Joe Frank Is Quite Happy Being Back ‘In the Dark’ : Radio: After a two-year hiatus from KCRW-FM, the writer-performer has returned to continue his exploration of love, death and values.

Two years is a long time to be away from the airwaves, but radio dramatist Joe Frank still gets mail. Letters from strangers across the country arrive at least twice a week, looking for tapes of favorite shows, and for reasons why his weekly series of intimate and surreal drama disappeared from their lives.

The other day a Boston high school student called up in search of an interview. And Frank had news for him: After finishing a book of short stories, and ending a long and ultimately disappointing flirtation with television, Frank has again returned to the Santa Monica studios of KCRW-FM (89.9) to explore themes of love, death and values with his “In the Dark” series.

“It’s remarkable to me, knowing that there is this audience, knowing that there are people who take this work seriously,” said Frank, who learned of fans who missed gathering each week to listen to the show and discuss its messages. “It makes me feel that I really want to come through for them. That’s my mission in life, for the people who really are committed to the show--to not let them down, to not disappoint them, but to keep on taking them to places.”

The half-hour show began airing at its new 6 p.m. Saturday slot Oct. 2, with a rebroadcast scheduled for Fridays at midnight. Wider distribution, via National Public Radio, is set to begin in January.

The program was launched in typically weighty fashion with an episode titled “God,” which explored faith and human suffering in a narrative that traveled from grim understatement to black comedy. It began with the narrator being invited to the apartment of a desperate middle-aged woman who has turned to prostitution to supplement her free-lance typing career. Later a priest agonizes to the brink of madness over his loss of faith.

Frank understands the risks involved in traveling through such territory. One recent promotional spot that featured a brief but emotionally intense monologue with imagined scenes of violence was pulled from the KCRW airwaves after earning some listener complaints.

In spite of his use of uncomfortable subjects and blunt, urban imagery, Frank does not see himself as a provocateur .

“I don’t do this show to upset people, to make them angry,” Frank said. “But some people are threatened by this work. They’re the ones who get upset, and they’re the ones who create problems for an artist like myself. Other people are challenged.”

He added, “Serious artists are asking those kinds of questions, and will probably forever. We just have different ways of addressing them.”

The writer-performer had hoped to bring a similar exploration of the big themes to television when he left KCRW two years ago. Frank had already written and performed in three short films for the Playboy Channel, and another for CBS, when HBO became interested in a possible series and committed itself to three episodes.

Filmmaker Francis Coppola (“The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now”) signed on as executive producer and fast-rising music-video auteur David Fincher was hired to direct. Frank wrote three scripts that were well-received, but the cable network balked at the costs required to film the number of scenes and characters involved.

After many months of script revisions, a successful search for additional financing and a change in directors, HBO finally lost interest in the Frank anthology series. “It was a very disheartening experience,” Frank said.

During the hiatus from KCRW, Frank also wrote “The Queen of Puerto Rico and Other Stories,” a book that is to be released by Morrow in November. But it’s his return to radio this month that has his attention now and for the foreseeable future.

“This is what matters to me,” Frank said of the medium that has earned him a variety of awards, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. “It expresses things that are deep in me that need a form of expression. And radio serves that purpose. So there is a very emotional and satisfying and fulfilling experience that radio provides.

“I feel comfortable in radio. Radio really does feel like my medium. It’s the medium in which I am really unique and where I stand alone.”