BBC Radio 4 Extra

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama. With recent favourites from BBC Radio 4.

Classic Serial

Drama: Classic & Period

Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status

Classic Serial: François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel

Classic Serial: François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel: Episode 2: Pantagruel

Drama

Drama: SciFi & Fantasy

Gargantua and Pantagruel

Episode 2

Episode 2: Pantagruel

François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel

Pantagruel

BBC Radio 4 - Classic Serial, François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel, Pantagruel

Pantagruel and his morally dubious friend Panurge try to discover if marriage is for them.

Gargantua's son Pantagruel and his morally dubious friend Panurge try to discover if marriage is for them. Stars David Troughton and Justin Edwards.

Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais. Dramatised by Lavinia Murray.

Ep 2 - Pantagruel.

Concluding the bawdy and scatological adventures of Medieval giants. This episode concentrates on the story of Gargantua's son, Pantagruel and his morally dubious friend Panurge, as they go on a quest to discover whether marriage is for them. On the way they have many adventures before they come before the Seer of the Holy Bottle who gives them a definitive judgement.


Rabelais.....David Troughton
Gargantua....Robert Wilfort
Pantagruel....Justin Edwards
Panurge...Conrad Nelson
Friar Jean....Jonathan Keeble
Jacqueline/Seer...Fiona Clarke
Librarian/Secretary...Mark Chatterton

Producer Gary Brown

This tale is a dizzying blend of fantasy, comedy, philosophy and scatological humour. The world's a messy place. All the big mock-heroic novels that followed - Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, Gulliver's Travels, Ulysses - are about mess, they're about slops and slime, encyclopaedic in their efforts to encompass humanity in all its bawdy, chaotic, grungy, and painful reality. And like Gargantua and Pantagruel they're also very funny. The Rabelaisian world view is founded on the assumption that the humourless are not yet wise - and these tales insist you learn to laugh at humanity.

Gargantua and Pantagruel is dramatised by Lavinia Murray, one of our leading radio playwrights whose credits include 'The Anatomy of Melancholy' and 'The Confessions of an English Opium Eater'.

BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Comedic moral stories by Rabelais that interweave the realistic with the fantastical

By François Rabelais. Comedic moral stories that interweave the realistic with the fantastical to expose human follies

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Classic Serial

François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel

Episode 2: Pantagruel

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 4 Extra

About BBC Radio 4 Extra