The debates that, y'know, drive me mad (Filed: 30/11/2004)

I tried hard to understand what was going on in Sunday's Radio 3 drama, Pale Fire, from Vladimir Nabokov's convoluted novel. I listened to the preview cassette twice. I listened to the transmission. I could decipher the structure but discovered I didn't much care.

Mark Lawson and Radio 4's nightly arts review Front Row, interestingly, avoided offering judgment on this dramatised version by Robert Forrest, content last Thursday to draw attention to it within in a mini-feature by Michael Arditti on other works considered "unadaptable".

The novel is certainly richer, funnier and darker, yet I don't think it was this version that failed. I'd put it down to the curse of radio acting, those voices that smell of mothballs. On second thoughts, why blame moths?