Dickensian [DVD] [2015]

Clever idea, actually. Scour the novels of Dickens, examine the Dramatis Personae within, select the most pleasing, colourful, interesting and memorable characters, throw them together in the East End of London in, say, the year 1850, then see how they get on together. Being street urchins, hustlers, drinkers, lechers, layabouts, trollops and pickpockets, they get on as expected. They scrounge, rummage, hustle, steal. They lie, cheat, hide from the peelers and the law. Their world is dog eat dog and most of them are hungry and poor. If they behave like jackals and hyenas, this helps explain it, an example of social Darwinism, if such a thing exists. Territories are staked out and defended. Predator and prey mix on the streets. The Industrial Revolution made winners and losers as it burned itself into the world. Here we mainly see the losers, its victims. The bosses, on the other hand, are shielded by their wealth, largely hidden from view.Old friends from numerous stories appear here: Scrooge and Fagin, Bill Sikes and Nancy, Jacob Marley, Mr. Bumble and Mr. Venus, Bob Cratchit and family, the Artful Dodger and Oliver Twist, Little Nell, even Mr. Gradgrind from “Hard Times”, the harshest and most realistic of novels by Dickens, the book in which the words ‘dark’ and ‘satanic’ became synonymous for the revolution he despised for its inhumanity and pitilessness. Dickens was a moral writer, and thank goodness for that. He had what the world always needs more of — heart. You want his downtrodden characters to find some redemption and love, some happiness of the sort you yourself have experienced. If not, you could not find their lives interesting and relevant to your own. We love Dickens because he holds the mirror up to life. He exaggerates and caricaturises, but he never lies. We understand the world he sees. He was an honest man.Other characters are talked about, even if we don’t meet them in the series. The names Uriah Heep and Mr. Pickwick are overheard in conversation. Well-known places also appear. Young Nell sells trinkets in the Old Curiosity Shop. The Three Cripples ale house is the local here, the same pub where Fagin and Bill Sikes famously drank and conspired in “Oliver Twist”. Satis House is where the young heiress Amelia Havisham lives, which of course is where old Miss Havisham lived in “Great Expectations”, and where Pip used to steal kisses from beautiful young Estella.The jumble is a nonsense of course, and yet it works rather seamlessly. After the first few episodes (20 of them, 30 minutes each) we start to believe this world could be true. One important character is Inspector Bucket (from “Bleak House”), an investigative peeler who works for a new branch of the police called The Detective. Mr. Venus is confused and asks Bucket exactly what he does. He investigates crimes, he says, as opposed to arresting and charging those who merely look guilty. It’s a new science, a new way of getting at the truth, he explains. The forensics and deductive reasoning of Sherlock Holmes were not yet in practice in 1850. Inspector Bucket (Stephen Rea) marks their beginning. Clues and leads are the keys to solving crimes, he thinks, and, like a bloodhound, he has a nose for them. He even calls himself a detective, not a copper. Mr. Venus thereafter invents a new word, and tells others that Inspector Bucket is “detectiving”.Two main threads run through the story. The first concerns the estate of Amelia Havisham and her brother Arthur. The second follows Inspector Bucket and his attempt to solve a most serious crime — that of murder.The death of old Mr. Havisham occurs just before the story begins. All is black at the beginning of Episode One: the hearse carrying the coffin to the cemetery; the clothes of the mourners, including the tall black stovepipe hats of the men; the dark candlelit interiors; the sky which has no sun, only heavy snow which turns brown and muddy when it touches the dirty, slushy roads. The world looks and feels grim. Although it’s the day before Christmas, many people are grumpy, cold, weary, miserable. Scrooge’s famous “humbug” resounds in the frosty air. Only the Cratchit family is bright and cheery. Why? Because it is immersed in love. Bob and Emily are poor, but they love each other deeply, as well as their sizeable brood of children, of which Martha and Peter are the eldest, and Tiny Tim among the youngest. Peter has a crush on Nell and Martha is betrothed to John Bagnet, a local lad. They marry in a touchingly simple ceremony in Episode Five. Joy radiates throughout the household. The Cratchits are Dickens at his most sentimental, the personification of the power of love to overcome and solve all troubles. Of course we don’t condemn Dickens for this. On the contrary, we love him for suggesting it.Mr. Havisham has died. He was a large estate and brewery owner. Mr. Jaggers, the family lawyer, is asked to read the will on Christmas Day. All the brewery and 90% of the estate are left to Amelia, not Arthur, who receives only 10% of the estate. Arthur is outraged, beside himself with bitterness. Why has his father disowned him? What did he do to the old man to be so unloved by him? He takes his rage out on his sister and plots to undermine and ruin her. Where once they were close and loving, now the inheritance has divided them. Amelia does what she can to try to reconcile with him, but Arthur is aggrieved, stubborn, victimised. All he can think of is revenge, getting what he feels is rightfully his. But he doesn’t plot alone. He has a co-conspirator in Meriwether Compeyson (from “Great Expectations”). His job is to steal the heart of Amelia, thereby weakening her and allowing Arthur greater leverage.Inspector Bucket meanwhile attempts to solve a crime most foul and dastardly. A local resident who shall go unnamed has been murdered. Yes, murdered, and several well-known persons will fall under suspicion and be subject to Bucket’s detectiving. He examines diaries, dusts pieces of potential evidence, asks many probing questions that induce those suspected to produce alibis. Like Holmes himself, Bucket is determined. He is a man of science equipped with a brain that can deductively reason. We feel sure he will find the murderer. He feels sure too.Stephen Rea is marvellous as Bucket. He is serious, deliberate, methodical, humourless. He speaks slowly, weighing every word. Murder most afoul has been committed. It shall not go unpunished. But many of Bucket’s leads halt at hard dead ends. Even so, he continues.Other important characters are the Barbarys from “Bleak House”. Edward, the father, is a respectable businessman. But his business has fallen onto hard financial times. He demeans himself by taking a high-interest loan from Scrooge, using his house as collateral, to keep his creditors at bay. This is madness, the cycle of debt he has fallen into. He is mortified and conceals the truth from his family. Or he tries to. Frances, his eldest adult daughter discovers his predicament. Both then conspire to conceal the truth from Honoria, the younger daughter, aged about 21. She is charming, beautiful and much attended to by Captain James Hawdon, a dashing young officer who wishes to marry her. But his problem is financial too. The Army does not pay him well enough for the couple to marry just yet. So, their engagement must be a long one.Some critics have called the series a messy hodgepodge. Yes, I get it. I have some sympathy with the view. But I think that’s only true because we know Dickens, the characters, and their stories within the novels. So a good trick may be the one I’ve used. Who is Dickens? Never heard of him. This ruse allowed me to watch the characters afresh, as if this series was their only home. There are no novels and backstories. There is no Dickens. Once the decision was made the series opened up and felt fresh. I loved it. A terrible pity, then, that the BBC have failed to renew it for a second season. The acting and writing are superlative, as are the costumes and sets. The opening scenes with the snow falling on the bleak city streets is so Dickens, so atmospheric, so redolent of his times. We are immediately plunged into his London, and, quite frankly, it wasn’t one I was ready to leave. When the last episode ended I started again, watching the whole series nearly straight through a second time.It’s a fun guessing game as well if you know the characters and novels. It’s a lark and laugh to see characters who never could have met in Dickens meet here now on these streets and in these shops. Small world indeed!So, to repeat: really clever idea. Once you get used to it, all will seem normal.

Highly recommend this series. Am surprised it didn’t gather a bigger audience when shown on TV.Will re watch this now & again for its clever pulling together of Dickens stories, pathos, humour & reality of the times.

The first episode is a little bit slow, but persevere with it.It's a very interesting idea. Done in the format of a soap opera. Except it's the Dickens characters from his novels. Imagine the Eastenders cast are replaced by Bob Cratchit, Scrooge and Marley, Fagin, Miss Havisham etc. and they all live in the same neighbourhood and their stories cross over with each other.Such a pity the BBC axed it after the first season.

enjoyed the entire series and some good jolly characters thatmade this producion worth watching. fast delivery & well packaged. thanks.

The English actors in this adaptation are superb! But, sadly there is only one season of Dickensian. The story cleverly combines many of Dickens' characters placing them together in the same time period. Dickens' novels are entertaining and evocative making them truly timeless. I never tire of his stories because Dickens' world is slowly becoming reality here in the US. His novels mainly portray the world of the very rich mistreating and abusing the very poor. And, the dwindling middleclass must be somewhere in between. This dystopian world is fast becoming reality in the US. I say to America: Read/watch Dickens and learn from England's lamentable past!!

I did enjoy this great actor's but can't go wrong with dickens

A fabulous compilation of some of the best known Dickens stories in one fantastic series. Intense, funny, sad, full of tears and laughter, hope and despair. An amazing new method that works. You can guess as you watch, who the characters represent and the Dickens story they come from. A totally ingenious, wonderful and 'can't wait for the next episode' series. Highly recommended to all Dickens fans and those who aren't. You will enjoy every moment of it....

I had mixed feelings about "playing around with Dickens" before watching this series but now can only say it's brilliant. It's so clever, the way the characters and plots are merged and interwoven to create what is essentially a Dickensian London village. I knew something about most of the stories and people, mainly from films and TV series, as I've read only two of the novels. One of these was Bleak House, which I studied to A-Level, and and was deeply moved by the "prequel," having seen two very good TV adaptations since leaving school. I was also very much drawn in by the Amelia Havisham theme, here is someone who could so have been her own woman had she not met the wrong man. Some things were darker than I've seen depicted on screen before, namely Fagin and the way he was "saving" the lost boys from hard labour overseas and "pimping" poor Nancy out. But doubtless this reflects Dickens' time and society as it really was. On the lighter side, Pauline Collins was a scream as Sarah Gamp. I also liked the necessary additional characters such as the bankrupt Edward Barbary and the romantic plot lines for Bob Crachit's older children. If you know your Dickens, you know things will end well for some characters and tragically and terribly for others. But the episode that blew my mind was the one in which Jacob Marley's "murderer" confessed, who could have foreseen that coming? And waiting with baited breath to see what the Inspector, a decent and humane man, would decide to do next.