A Tale of Two Cities (Radio 4) looked on paper to be one of the Christmas radio highlights and it doesn't disappoint. Yesterday's first episode was commanding drama from the opening moments, with Robert Lindsay as Dickens describing a prisoner walking to his death at the guillotine. It was a momentous and yet taut opening building to Dickens asking us to imagine "what those two or three seconds must be like" as a life seeps away after beheading.

From the swirling of big ideas in pre-revolutionary Paris, this exquisitely classy adaptation by Mike Walker, directed by Jeremy Mortimer and Jessica Dromgoole, melted quickly into the first scene: a cryptic message delivered at night to a coach on the Dover Road. The passenger, Jarvis Lorry (Jonathan Coy) has lurid dreams afterwards but recovers sufficiently to face a breakfast of beef and swede, dover sole and samphire, and then dessert. "I think port with the pudding," he says.

Every moment convinces. It's partly the terrific performances – Alison Steadman does a lovely Miss Pross – but also the knack of getting the novel's challenging mix of personal stories and huge social change spot on. "We'll write blood across the face of this whole nation," snarled in Paris felt as real as the details of that extensive breakfast in Dover. A joy to listen to.