Doctor Who’s Peter Capaldi has made this classic fantasy book the perfect audiobook

When I finished watching The Sheep Detectives discreetly one of the best movies of 2026 (comedy or otherwise)I thought of another animal story. More precisely, I was thinking of another story where animals are treated like this animals and not as anthropomorphic jokes, ie. people wearing a different skin for some plot. Watership Down by Richard Adams is the gold standard of the talking animal story because the rabbits at the heart of the novel have animal needs, animal desires, and animal instincts. Any serious cross-section of humanity exists to prove a larger point about life.

Naturally, this led me to revisit “Watership Down” for the first time in over 20 years. And since I’m a busy adult with responsibilities, I decided to choose an audiobook.

It turned out to be the right choice. Because the Watership Down audiobook is narrated by Peter Capaldi, a brilliant Scottish actor with the kind of range that allows him to play loathsome sociopaths and good parents without telling a single lie. Of course, Capaldi is best known these days as a science fiction legend. Indeed, his three-year run as the title character on Doctor Who is now rightfully being hailed as the strongest in the show’s 60-plus year history. (Fighting me.) At least those are the features one of the greatest Doctor Who episodes ever. in Heaven Sent.

Capaldi’s narration, his voice bring the book to life to the point where I am lost for words. The narrative also doubles down on the low-key element of “Watership Down,” which seems more obvious than ever when you’re told the story: This is one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written.

Yes, “Watership Down” is set in our world where rabbits live in burrows near human farms and roads. But the beauty of the novel is that an ordinary patch of land and forest can be Middle Earth for a group of bunnies.

As the rabbits in “Watership Down” leave their hutch, prompted by prescient images of impending doom, the journey to find a new hole to call their own takes on the scale of a true epic. Small streams become raging rivers. Machines become unstoppable gods. Dogs and cats become mythical beasts to be run from or fought against. And when the rabbits stop to eat or rest, they regale each other with tales drawn from their own culture and homegrown mythology, like a troop of hobbits exchanging poems.

“Watership Down,” on page, owed to J. R. R. Tolkien, as well as “Sheep Detectives” – Agatha Christie’s mystery novel. Name the rabbits anything else and place it in a fictional world and there’s no question of genre.

And much like how Peter Capaldi brought stunning nuance, wry wit and deep pain to his portrayal of the Doctor, his narration in the audiobook imbues even the smallest moments with great drama and great emotion. Just as he balanced the inherent silliness of Doctor Who by confronting every gonzo alien or time-traveling threat with an honesty that made you to believe in Dalek, his take on the world and characters in “Watership Down” showcases a performer with a keen sense of empathy. His swaggering Scottish brogue lends a sense of scope to each long mile of Rabbit Quest, but he’s also unafraid to take on radically different timbres and get down to the level of these little creatures, fulfilling their smallest fears and dreams. It’s a beautiful performance.

Peter Capaldi stars in the cast of the 2018 BBC animated adaptation of the novel as the dumbest character ever. Probably a great performance. (I have not seen this, although I can confirm it Adaptation of the 1970s animated film Shipwreck is a true classic.) But now I just feel spoiled knowing that he’s just more than one character. He can hold this whole world in the palm of his hand. Or mouth, to be exact.