bets he'll be back next week; he wins that bet as in the next week's episode, the Falcon is called out of his brief retirement to become an international U.S. military intelligence operative, which is how he spent his last three months on NBC. Those last few NBC broadcasts are of minor interest because the show changed so drastically, with the Falcon now a jet-setting international operative and sounding lot like a contemporaneous NBC program-- Dangerous Assignment. Of course, almost every episode boiled down to answering, "who's the secret communist agent this week?" When the show returned on Mutual in 1953, the Falcon was back to being a stateside detective.
An episode from the later era with some particularly bad radio is "The Case of the Careless Corpse" (August 31, 1952). In one scene, the Falcon speaks to a criminal over the telephone while an associate tries to trace the call. As the Falcon and the criminal speak, the Falcon's associate can be heard talking in the background, trying and failing to trace the call. When the Falcon ends the call, the associate confirms he couldn't trace it. It must have been an attempt to sound realistic, like Dragnet, but it didn't suit the Adventures of the Falcon to have someone else speaking audibly in the background during a conversation. Robert Altman, this ain't.
I think the Adventures of the Falcon is, overall, an average detective show, but it had a pretty consistent quality that makes it easy to listen to. You certainly owe it to yourself to listen to at least one of the episodes with the dramatized Miracle Whip ads! I'm also fond of the Christmas episode "The Case of the Unwelcome Present" (December 24, 1950) which was the first episode I ever heard - it was a long time before I heard another episode from the series. That one is a delightful Christmas mystery show and I usually listen to it every December.
The Old Time Radio Researchers have a collection of 92 episodes of the Adventures of the Falcon at the Internet Archive.
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