Bleak House

Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock in Bleak House

If the film is often a novella, the TV mini-series is often the full-fat 600-pager, with Charles Dickens right up at the top of the list when it comes to cliffhanger endings to the week’s proceedings – the stories were often written for serialisation, Bleak House having appeared in 20 weekly editions of 32 pages plus illustrations. The BBC have something of a lock on Dickens, but their productions can be a bit dusty, more focused on the clothes than the action. But not this Bleak House. This 2005 outing is their best Dickens since 1994’s Martin Chuzzlewit and has the edge on its previous Bleak House, made in 1985 and starring Diana … Read more

Oliver Twist

Oliver is menaced by Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist

The sort of film that most of us have slept through a few times. No, not the one with “Consider Yourself” and all those other fabulous Lionel Bart songs. Instead, it’s the David Lean version of Dickens’s story of a nice young lad all at sea in bad old London, completely song-free and freighted with baggage – Alec Guinness’s Semitic schnozz for starters, his wheedling manner for another – as thiefmaster Fagin. But beneath Fagin’s hard shell and stereotyped Jewish image (based on the Cruickshank drawings, that’s Lean’s and Guinness’s defence) there beats a heart of gold, while around him operates his gang of reasonably well-cared-for ne’er-do-well pickpockets. It’s Robert Newton’s Bill Sykes who’s … Read more