The mere name, Clarín, the notorious novelist and Spanish literary critic, was enough to turn a 19th-century writer’s blood cold. His biting and often bellicose articles made him the nation’s most feared critical voice. This program, produced by RTVE, is a dramatization of Clarín’s most famous work, La Regenta (The Professor’s Wife), generally considered the greatest Spanish naturalistic novel of that period. Brimming with political irony and stinging commentary on social scandals of the day, the work consecrated Clarín as a major literary genius, and earned for itself a lofty place in the canon of Spanish literature. (Spanish with English subtitles, 5 hours)