Oh it’s so sad. And so happy. It’s so happy and so sad. It’s taken me weeks and weeks just to wipe the tears away.¹ I’d better finish up.

Week Seven. Last week, Tulkinghorn got what he so dearly deserved. Now, all the other characters are left to bicker over who actually got around to killing him. There’s an angry, rude, passionate foreign woman running about the place, but surely she’s too, too obvious a suspect? No? Oh. I’m not even going to go near any subtextual implications of her guilt. But I’m happy it wasn’t sweet Lady Dedlock.

Meanwhile, those crazy kids, having come of age, are now engaged secretly to be managed. Ada’s bunking with her dearest now, which seems unwise as he looks sickly enough to catch any number of diseases from. But true love means never quite allowing yourself to notice that your dearest is an obsessive, self-destructive loser.

Mind you, it’s not that easy to find good medical help these days. Hilarious but somewhat disturbing moments this week, as Esther gets rid of the worst doctor ever. Imagine a time where medical knowledge was basic enough, and the populace ignorant enough that a man could make a living going from house to house extolling the virtues of his faithful “black liquid”.² Where oh where could we get a proper doctor? Oh, it’s that dishy Woodcourt back again. This would be convenient for Esther if she hadn’t gotten all engaged to Mr Jarndyce.

Week Eight. With that nasty murder business behind us, everyone’s happy and well. Or rather they would have been if that silly foreign woman had gone on a proper murderous rampage and taken out Mr Smallweed as well. At the beginning of Bleak House, it felt like there was a dark, oppressive god overseeing all the little people and keeping them in check; now that he’s gone, everyone’s free, and things start moving. Jarndyce and Jarndyce is concluded — but there’s no money in it. Ada and Richard are married — but Richard’s dying. Smallweed ensures that the truth about Lady Dedlock is revealed — and she takes her own life.

In the chaos and release, there’s only room for a few happy endings, but those that eventuate are all the sweeter for the tragedy around them. Life goes on, Mrs Flite’s caged birds are set free, and Mr Jarndyce comes good, and allows Esther to cancel their engagement and marry Woodcourt. There were moments at the start where I wasn’t completely sold on the series — the crazy sound-effects and scene-switching felt a bit tacky in the earlier episodes — but these elements settled down quickly and found a more natural level. Bleak House was a relaxed, involving and consistently entertaining adaptation,³ with the performances of Gillian Anderson, Denis Lawson, Charles Dance and Anna Maxwell Martin in particular making a larger-than-life story feel very real. No one does the classics like the BBC, but I’m glad that they’re willing to experiment with them.

1. Yeah, that’s plausible. They’ll never guess just how lazy I truly am.
2. Could have been blue. Or another possibly purple.
3. Not that I’ve read the book. Must get onto that.

Learning that the BBC had decided to schedule Bleak House like a soap had got me thinking. There’s two schools of thought on Dickens and his fellow famous British writers. One is that if they were alive today, they’d damn well be writing for television, and what’s more, writing really good television. The other is that they achieved something far greater than anyone today is likely to ever achieve, and that they should be held on a lofty pedestal, and studied in exactly the sort of university courses that the people who take this view never attended in their life.¹

Me, I like the former view, and it’s good to see people putting their money where their mouth is and actually having the nerve to make, and program, Dickens in this way. Bleak House is probably a fantastic book, and I’ll be reading it straight after the adaptation is over.² But there’s no doubt that in terms of genre, it’s a bit of a soapie.

soap op ▪ er ▪ a
noun
a television or radio drama series dealing typically with daily events in the lives of the same group of characters. So named because such serials were originally sponsored by soap manufacturers.

Bleak House is indeed dealing with a world that often seems to consist of only around 30 people, who keep improbably bumping into each other. People have exploded, people have suddenly caught illnesses, and this week, people meet their long-lost daughters. The difference between this and Neighbours? Firstly, the clothes and backgrounds are prettier. More importantly, it’s well written and planned, by virtue of not being produced at a pace more suitable for sausages than drama.

Enough of this waffle. Let’s look at this fortnight’s episodes. Having found a kind soul by the name of lilycup who screencapped the episodes, the quality of the pictures has gone up somewhat.

Week Five. Adjusting to old-fashioned values is tricky. Jarndyce is such a nice man, but I feel a little icky at the thought of him marrying Esther. The scene with him getting all embarrassed in the carriage almost sold me on it though. But while Jarndyce is awkwardly attempting to make Esther understand his true feelings, Lady Dedlock has discovered her daughter is still alive, and comes to her, explains that she’s the daughter of her and Mr Nemo (aka Captain Hawdon), and that they can never see each other again. Textbook parenting, really.

Guppy manages to completely screw up this week. Wandering blithely in to try to collect the love letters, he simply makes it easier for Smallweed to find them, and hand them over to Tulkinghorn. It does however lead to an awesome moment as he turns to leave and finds the despicable man standing over him like some kind of devil.

Week Six. Oh poor Jarndyce. All thoughts of icky are gone. In perfectly played scenes by Denis Lawson, he proposes to Esther — and is accepted — and then asks to keep it quiet the next day, having suddenly been hit by an attack of the guilts at trying to pick up a girl so much younger than him when she might still have prospects. See, this is why the nice guys never get the girl. They’re just not selfish enough. Of course, Guppy turns out to be a little too selfish; upon seeing Esther’s skin condition, he does a complete U-turn.

Richard’s obsession with the court case was picking up last week but now things get really disturbing. Skimpole may be naive, but he’s also curiously good at picking up money from suckers, or at least helping his friend the creepy, slow-talking lawyer do it. Poor cute little Ada pledges her fortune to allow him to keep going in the army and forget about Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which he’s willing to agree to, on the condition that he continue with Jarndyce and Jarndyce and quit the army. Ada’s now stuck with a useless fiancee and friends who can see that he’s useless, so she’s started getting a bit disagreeable, as you do.

Perhaps the best scene so far comes when almost all the cast gathers around the poor young boy Jo as he dies. Anna Maxwell Martin is adorably noble as she tries to lead him in prayers, and heartbreakingly he only manages a few words before shuffling off the mortal coil. Jarndyce gets some cool poetry to recite too.

So it’s come to this; Tulkinghorn has finally been so evil that it’s coming back to bite him. His meddling to keep the boy Jo from blabbing has caused his death, he’s pulling in Sergeant George’s loan despite their agreement, and he’s threatening Lady Dedlock with retribution if she doesn’t do exactly what he says — and she hasn’t.

It’s amazing it took this long for someone to shoot him in the head.³

1. They preferred more… political studies.
2. By which I mean it goes straight into my queue.
3. May not actually be the head. Or it could be a clone. I’ll find out next week.

I’ve been round the bend and back again. How many episodes of Bleak House are there? Fifteen. Also, there are eight. In Britain, the show started with an hour-long episode, followed by fourteen half-hour episodes, to emulate the style of a soap opera — the show was shown after EastEnders. The ABC are showing it in eight episodes, with the fourteen half-hour episodes joined together. This has all been terribly confusing for a poor bastard trying to write reviews with the help of an episode guide that tells him of things that happened one and a half episodes ago. If that confusion has spread over into this review, I apologise. But I’d best catch up.

Things seemed a bit slow in the first two (three) episodes, so I was concerned — but once people start spontaneously combusting, you know things are going well.

Week Three. Damn, that Richard is irritating. He may be the most irritating character I’ve seen on television this year — and remember, I’ve been watching the Stargates recently. Having chickened out of being a doctor, he now finds that he hasn’t even the application to become a lawyer — though he does find himself quite interested in the case from which he could potentially be awarded thousands,¹ Jarndyce and Jarndyce.²

Meanwhile, the ruined and depressed Mr Gridley, who pretty much has a sign over his head saying “THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU,” has previously cursed the deliciously evil Mr Tulkinghorn in public. It’s pretty clear now that this action is not dissimilar to flapping one’s testicles in the face of a lion. There’s a warrant and he’s on the run. Inspector Bucket tracks him down in Sergeant George’s gym but Gridley cunningly escapes by dying.

Week Four. This is the episode where things really pull you in. It must be very relaxing to adapt a novel to television.³ Free of the hassles of cutting and keeping people constantly occupied, you can spend three episodes setting all your characters up in the same neat way that the book did, and then start moving them about after that. The snivelling but surprisingly promising Mr Guppy visits Lady Dedlock with an eye to helping out Esther. He’s not much of a champion, but Lady Dedlock isn’t exactly spoiled for choice. He goes to get the incriminating love letters to Mr Nemo from Krook, but rather unfortunately, Krook has exploded.

It is at this point that Guppy miserably fails to retrieve the letters. Idiot!

Esther meanwhile has developed smallpox. Serves her right for living so long ago. I feel manipulated. It’s textbook stuff. Give the cutest, most selfless person in the story a horrid disease. She survives, but as a result her cuteness goes slightly down and her selflessness goes way up. She’s also attracted the attention of Lady Dedlock, who is either secretly her mother, or develops very deep bonds with complete strangers very quickly. Anna Maxwell Martin has been lovely, but Gillian Anderson is great in this episode. So much restrained emotion, you’d think she really was British.

So we’re halfway through… ish… and everyone’s set. But there’s a problem. Tulkinghorn is really clever and all the nice people are a bit hopeless. Who can stand up to him? The hot-headed Sergeant George? The weedy Guppy? The kindly but slightly mysterious John Jarndyce? I fear for everyone.

1. Remember inflation.
2. I still have no idea what exactly this court case started with. I almost wish we had a “Previously, on Bleak House.” Perhaps I should just read the book.
3. Probably not true.

Is the six part BBC mini-series not the perfect way to adapt a novel? A film based on a novel may be good every now and then, but only a mini-series can emulate the feeling of living with the characters that a good novel has. It’s rare to read a novel in one sitting; six sittings is just about right.¹ It gives things a chance to percolate in your head. More importantly, it allows one to write a paragraph a week and end up with a solid review. I now present my Bleak House Diaries.

Oh, and that’s not the title. But I refuse to go around calling TV shows by their episode numbers. It’s uncouth. I’ll be naming the series for you in a suitably Dickensian fashion.

Week 1. Let us get something out of the way immediately; I love the names of Dickens’ characters. Jellyby. Skimpole. Pardiggle. Tulkinghorn. Brilliant. I can also confirm for old X-Files fans that Gillian Anderson is still hot, in an old, forbidding, slightly creepy sort of way.

So there’s these two young things, adorable and naive, swept up as possible heirs to a massive fortune, tied up in litigation for some years now. They’re brought to London to stay with Mr Jarndyce, who seems far too nice and must have some sort of agenda. For a reason I missed, a cute brunette is brought along to accompany them. Before they’ve settled in, she’s already picked up a stalker, who resembles a white Michael Jackson.² Meanwhile, there’s a noble-seeming, poor-living bugger who can’t pay his rent wandering the streets and transcribing legislation for wages, and a beautiful nobleman’s wife who sees his handwriting by chance, and gets all a-flutter, even going so far as to faint.

There are hints of nastiness in the wind. There’s an evil-looking lawyer snooping into Mr Nemo’s affairs. There’s an apparently mindless lazy dolt who gives off a duplicious air. This is good, intriguing stuff.

Week 2. I have now remembered the Dead Ringers spoof of Bleak House — two scenes of people sitting around doing nothing, woven together with loud noises and crazy camera zooms. It wasn’t entirely unfair. There was one set of scenes this week that seemed particularly pointlessly split up. And the sound effects do seem to be getting louder. I’ll swear they’re stock sci-fi noises. Woooosh!

Esther falls in love this week, but has the chance of love cruelly snatched away. I’m much more easily manipulated by love stories in the olden days. They just don’t get that many chances; how brutal that a good match gets snatched away. And she’s still got her sneaky stalker. Lady Dedlock seeks out the grave of Mr Nemo and is much affected. Meanwhile, the Evil Lawyer Tulkinghorn appears to be tightening the noose on a trap for her. I can’t shake the feeling that bad things are about to happen to everyone. It’s best to choose the characters who absolutely must end up unscathed and sacrifice the others to television’s gods of karma. The male heir can go. He’s a useless pain in the arse. Little Miss Cutie, his companion, may stay.

1. What? Fifteen? Surely not.
2. Hmmmmmm.