Middlemarch
BBC Radio 4

I hadn’t been listening to Radio 4’s 12-part dramatisation of George Eliot’s classic from 1872 (23 November-7 December) for more than a moment before experiencing a twinge of déjà vu. The twitch on the thread came in the voice of Juliet Aubrey, here pressed into service as Eliot’s narrator, and the memory of her playing an anguished Dorothea in the 1994 Andrew Davies-scripted TV adaptation.

If this was a nice touch from the Radio 4 casting team, it also set one or two of the procedural problems of radio drama into sharp relief. You need a voice-over for Middlemarch, as so much of the audience’s appreciation relies on the effect of Eliot’s sly, ironical prompting. On the other hand, too much narration tends to slow the action. The listener wants to hear Ladislaw (here played by Joseph Quinn) attending on his lady love rather than somebody explaining what his precise motives are.