Andrew Rhynes
43 episodes listed below
A western with manners, menace, and gun smoke.
Frontier Gentleman pairs literate narration with hard-edged western drama, sending J.B. Kendall into towns where custom and violence rule faster than law. Its stories favor tense conversations, bruised honor, failed justice, and the dry manners of an outsider who can still draw a gun.
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Frontier Gentleman is an old-time radio western with a distinctly civilized edge. Its protagonist, J.B. Kendall, is a London Times correspondent traveling through the American frontier, taking notes on violence, custom, loneliness, and the odd forms justice assumes beyond polite society. The series is not built on swagger alone. It is built on observation. A town in Montana Territory can forbid guns and still leave decent people exposed. A woman can travel for years on the hope of seeing a killer die. A dinner table in a rain-soaked farmhouse can feel more threatening than a saloon. A preacher's past can follow him into Deadwood with murder in mind. The writing often begins with calm narration, then lets danger enter through talk: a warning, an insult, a confession, a legal bargain, a name spoken too plainly. That gives the show its particular tension. Kendall may speak with restraint, but the people around him live close to fear, pride, hunger, money, and vengeance. Episodes such as The Shelton Brothers, Holiday, Nasty People, The Rainmaker, The Preacher, and Aces and Eights show a range wider than simple shootout storytelling. There are gamblers and sheriffs, yes. There are also frauds, mourners, drifters, stage players, supply-store owners, and men who cannot outrun old guilt. The Deadwood material brings in Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane without turning the whole show into legend worship. The stories are interested in reputation, but more interested in what reputation costs. The OTRWesterns.com presentation frames the preserved broadcasts with short introductions by Andrew Rines and closing podcast notes, while the main attraction remains the CBS-era drama itself. John Daner is named in the lead role, with Ben Wright featured in the audition version. The result is a western for listeners who like gun smoke, but prefer it carried by dialogue, atmosphere, and moral consequence rather than noise.
Made for: For listeners drawn to classic radio drama, frontier fiction, and western stories with literate narration rather than nonstop action. It especially suits anyone who likes tense saloon conversations, lawmen under limits, haunted reputations, and morally complicated endings.
What sets it apart: The show sets a London Times correspondent inside western danger, creating a sharp contrast between polished observation and rough local speech. That outsider frame gives familiar frontier material a more reflective, sometimes dryly ironic shape.
Frontier Gentleman is different from other radio westerns in that the story centered not around some colorful character out of the old West, but it is about a foreigner. An Englishman who came to America to experience firsthand what it is like to live in the still wild and untamed frontier. As the series goes on, we’ll find that Kendall is as good with a gun as he is with a pen.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
J.B. Kendall's measured narration turns frontier wagers, feuds and questions of conscience into compact, sharply performed drama.
J.B. Kendall moves through the American West as both observer and participant, filing first-person accounts while repeatedly getting pulled into other people's wagers, feuds and moral trouble.
A rainmaker signs for the weather, and you can practically hear the sheriff checking the fine print.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A gunless Montana town turns J.B. Kendall's arrival into a pointed test of law, pride, and nerve.
A Montana Territory town has banned the carrying of guns, leaving its sheriff committed to an order that can protect the law while leaving men exposed. J.B. Kendall arrives from St.
A rainmaker bargain turns into a legal arrangement in the sheriff's office.
Darby Bullman sets the episode in motion with a claim that sounds simple on its face: one inch of natural water within 24 hours for $1,000. Once that promise reaches the sheriff's office, it stops feeling like a boast and starts reading like a legal matter, with Lawyer Wolsack…
A limp, a grudge, and a former minister make Deadwood feel dangerous.
Frontier Gentleman builds its tension around Thomas Yorby, a man already frayed in Deadwood, where a stranger with a limp vanishes into a saloon and leaves his name hanging like a warning. The episode's strength lies in its restraint: J.B.
A prison-yard exchange turns a condemned man's silence into the episode's moral center.
An English newspaper reporter's visit to Crow Dog, a Sioux prisoner awaiting execution, becomes a quiet test of law, patience, and what outsiders can truly understand. Crow Dog admits killing Spotted Tail but keeps his reason to himself, while Mr. Clumb tries to win a stay.
A nearly 300-mile horse race turns frontier bravado into a wager with a stable at risk.
J.B. Kendall follows a bold claim about a horse's stamina into a frontier wager that soon becomes more than a test of speed. The proposed race from Deadwood to Cheyenne, nearly 300 miles, puts hard terms around the boast: five miles an hour, twelve hours a day, with rest built…
Restored broadcasts, sharp shadows, bright old voices.
On February 2, 1958, Frontier Gentleman follows London Times reporter J.B.
This episode features the Frontier Gentleman radio drama from 1958 starring Ben Wright as J.B.
This is the final episode of the Old Time Radio Western series Frontier Gentleman, featuring J.B.
A reporter travels to Batesville, Missouri, to interview the dying outlaw Cole Williams, who terrorized Kansas before the Civil War.
An English reporter recounts his adventures in the violent American West, including a partnership with a rainmaker for water divining.
Darby Bullman offers to sell rain.
The Preacher opens in Deadwood with J.B.
This 1958 Frontier Gentleman radio drama follows London Times correspondent J.B.
In this 1958 Frontier Gentleman episode, London Times correspondent J.B.
This episode of Frontier Gentleman follows J.B.
This episode of Frontier Gentleman follows reporter J.B.
This episode of the Old Time Radio Westerns podcast features the original 1958 broadcast of 'Charlie Meeker' from the series Frontier Gentleman, starring John Daner as J.B.
An English reporter for the London Times recounts his experiences and observations of life in the American West during the violent frontier years.
This is the final episode of the 1958 radio western 'Frontier Gentleman', featuring random notes from an English reporter's experiences in the American West.