This was my keynote for the adaptation Palin’s narration is audible to all the characters in the room, often to their annoyance.ĭead Souls exists in two volumes the first is the most famous and the second is incomplete (Gogol destroyed it believing it immoral having come under the influence of a religious fanatic). At one moment, the narrator narrates quietly so as not to wake the person he is narrating about. In particular, re-reading it, I noticed that when the book was written, the classic nineteenth-century omniscient narration had not been fully settled in Gogol’s novel sometimes the narrator knows too much (he tells us what the furniture is thinking at one point) and sometimes too little (admitting to be baffled by people’s expressions and behaviour). The adaptation emphasised the comic aspects of the book. The production was first broadcast on Radio 4 in April 2006 it was repeated on the World Service in February 2007 and on BBC7 in December 2010 and again on Radio 4 Extra in August 2012. It also featured David Fleeshman, Judith Davis, Wyllie Longmore, Toby Hadoke, and Graeme Hawley. It starred Mark Heap as Chichikov and Michael Palin as the Narrator. This was a two-part adaptation of Gogol’s novel for the Radio 4 ‘Classic Serial’ slot. As he rides in his carriage from estate to estate, encountering ever more absurd characters, his greed and ambition grow - but so too do the suspicions of those he meets. If he can persuade landowners to transfer to him ownership of all the serfs who have died since the last census, he will look on paper like a very wealthy man.

Dead souls gogol