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Germany’s most popular audio drama in numbers
3 December 2020 | 5 min read
Imagine whispering mummies, laughing shadows and invisible dogs … If you like the idea then the three investigators is for you: An American juvenile detective book series first published as “Alfred Hitchcock and the three investigators”. Three young boys investigating baffling phenomena by application of reason and logic. Created by Robert Arthur Jr in the early 1960s, the books were translated into many languages.
The series became particularly popular in Germany as ‘Die drei ???’ (the three question marks). So popular in fact, that from 1993 the German publisher Kosmos continued the series after the American version stopped. The German detectives even got their own audio drama, video games, graphic novels and theatrical plays.
As a huge fan of the series and data lover, I wanted to explore the audio drama in more detail while learning some new data science skills. Thanks to the fansite Rocky-Beach.com, I was able to collect data on each episode, and this is what I found.
More than 200 episodes and still going
In 1979, the German publisher Europa started a radio drama based on the book series. Since then, they produced at least one episode each year, with two exceptions. When the American titles stopped, the production had to pause for one year. A litigation between the book publisher (Kosmos) and the audio drama publisher (Europa) over naming rights caused the second gap in 2006-07. Today, with over 50 million sold copies, Die drei ??? is the most successful audio drama production worldwide.
Episodes are getting longer
Episodes have been getting longer over time, a fact probably unsurprising to regular listeners. In 1979, episodes were about 45 min long while today they last over 69 min on average. To mark the series’ jubilee, the 100th episode was split into three parts. Since then, this has also been the case for episodes 125, 150, and 175, while episode 200 stretches over four parts.
The main characters are key to the show’s success
The characters known as the three investigators are three boys named Justus Jonas, Peter Shaw and Bob Andrews.[1] The same actors have been performing the three investigators and are key to the audio drama’s success. Due to their popularity, the trio has been touring with live shows since 2002. Until episode 76 the show included a role for Alfred Hitchcock, which later changed to a generic narrator.
In addition to the three investigators, a number of other characters are crucial to the show. Aunt Mathilda Jonas (55 episodes) and Uncle Titus Jonas (35 episodes) are important family members, while superintendent Reynolds (22 episodes) and inspector Cotta (67 episodes) support the three boys from inside the police. The arch enemy Skinny Norris makes an appearance in 12 episodes while Hugenay, another enemy, appears five times.
The main characters are key to the show’s success
The characters known as the three investigators are three boys named Justus Jonas, Peter Shaw and Bob Andrews.[1] The same actors have been performing the three investigators and are key to the audio drama’s success. Due to their popularity, the trio has been touring with live shows since 2002. Until episode 76 the show included a role for Alfred Hitchcock, which later changed to a generic narrator.
In addition to the three investigators, a number of other characters are crucial to the show. Aunt Mathilda Jonas (55 episodes) and Uncle Titus Jonas (35 episodes) are important family members, while superintendent Reynolds (22 episodes) and inspector Cotta (67 episodes) support the three boys from inside the police. The arch enemy Skinny Norris makes an appearance in 12 episodes while Hugenay, another enemy, appears five times.
Majority of characters and authors are male
Since all three investigators and the narrator are male, it’s not surprising that in most episodes the majority of characters are men. However, even if the main characters are disregarded, women make up about 29% on average of the side characters. There are 11 episodes with no female roles at all, while the episode with the highest proportion of women of all side characters is 75%. The proportion of female characters has varied over time, with no consistent trend line. However, the average went up slightly when the original book series ended in 1993.
There are not just fewer female characters, but also fewer women writing for the series. Seven of 19 authors are female[2] producing a quarter (57) of all books. The top female writer is Brigitte Johanna Henkel-Waidhofer with 16 books compared to André Marx and Marco Sonnleitner with more than 30 books each. Female writers seem to include slightly more female characters in their books. On average, women make up 33% of all side characters in books written by a woman, compared to 28% in books written by men.
Paranormal subjects are the most common theme
The three investigators are all about mystery and strange incidents, which is reflected in their book titles. Paranormal subjects are the most common theme, appearing in 48 titles. This includes words such as ghost, demon, vampire or devil. Haunted places such as castles, villas, mountains or canyons are also very popular. Fewer titles include animals, people or words about mystery and death. With five mentions each, the most common words are Schrecken (horror), Drache (dragon), schwarze (black), Rache (revenge) and Spur (trace/clue).
The geeky part
Most of the data is sourced from the extensive fan website Rocky-Beach.com. It lists all of the episodes with title and descriptions as well as meta data such as author, actors, publication date, duration and more. Using python, I was able to scrape this data from the website and combine all individual tables in one big data set. To determine the gender of actors, I used the Genderize API to predict gender based on their first names. Background information is largely based on information from Wikipedia.
All analysis code and details about the methodology can be found on Github.