
What is this thing called Film Noir?
Join host Sergio Angelini and his guests every 10 days for the podcast where they uncover the secrets behind 100 years of crime movies, radio dramas, hardboiled fiction and thousands of television episodes.
The cast of characters includes hit men and femmes fatales, flawed cops and psychopathic gangsters, women in peril and cynical private eyes - all of them well over their heads.
All part and parcel of the noir iconography - a black and white world painted in shades of grey.
Episodes

Sunday Jun 14, 2026
50. Top 10 Sherlock Holmes Movies (part 1), with Nick Cardillo
Sunday Jun 14, 2026
Sunday Jun 14, 2026
To celebrate Fedora's 50th episode, our special guest is Nick Cardillo, author of several Sherlock Holmes pastiches in print and on audio. He joins me to pick his favourite movies featuring the most beloved, and most filmed, "consulting detective." This podcast became such an epic that we had to split it into two halves. In this first part, Nick and I discuss his choices covering films originally released between 1939 and 1965.
To find out more about Nick, please visit his homepage: www.nickcardillocreative.com/

Sunday May 31, 2026
49. REAR WINDOW (1954), with Brad Friedman
Sunday May 31, 2026
Sunday May 31, 2026
I am joined by Brad Friedman to look at Hitchcock's classic romantic thriller, REAR WINDOW, which was based on a short story by Noir maestro, Cornell Woolrich.
Brad blogs about Golden Age mystery books and movies at Ah Sweet Mystery: https://ahsweetmystery.com/
Spoiler alert: the plots for REAR WINDOW and VERTIGO, including their respective endings, are explored in detail.

Sunday May 17, 2026
Sunday May 17, 2026
Returning guests Matt and Luke, crime authors and hosts of the Cinema Sleuths podcast, visit Fedora to talk about their latest novels and give us a list of their 10 favourite Noir books. Authors up for discussion include Raymond Chandler, Philip Kerr, Sue Grafton and many more. We also slip in a quick look at Robert Altman's very eccentric private eye movie, The Long Goodbye (1973). For more info about Mattew's Everett Carr series, visit Level Best Books (www.levelbestbooks.us/authors/matthew-booth) and for details of Luke's forthcoming private eye novel, No Saints, Only Killers, visit: https://shorturl.at/wrs6e.
Luke and Matt's podcast, Cinema Sleuths, is available all over the Internet - https://cinemasleuths.podbean.com/

Sunday May 03, 2026
47. THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1970) with Steve Hunt
Sunday May 03, 2026
Sunday May 03, 2026
Sergio is joined by Steve Hunt to discuss Dario Argento's classic giallo, THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, and its uncredited basis in Fredric Brown's exceptional 1949 Noir mystery novel, The Screaming Mimi.
Steve Hunt is the host of the superb Boxing Movie Podcast and author of, Heavyweight Title Fights of the 1980s: A Complete History.
To listen to Steve's podcast, please visit: https://boxingmoviepodcast.alitu.com/
You can find his homepage at this link: https://www.stevehuntboxing.com/
Steve's book, Heavyweight Title Fights of the 1980s: A Complete History, is now available in paperback and on Kindle from Amazon in the UK (https://shorturl.at/h02Bc) and from McFarland (https://shorturl.at/8i5ll) in the US.

Sunday Apr 19, 2026
46. MANTRAP (1953) with Steve Rogers of Hammer Films
Sunday Apr 19, 2026
Sunday Apr 19, 2026
Terence Fisher's 1953 whodunit, MANTRAP (US title: Man in Hiding), starring Lois Maxwell, Paul Henreid and Kay Kendall, is the latest thriller from the vaults of Hammer Films to be restored and released in a deluxe edition. Sergio is joined by Steve Rogers, of Hammer Archive & Product Development, to discuss the latest in the company's range of dual 4K UHD / Blu-ray sets.
For more information about the release, visit the Hammer Films homepage: hammerfilms.com/products/mantrap-limited-collectors-edition
Sunday Apr 05, 2026
45. BURIED ABOVE GROUND, with author Mike Ripley
Sunday Apr 05, 2026
Sunday Apr 05, 2026
Today I am joined by crime author, critic, historian and archaeologist, Mike Ripley, to talk about his latest novel, BURIED ABOVE GROUND, which has just been published in paperback. A witty and clever mystery about the crime fiction industry, I quiz Mike about the sources of his inspiration and try to figure out just how realistic a depiction of the book trade this actually is. For more details about Mike and his novels, visit the official Severn House page: https://severnhouse.com/authors/mike-ripley/

Sunday Mar 22, 2026
44. CASINO ROYALE (1954), with Professor James Chapman
Sunday Mar 22, 2026
Sunday Mar 22, 2026
Sergio is joined by Professor James Chapman, author of Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films, to look at the first 007 adaptation, the 1954 TV version of CASINO ROYALE, as well as the 1967 spoof and the 2006 Daniel Craig reboot. We then speculate about the future of the franchise under Amazon after 25 movies, wholly or partly, all overseen by the Broccoli family.
To find out more about James and his many publications, please visit his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Chapman_(media_historian)

Sunday Mar 08, 2026
43. The novels of Ross Macdonald, with Moira Redmond
Sunday Mar 08, 2026
Sunday Mar 08, 2026
Sergio is joined by Moira Redmond, she of the mighty Clothes in Books blog, to celebrate the work of Ross Macdonald, creator of PI Lew Archer and for many the natural successor to Hammett and Chandler. We look at his books, his life with his wife, celebrated mystery author Margaret Millar, and some of the films based on his novels including HARPER (1966) and THE DROWNING POOL (1975). both starring Paul Newman, and the TV Movie THE UNDERGROUND MAN (1974) featuring Peter Graves as Archer.
Here is a complete list of the Archer novels in publication order:
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The Moving Target (1949)
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The Drowning Pool (1950)
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The Way Some People Die (1951)
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The Ivory Grin (1952)
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Find a Victim (1954)
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The Barbarous Coast (1956)
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The Doomsters (1958)
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The Galton Case (1959)
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The Wycherly Woman (1961)
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The Zebra-Striped Hearse (1962)
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The Chill (1964)
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The Far Side of the Dollar (1965)
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Black Money (1966)
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The Instant Enemy (1968)
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The Goodbye Look (1969)
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The Underground Man (1971)
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Sleeping Beauty (1973)
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The Blue Hammer (1976)

