The BBC are currently filming a new adaptation of the Dickens classic Little Dorrit. Dickens originally published the novel in 19 instalments and the BBC plan to have one 60 minute episode and 14 half hour episodes. This will mirror the way it was originally delivered to the Victorian public and it was also done (in Britain) with the very successful version of Bleak House.
There is a terrific cast for this Dickens just as there was for “Bleak House.” Little Dorrit, the child at the centre of the novel, is played by Claire Foy who was in the series “Being human.” The main character, Arthur Clennam, is played by Matthew McFadyen. Tom Courtenay plays Little Dorrit’s father. James Fleet her uncle and the villain Rigaud is Andy Serkis. Playing Mrs Merdle, wife of “the greatest man in London,” is a change for Amanda Redman from playing the matriarch in the U.K. version of “Outrageous fortune.” Robert Hardy is Barnacle, principal of the Circumlocution Office and as Harris, the teller of shaggy dog stories, there is Mackenzie Crook.
Plenty of other names in the cast including Maxine Peake (from ‘Shameless”) and Alun Armstrong as the Flintwinch twins make this something to look forward to. Well it would be if we didn’t have such appalling television where the much acclaimed – and, in Britain, high rating – “Bleak House” was tucked away at 10.30 on a Sunday night and the Bafta award winning version of “Nella Last’s War’ (a fascinating book of the diaries of a housewife during World War II) with the ever popular Victoria Wood in the lead was put on at an even later time at 12.30.
Will we see this some time – perhaps at 3 a.m. on a Sunday night – or will it be just be one of the many British programmes (there’ve been dramatisations of the life of famous cooks, a number of programmes in which contemporary names play famous comedians, adaptations of Hardy, Trollope, Mrs Gaskell and others) that get pushed aside for game shows and programmes about cultural icon Nicky Watson?
4 June 2008 at 3:39 pm
There is a simple remedy, buy the DVD. I’ve done that with Bleak House: you get to watch at the time you choose and don’t have the programme broken up every few minutes with interminable adverts. If you have a multi-region DVD player Amazon UK is a good option, they’re always offering specials. Bit more costly than watching on the box, another option would be to wait until it comes out as region 4 and hire it.
16 September 2008 at 4:27 pm
just notice a spot of Trollope on Sunday night:
21 September 2008
“The Way We Live Now (TV1, 10.30pm). A 2001, Bafta-winning Andrew Davies adaptation of the Anthony Trollope satire that has a stellar cast – David Suchet, Matthew Macfadyen, Cillian Murphy, Miranda Otto and Shirley Henderson among them.”
26 September 2008 at 3:30 pm
Do you know when this airs, and if it can be found online? I’m in Canada, and can’t really find much info about it. I just finished reading Little Dorrit today, and I would love to see how they’ve interpreted it.
Thanks!
29 September 2008 at 8:02 am
Dear Heather
We are in New Zealand so I wouldn’t have a clue where you’d get hold of it in Canada. It hasn’t actually been shown yet so I doubt it will be available immediately but as it is BBC you can write to them in England. The good old Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com/search)has information about it.
Cheers
Philip