The great Scot, Brian Cox, has enjoyed a brilliant career as an actor specializing in Shakespearean drama. He is the perfect choice, therefore, to perform Joseph Conrad’s demanding and seminal short novels, Youth and Heart of Darkness. Both novels focus on the human condition through the prism of Marlowe, a swarthy English seaman.
In Youth, Marlowe suffers a horrendous shipwreck en route to Thailand. In Heart of Darkness, Marlowe sails deep into the African jungle where he meets Kurtz, arguably a personification of the degrading power of imperialism. While the novels were written one year apart, Heart of Darkness is widely considered one of the great works of the English language and is the basis of the Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now.