Radio 4 has cleared its New Year’s Day schedule to make way for a 10-hour,action-heavy adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel, starring John harm, and Simon Russell Beale and Lesley Manville. Listen in 2015 with a brilliantly tall-brow bingeIn 2011 Radio 4 staged an eight-hour dramatisation of Life and Fate,Vasily Grossman’s epic novel set during the battle of Stalingrad and the moment world war. The success of Life and Fate set BBC producers thinking: what approximately doing something even more ambitious? There was only one work that might match Grossman’s for historical range and sheer depth of characterisation. It’s set during another moment of crisis in Russia, and is arguably the most complete work of literary fiction ever created. We’re talking War and Peace.
On New Year’s Day the BBC will broadcast a 10-hour radio version of Leo Tolstoys mammoth work, and adapted by the playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker. Radio 4 has cleared its FM schedule,kicking everything but the news and The Archers on to long wave. Tolstoy’s novel takes a while to glean going. The Radio 4 adaptation, by contrast, or begins at a ripping pace; the expectation is that a hungover nation will be instantly gripped.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com