Is Jewel in the Crown the best drama radio has every known?!

[AlecOrAlonzo]

It's just so good! I loved the books and the TV series but this version is fantastic. I'm really enjoying it. I think there's still a few days left to listen to the first episode.

Ronald Merrick is so vile. Daphne so naive. Hari so bitter.

Go and listen now!

Loved the books of this. Have the TV series on DVD somewhere, they don't make 'em like that any more. Which station is the radio adaptation on?

The TV drama was so different to the books though. Hari is very unlikable in the books IMO.

There's four days left to listen to episode one.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09v64st

Radio 4

Thank you for pointing me in the direction of this, AlecOrAlonzo. I've listened to Ep 1, (while making an Indian meal, as it happens).

I know the TV series inside out, the novels less so. I thought the fleshing out of matter that is suggested but does not appear in the TV work is very good.The actor who plays Merrick is eerily like Tim Piggott-Smith of the TV version, in a good way.

As an aside, years ago I read Hilary Spurling's biography of Paul Scott, the author of "The Raj Quartet", the basis for "The Jewel in the Crown TV series. A man who had been in the army with Scott in India, years after Scott had died and the series first aired said: " Merrick. That's him, that's him. When I saw him on the box, I recognised so much."

Meaning Scott was Merrick?! Oh no!

Listening to Division of the Spoils now. Merrick is utterly loathsome. I'm so sad for the Laytons. Well, Sarah and her dad not the other hideous beasts.

What the army chum was remarking on was Scott's frequent icy withdrawal, his sense of being an outsider, not one of the chaps. The vile racism was invention. Scott struggled terribly in his life, repressing his homosexual urges, specifically comparing it Dorian Gary, and Merrick is generally seen as the fictional expression of this.

I've got the same book, echt!

It was the best tv drama ever known! (Which radio station?).

Yes Merrick is vile but Mildred Layton is definitely second. Utterly odious woman.

I have the books and have read them and watched the tv series numerous times.

Quite simply the best piece of fiction ever.

Binge listened the whole lot whilst doing some long drives recently- it's all on iPlayer so download now! I was so happy to be able to get to the next episode straight away!
Loved it (good radio drama is the best of both worlds giving you the whole thing 'digested' but allowing you to put your own images in there) - I read the books decades ago and I'm going to re-read them now.....

YABU, because the Robert Stevens/Ian Holm/Bill Nighy/Michael Horden Lord of the Rings is the best radio dramatisation ever.

(Couldn’t face JITC at the moment - a bit too grim for my morning commute, I prefer socking great wodges of Trollope).

I listened to the whole 10 hours twice it was so so good
The towers of silence episode was pure radio gold - poor Barbie - I almost wept
Also Anna karenina there at the moment and Jude the obscure

Did a complete binge listening fest today, sorting out my late DH's CD collection and all the bags of memory shite, that are now fewer and smaller bags of memory.

Blow me down, it's a superb dramatisation.

Tip-top.

Thanks for the tip off. I somehow missed the TV dramatisation and have never read the book. What do you think about listening to this as my first introduction to the series?

I agree about the LOTR dramatisation, btw, TheyMostlyComeOutAtNightMostly. I loved it. Used to have it on a boxed set of cassettes.

The books are brilliant. The tv show was excellent. This radio version is wonderful. This is an excellent way to know the story I'd say. Then you can read the books and then the tv show. There's quite a lot of political stuff I hadn't really understood when I read the books but I think the partition stuff that was on the radio a few months ago has really helped my knowledge of the history so it makes more sense. Also listening to it is always easier.

I was in sobs about Barbie. It was all so, so cruel and unnecessary. Mildred is just rotten inside. I think she's always been like that too. She obviously took Layton away from her sister just the same as Susan does to Sarah.

Mildred is a bitch, and despite seeming to have everything she could want, isn't happy. I couldn't really work out why. Her behaviour towards Barbie made me cry when I watched it.

Paul Scott's family apparently hated the book as it was his obsession. I think he was a genius, especially the way he showed the horror of partition by focussing on one person instead of the thousands who suffered in the communal violence that followed (and I can't say more because of those who haven't read or seen it.)

I've been thinking a lot about how the story is about women. It's Daphne and her naivety; Sarah and her vulnerability; Susan and her insecurities; Mildred and her viciousness; Barbie and her love. It really is about women's experience. Interesting I think that another Paul Scott book I read, Staying On, is the same. The woman was at the heart of the story.

@AlecOrAlonzo
Interesting how you should say that it's about women
What struck me about this adaptation, and idk if it's the adaptation or me compared to reading the books or watching the series, is the class theme
I thought the conversation between Merrilck and Barbie was oddly intimate (when he turned up to look at rose cottage and she was packing) and that seemed a class thing - he knew how to communicate with her and was easier and almost nice. They were both trapped

Gaspode I came to TRQ via the TV series, then read the books, then this adaptation. All are superb and don't betray Scott's intent.

In between I read the novel that Alec mentions, "Staying On" which has, though tangentially, some of the main characters from TRQ while having tangential characters from TRQ as the main focus, IYSWIM. It is piercingly sad as well having some very funny moments. Well worth a read. It was filmed for TV in 1980, with Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard.

Thanks, all, will give it a go.

Place marking and will download. Thanks OP!!

Thanks op

I think I was struck by the female perspective because I read an article in the Guardian by Rhiannon Lucy Coslett about male writers often being unable or unwilling to write about women. Scott really does write about women. Susan's terrible emptiness is something I think was particularly interesting. She is expected to be satisfied by marriage and motherhood and feels as though she is to blame when these things don't make her "better" but only highlight her own "shallows" as it were. I presume Mildred was the same and has dealt with it by becoming cruel. She's cruel to everyone: her sister; her daughters; her husband and horribly, horribly cruel to Barbie. She's like an animal in pain just lashing out over and over again.

This has sent me back to the TV series, which I have on DVD. The curtains I have in my bedroom are similar Kashmir crewel embroidery (also bought in India) to the ones in the Laytons' Kashmir lakes houseboat.

Slightly more to the point is the marvel of Mildred Layton's haughty glamour as played by Judy Parfitt compared with her later faintly dotty religious in "Meet the Midwife". I know it's all acting, but still...

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g
Have you listened to it?
What did you think?

Hi! Well, I messed up. I managed to catch the first two episodes and was enjoying it, but I left it a few hours too long to catch episode 3 on i player. Sorry. I couldn't see a way to download episodes as podcasts or I would have done that. However, as I see it's years old I'm hoping that Radio 4 Extra will repeat it again.

Still got the TV version to see some time, and/or the books to read. How I've missed all of them before now is beyond me!

Oh what a shame!

Still, you have a treat ahead when you get tore into the books. The TVs series is also excellent.

Lucky you!