Christine Geraghty

Christmas is long gone and some of its televisual pleasures have been
explored in the CST blogs by Kenneth Longden
(<https://cstonline.net/bbc-christmas> and <https://cstonline.net/sherlock-abominable>)
and Lorna Jowett (<https://cstonline.net/not-so-cosy>). But one
Christmas special which began on Boxing Day on BBC1 still lingers
on. *Dickensian* (Red Planet Pictures) made the usual Christmas use of a
Charles Dickens' storyworld complete with Victorian urchins and snowy
streets. But unusually the serial is being screened in twenty 30 minutes
episodes and so in the first week of February, with the screening of
episodes 14 and 15, we will be only three-quarters of the way through. (
See the [BBC website](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06vbmfq))

If you aren't a Dickens fan and don't enjoy classic adaptations, you may
be tempted to stop reading at this point. But in this blog I am not
going to go into detail about the serial itself (though I hope to do so
in due course) but to use it to make some points about serial narratives
and how they can be viewed. I hope these points which relate to
narrative organisation, spoilers and characterisation in popular
adaptations will be of interest to those for whom period drama is a
turn-off.

*Dickensian* is a sort of adaptation. Over ten hours, it takes
characters and locations from some of Dickens' novels and makes up
different stories with them.

![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=540&height=304&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/1.%20cast%20and%20set%20of%20Dickensian.jpg){.addCaption
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In particular, it is a prequel for stories from two of the
novels, *Great Expectations* and *Bleak House*. We meet Miss Havisham
before she became the frozen character in *Great Expectations* who had
been jilted at the altar and Miss Barbary before she too froze into the
persona of Lady Dedlock, hiding the fact of her illegitimate child
in *Bleak House*. *Dickensian* is also a detective story in which
Inspector Bucket (from *Bleak House*) in the first episode takes up the
case of the murder of Joseph Marley (who had died a year before the
opening of Dickens' much-adapted work, *A Christmas Carol*).

![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=548&height=411&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/2.%20A%20watchful%20Inspector%20Bucket.jpg){.addCaption
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The continual referencing of so many Dickens' characters in the early
episodes was brave since it made for a tricky opening. The sheer number
of characters and storylines was potentially confusing as a number of
critics pointed out and had the viewer scanning the magnificent set
trying to find something to hang on to. And it almost seemed that some
knowledge of the books was a disadvantage as I found myself asking
questions like 'Where does Samuel Wegg come from?' and wondering where
Joe the road sweeper or indeed Oliver Twist was. Bucket's murder enquiry
provided the essential narrative line with Stephen Rea quietly menacing
in his pursuit of possible leads.

But for me the serial really established itself in episodes 4 and 5
which were written by Sarah Phelps, an experienced soap writer and
adaptor. At an RTS event on adaptation in November, Phelps spoke of her
experience of adapting J K Rowling's *The Casual Vacancy* and emphasised
the importance of finding the 'through line' which would take the viewer
to the 'beating heart of the story'. With *The Casual Vacancy* Phelps
said that she had found that line by following through one of the
teenage characters. *Dickensian* had more characters and more storylines
but it seems that Phelps followed the same principle. At the beginning
of episode 4, Phelps pulled together the story line around three young
women -- Honoria Barbary (Sophie Rundle) with her dashing young soldier,

![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=540&height=304&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/3.%20Honoria%20and%20her%20soldier%20lover.jpg){.addCaption
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Amelia Havisham (Tuppence Middleton) whose fortune is attracting the
interest of a potential suitor and Martha Cratchit (Phoebe Dynevor)
whose imminent wedding will be threatened by the arrest of her father
for Marley's murder.

![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=580&height=327&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/4.%20Martha%20Cratchit%20andfather%20Bob%20on%20the%20way%20to%20her%20wedding.jpg){.addCaption
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The stories of  these young women are boldly woven into a common thread
about the possibilities and limitations of female action and with this
narrative line firmly in place, the other characters could be dropped
into place around them.

The second point I want to make is about spoilers. Tony Jordan, the
producer and main writer, and the BBC press material stress
that *Dickensian *is for those who don't know Dickens and the BBC
website goes in for spoiler alerts in a dutiful way. But unlike the
BBC's *Bleak House* (2005), about which similar claims were made, it
seems to me that this is a rare adaptation which actually works better
if you know the stories -- not necessarily from the novels but from
previous adaptations or general cultural references. When you know
Amelia Havisham's fate, watching her guileless yet spirited response to
the tactics of her seducer Compeyson (Tom Weston-Jones) is unbearably
tense and poignant.

![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=560&height=315&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/5.%20Miss%20Havisham%20and%20her%20suitor.jpg){.addCaption
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Similarly, the sacrifice of Honoria in saving her bankrupt father by
marrying the wealthy Lord Dedlock is made the more wretched when we know
that she will meet her death, pursued by Bucket, in a nearby graveyard.
Knowing the ending doesn't make you lose interest in the story. Perhaps
it is a lesson from soaps; in the end it is not what happens that
matters but how it happens.

Finally, one of the curious things about *Dickensian* is how it strips
away the accretions of the previous versions on which many in its
audience will depend for their knowledge. Despite much sometimes playful
Dickensian referencing, the characters have a freshness about them which
is backed up by the blessed lack of the kind of over-the-top acting
which plagues Dickens adaptations. Scrooge (Nick Dennehy) is stripped of
all that jolly Christmas spirit which is a feature of many popular
adaptations. Here, he is a genuinely menacing figures, pursuing the grim
capitalist logic of money with indiscriminate harshness. Mrs Gamp
(Pauline Collins) has a comic edge but is also clear that she is a
genuine alcoholic, using any cunning means possible to the next shot of
gin into her shaking hands. And it's made clear that Nancy, familiar
from so many versions of *Oliver Twist*, is a prostitute owned and hired
out by Fagin. Played with beautiful grace by Bethany Muir, the
sentimentality that can overpower this character ('As long as he needs
me . . .') is stripped away to leave a young woman who is both pragmatic
and innocent in the abusive world she finds herself.

![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=620&height=372&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/6.%20Nancy%20on%20the%20street.jpg){.addCaption
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Adaptations Studies scholars often emphasise the layering and
intertextuality of any new version of a familiar character but here we
get the opportunity to see the characters anew as those layers seem to
peel away.

*Dickensian* is a project which Tony Jordan nurtured for many years. At
a well-attended seminar in October 2015, jointly organised by Royal
Holloway's Centre for Victorian Studies and the London Screenwriting
Research Seminar, Jordan said that his inspiration had been Dickens'
fantastic range of characters and his admiration for his skills both as
a writer and a showman who understood the commercial necessities of
publishing. *Dickensian* was, he said, set in Dickens' mind not in
Victorian London and reminded us about the famous unfinished painting,
'Dickens' Dream' (1875) by the artist, etcher and illustrator, Robert
William Buss.

![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=524&height=402&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/7.%20Dickens'%20Dream%20(1875)%20by%20Robert%20William%20Buss.jpg){.addCaption
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It was a brave decision of the BBC to give Jordan 10 hours of primetime,
four more than Andrew Davies' more prestigious adaptation of *War and
Peace.* I'm not sure that *Dickensian* is really 'Comfort Television'
as [discussed by Tom Nicholls in his blog last
week](https://cstonline.net/comfort-telly) although I agreed with a
number of his comments on the pleasures it offers in terms of
contemporary resonances and quality of performance. *Dickensian* is I
think different from the conventional period drama and those differences
relate to questions about adaptation and narrative organisation. At the
Royal Holloway seminar, Jordan said that he already had the second
series written and was well into the third. I hope the BBC is brave
enough to commission the second series.

 

**Christine Geraghty** is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the
University of Glasgow.  Her publications on television include a
contribution to the 1981 BFI monograph on *Coronation Street*; Women and
Soap Opera (Polity, 1991); and *My Beautiful Laundrette* (I B Taurus,
2004).  Her BFI TV Classic on *Bleak House* was published in 2012 and
her reflections on the beginning of her work on soap opera appears in
'The BFI women and film study group 1976 -- ?', Renewing Feminisms,
Radical Narratives, Fantasies and Futures in Media Studies H. Thornham
and E. Weissmann (eds) I B Taurus 2013.  She is on the editorial board
of the  *Journal of British Cinema and Television* and sits on the
advisory boards of a number of journals, including *Screen*.


Christmas is long gone and some of its televisual pleasures have been explored in the CST blogs by Kenneth Longden (https://cstonline.net/bbc-christmas and https://cstonline.net/sherlock-abominable) and Lorna Jowett (https://cstonline.net/not-so-cosy). But one Christmas special which began on Boxing Day on BBC1 still lingers on.
<em>
 Dickensian
</em>
(Red Planet Pictures) made the usual Christmas use of a Charles Dickens’

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

CHARACTER, NARRATIVE AND SPOILERS IN THE BBC’S DICKENSIAN