Do you feel guilty because you've never read the great works of world literature that you're supposed to read? Nihon TV knows how you feel, and on Monday at 7 p.m. the network will present a special called "Arasuji de Tanoshimu Sekai Meisaku Gekijo (Theater of World Masterpieces That Can Be Enjoyed in Summary Form)."
Utilizing a variety of narrative styles, the program runs through the basic plots of several of the world's greatest novels using some unlikely talent, just in case such an undertaking strikes some as being too dry. For instance, idol Eiji Wentz plays the brooding suicidal hero in a dramatization of Dazai Osamu's "Ningen Shikkaku (No Longer Human)."
Comedian Cunning Takayama does the voices in a CG animation version of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," while another comedian, Udo Suzuki, appears in a precis of Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina."