No matter the medium of choice, adapting a novel the size of Samuel Richardson’s 1747-8 masterpiece Clarissa: The History of a Young Lady must be no easy task. My own copy (the oversized Penguin Classics edition) clocks in at just over 1500 pages, including appendices. However Hattie Naylor’s radio adaptation, starring Zoe Waites as the eponymous tragic heroine and Richard Armitage as the rake Robert Lovelace, manages to quite brilliantly capture the nuances of Richardson’s text in just four wonderful instalments.

I assume I am not alone in having always had a difficult relationship with Miss Clarissa Harlowe. As an undergraduate she was my nemesis (I lost two of my handbags in my struggle against her mighty weight). Four years later and I found myself toe to toe with her once again, as I wrestled to make her the corner stone of the first chapter of my PhD. Even if you put my own personal differences with the virtuous young lady aside, Clarissa has never been an easy text for modern readers to enjoy.

The Penguin Classics edition, which is the most widely available version, is both taller and wider than a standard paperback. It is also so heavy that the last time I tried to read it I sprained my wrist simply holding it. The modern Clarissa is not a text that lends itself easily to reading curled in a comfortable chair or before bed. Instead, it can only really be read at a desk, which (let’s be honest) is not the most enjoyable way to read a novel.

Much like the television adaptation of 1991, BBC 4’s radio play allows listeners to recapture the Clarissa enjoyed by eighteenth century readers. Reading the novel in volumes, eagerly awaiting the publication of the next instalment and anxiously following the virtuous Clarissa as she is forced by her greed-driven family into the grasp of the scoundrel Lovelace must have been quite the reading experience. Despite my familiarity with the novel, as a listener I found myself swept up by the narrative. Richardson packs in an obsessive level of detail to make it explicitly clear that Clarissa was just as chaste and good as the titular heroine of his 1740 novel, Pamela, and that she had absolutely no choice but to take flight. Thankfully much of this labouring has been stripped away for this adaptation, leaving the key letters and events of the text to allow its emotional core to shine.

Each episode section proves engaging and moving, even as the humour of the first two made way for the darker tone of the third and fourth. The writing and direction of the novel’s key scenes are handled expertly and executed similarly by the actors. Lovelace’s increasing encroachments upon Clarissa’s body and virtue are appropriately hard to bear, as is her subsequent decline.

The biggest strength of this series, though, is the acting. Zoe Waites’ tone and rhythm as Clarissa is forced from her home and into Lovelace’s scheme elicited sympathy for the character I did not know I still had, particularly as she grows more fearful of Lovelace’s designs on her. The cast of the first episode, portraying the Harlowes and their odious match for Clarissa, Mr Solmes, do a spectacular and hilarious job of convincing the listener of Clarissa’s need for escape. James and Arabella Harlowe were just the right amount of vain, spoiled and stupid, whilst Mrs Harlowe’s inability to remember or correctly pronounce the word ‘libertine’ was a fantastic comedic touch. The challenge of expressing to an audience how disgusting such a man as Mr Solmes is without offering a visual was also well met. I’m sure nothing is more off-putting than someone chewing in the most gross manner imaginable right in your ear.

However, in that grand old tradition of saving the best till last, it is Richard Armitage’s performance that really stands out. Lovelace can be a difficult character to portray; Richardson wrote his letters with such skill and brilliance and so effectively led Clarissa and her reader to hope for his reformation right until her first attempted flight from him, that he walks the tightrope between a dissolute wretch to condemn and the charming villain we secretly wish to succeed. Armitage maintains the balancing act just so, drawing the listener in with his declarations of love and promises of reform in his early scenes to effectively repulse them as he reveals his true self. His Lovelace is sly, arrogant and almost sickening. The sweet, simpering tone with which he addresses Clarissa contrasts brilliantly with the haughty, self-assured tone of his egotistical, chauvinist and base letters to his friend John Belford.

For disillusioned Clarissa fans such as myself, Naylor’s dramatisation has been breath of fresh air. The novel’s tensions, passions and tragedy are so fully alive in this adaptation that I believe I may even find myself enjoying my next re-read. Maybe.

Radio 4’s Clarissa: The History of a Young Lady, adapted by Hattie Naylor, was first broadcast in March 2010. It was aired again in December 2014 and is available to UK residents on BBC iPlayer until the end of the month.