Favourites?

Wow; you've given me so much to think about there (which, I assure you, is a good thing!)

I would have been quite nervous when I started 'This World Our Hell', except that it came free as a sample when I got 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. And I was pleased it was the whole story rather than just a teaser. It was a brilliant start and convinced me that the investment in the Series One & Two CDs would be worth it. It was the perfect opener to let people know what the series was going to be like; using a small cast, simple but compelling story and establishing Dorian as ruthless as Wilde wrote him, but not outright evil (besides Wilde himself making an appearance, as well).

'Deacon Brodie' is an odd one; I'm not a big fan of body-swap, either, unless it is done well. And I'm glad to say this WAS done well. I agree it captured a down side to Dorian's immortality in an original way, and did give the impression you said - life rushes by him. It was also one of those odd sparks of impulse the character sometimes has. He says several times that everything has its price and I thought giving him the strong motivation to agree to the swap was clever, as under any other circumstances he might have searched a bit more thoroughly for the potential price.

Blank Canvas grew on me during the re-listen, more than I'd enjoyed it first time 'round. I also had a better idea of the relationship between Dorian and the Portrait by then (which are sometimes such different characters...). There's something in this I can't quite get my head around, but I haven't quite figured out what it is, yet. One of those little alarms that says, "you're missing something"...

Enigma. This was very different; quite spooky, really, and I enjoyed the way that the listener starts to get an idea what happened, but Dorian doesn't give any clue as to whether he has figured it out or not. (But then, we have the advantage of a lot more Sci-Fi than he does, at the time it's set!!)

I agree with you about Season Five. They were all pretty anguished stories. The cleverest part, though, was how likely the development of Dorian's character was. He was more childish and thoughtless in 'Mirrors', although capable of being kind, as his sympathy towards Wilde at the end shows. The war seemed like a big joke to him at first, until he started to see that it really wasn't as time went on. He was very much the Dorian of the majority of the series during 'Valley of Nightmares'. 'Ever After' I find difficult to place - I still want to write a 'fix', especially as it played into one of my personal dislikes!

A question, though! I thought I'd ferretted out all the stories, adaptations, sequels &c. to 'Picture of Dorian Gray', but I'd not found the one you link to (thank you for that, by the way!) Do you know of any lists anywhere? I have found a couple, but that story doesn't appear on any of them.

I was going to put off 'Feast of Magog' and the 'Darkest Shadows', but I folded yesterday and bought them... then listened to them at work today. I was rather disappointed that Dorian only had a cameo on the latter, but I enjoyed 'Feast of Magog'

I think my absolute favourite is "One Must Not Look At Mirrors."

It's a bloody c***tease is what it is lol.



I actually stumbled across that one on Audible while looking for the BBC Picture adaption that had Geoffrey Beevers in it.

Wikipedia used to have a section/page for "Dorian Gray in Popular Culture," but in the endless posturing of the power users who have nothing in their lives beyond controlling their own little circle of the online encyclopedia, the page has long since been deleted. There's still some scattered lists on wikipedia, like this page that deals with "adaptations": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptations_of_The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray

As you can see, it's not complete, though it is fairly extensive.

Perhaps an enterprising fan could copy that page over to the Confessions wiki in the process of updating it? Wink wink nudge nudge?

for me the highlight was the first CD of season 3 with Blank Canvas and The Needle
due to a combination of the intensity of these stories and the contrast with the first 2 seasons (which I had only just finished listening to, the previous week)

Human Remains in season 4 also stood out as exceptional

I've found that perusing the edit history of that Adaptions wiki page reveals that it also used to house a much wider array of content, such as television episodes, musical homages, and various books and such the character had shown up in or been referenced by. You might find a rather interesting wealth of material there.

edit: Aha! I've found the missing link! It seem that that page houses a wealth of information from the now extinct "Dorian Gray in Popular Culture" page, which was at some point merged with "Adaptions of Dorian Gray" and then pruned down to basically just be the adaptations again without much of any of the old stuff that had been merged in

Anyway, here is the last version prior to the merge and deletion of content.

"Dorian" by Will Self looks like one I might have to check out.

Also, if you weren't aware, there's a Dorian story in one of the King in Yellow collections, which posits the "little yellow book" that Dorian was gifted was, in fact, the eponymous play, and Henry gathers Dorians friends to put on a performance as a form of grieving for them all, with suitably disturbing results, as one might imagine. The story is called In Memoriam, and you can read about it here: kinginyellow.wikia.com/wiki/In_Memoriam

No worries! I'm always on the lookout to expand my own as well

I recently came across this trilogy: www.amazon.com/Box-Set-Wolf-Dorian-Books-ebook/dp/B078WKSX34/ref=sr_1_3

The Wolf of Dorian Gray, in which the famous painting was of Dorian and a wolf, with the side-effect of turning him into a werewolf in this one. It's not the most sophisticated thing in the world, but hey you can't win em all