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Season guide

The Modern World: Ten Great Writers: Season 1

11 episodes Premiered Jan 10, 1988 Updated Oct 4, 2026
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Season 1 Episodes

Episode Guide

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Season 1: Filler vs. Essential Canon

Filter episodes by narrative weight. Focus on essential mytharc and skip standalone side quests.

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Mytharc (3): Crucial lore & season climaxes
Core (8): Character development & subplots
Side Quest (0): Standalone / filler
S1·E1 Mytharc

James Joyce: Ulysses

Jan 10, 1988

From the series "The Modern World: Ten Great Writers", this playful documentary introduces James Joyce's most famous work "Ulysses". It includes fantastic adaptations to film from

S1·E2 Core

Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent

Jan 17, 1988

When an anarchist attempted to blow up the Greenwich Observatory, an idea exploded in the mind of Joseph Conrad. This program re-creates the world of The Secret Agent, the first gr

S1·E4 Core

Marcel Proust: A la recherche du temps perdu

Jan 31, 1988

Withdrawing from the glittering high society he had so avidly courted, Marcel Proust spent the last decade of his life in virtual isolation, writing and revising Remembrance of Thi

S1·E5 Core

Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain

Feb 7, 1988

A novel of ideas at once serious and comic, The Magic Mountain offers a bird’s-eye view of the political, philosophical, and social landscapes of pre-World War I Europe. This progr

S1·E6 Core

Henrik Ibsen: The Master Playwright

Feb 14, 1988

This program, narrated by Ibsen biographer Michael Meyer, charts the development of Henrik Ibsen’s style over four periods: his early years of failure; his epic dramas; his sociolo

S1·E7 Core

Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway

Feb 21, 1988

Virginia Woolf pushed the boundaries of the novel as a tool for psychological inquiry through her experimentation with subjective and relativistic perceptions of time and events. T

S1·E8 Core

Luigi Pirandello: In Search of an Author

Feb 28, 1988

In 1925 Luigi Pirandello brought his troupe to England as part of a worldwide tour. This program re-creates one day in London as “The Einstein of the Theater” watches his plays and

S1·E9 Core

T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land

Mar 6, 1988

Read by noted actors Michael Gough, Edward Fox, and Eileen Atkins, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land powerfully expresses the disillusionment and disgust of the post–World War I era in

S1·E10 Mytharc

Franz Kafka: The Trial

Mar 13, 1988

A suppressor of his own writings, Franz Kafka even requested that upon his death all his extant works be destroyed—yet those very works accurately prefigured the anxieties and alie

S1·E11 Mytharc

Ten Great Writers: The Seminar

Mar 20, 1988

In this lively round-table discussion, moderator Melvyn Bragg; the late writer and critic Anthony Burgess; Professor George Steiner, author of Language and Silence; literary critic

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