While I’ve been getting tired of reading Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael novels, when some adaptations showed up on BBC7, I figured I’d give them a try. It’s the repetitiveness of the plots that’s been annoying me, not the characters, and an audio format usually gives me a clearer idea of the characters. (It’s true that it also gives me the time to think about the clues that are given or omitted. However, I have no objections to this adaptation on those grounds.)
I recorded three of them, but listened to Monk’s Hood first, as it came earliest in the chronology. This starred Philip Madoc as Cadfael, who has a nice deep strong voice; the recurring secondary characters of Brother Mark and Hugh Beringar were also voiced well and suitably. My only complaint is that the dialogue was occasionally a touch too fast; there were times when I thought a slight pause between speakers would have suited the content, but the responses came disconcertingly fast. Otherwise, this was an enjoyable listen, and I’ll keep the others for commutes when I can’t deal with anything more demanding.
(Weird note of the day: Something about the Welsh accents in this production (maybe the rhythm?) reminds me of—of all things—Indian accents.)
Welsh accents: this is a Known Issue- it’s almost a stock joke about bad impressionists that they slip between Welsh and Indian. It’s the rhythm, as you say, and also some of the intonations.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4328733.stm has a BBC journalist trying to track down some linguists to explain it.
Jen, thanks for the link and the note–it’s good to know that the similiarity isn’t just a weird quirk of my ears.
Apparently the explanation that it relates to the role of Welsh missionaries in the Indian subcontinent is an urban myth