{"id":10995,"date":"2024-01-30T08:52:42","date_gmt":"2024-01-30T08:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=10995"},"modified":"2024-01-30T20:45:38","modified_gmt":"2024-01-30T20:45:38","slug":"media-bleak-house-bbc-2005","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=10995","title":{"rendered":"MEDiA: Bleak House, BBC, 2005"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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My wife Teresa has watched this series innumerable times. And I along with her! It\u2019s incredibly well done. The stellar cast are absolutely superb, and it\u2019s brilliantly realised in every way, from the music, to the visual look of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Few such adaptations could, I think, sustain such repeated viewing, and not pall. That this can and does is down to numerous factors, some already cited. But the central one is the source material. Bleak House<\/em> is a very great work by a very great writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This 2005 BBC adaptation (read more about it here<\/a>) benefits from a terrific ensemble cast. And they, and the production crew as a whole, are brilliant at getting over the full range of meaning Dickens himself implies in this most highly nuanced of his many novels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I\u2019m typing this, he – Dickens – masterfully wields his scalpel-sharp wit, lampooning medical quacks (Dr. Growler, and his \u2018black mixture\u2019), the British class system (as Inspector Bucket deliberately overdoes his deference to \u2018Sir Leicester Dedlocke, Baronet\u2019), and the vampire Vholes, feeding off Richard Carstone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s an embarrassment of riches here. With so many levels or degrees of nuanced observation, about class, wealth, The Law (from which background Dickens himself came), family ties, religion, honour, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after the above-mentioned stuff, we get a great juxtaposition, of Sgt. George and Phil Squod, celebrating the latter\u2019s birthday \u2018feast\u2019, with that of Ada Clare\u2019s anniversary, more sumptuously staged, at the home of John Jarndyce. How closely the TV series follows the book, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the themes, like honour and the class system might at first appear rather cutely antiquated. And certainly things have changed. But not so completely as to render such themes redundant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two of the ongoing themes that most engage me are: family ties, mostly unfolding in a tragic line, re Esther Summerson\u2019s provenance, as the bastard love child off Miss Barbary (now Lady Dedlocke) and Captain Hawden (lately known as Nemo); and hypocrisy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are some lovely moments, re the family, as when Sgt. George\u2019s mum, Mrs Rouncewell, is reunited with him, as he languishes in a jail cell. The latter theme, of hypocrisy is also adroitly explored in numerous ways. From the more seemingly innocent, Mrs Jellaby\u2019s obsession with African charity, to Vholes and Tulkinghorn, who hide behind veneers of professionalism, but enjoy bullying those \u2018below\u2019 (and even \u2018above\u2019 them) and exist by parasitism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another interesting thread is that concerning Inspector Bucket, who may perhaps be the first truly modern detective, of the type so popular in literature nowadays. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this adaption – although you wouldn\u2019t know it from the publicity materials at the time (which favour Gillian Anderson\u2019s Lady Dedlocke) – the character of Esther Summerson is really the central driver. That said, Lady Dedlocke is perhaps a more realistically flawed character. We pity her, but she can herself be selfish and cruel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could blather on endlessly about this marvellous adaptation. But I\u2019ll just finish by reiterating how damnably good the casting is. All the main roles are brilliantly done. Amongst those I\u2019d choose to single out, Charles Dance is pitch-perfect as the icily \u2018efficient\u2019 Man of The Law, and several actors excel in more minor roles, such as Johnny Vegas\u2019 Krook and Matthew Kelly\u2019s Turveydrop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My wife Teresa has watched this series innumerable times. And I along with her! It\u2019s incredibly well done. The stellar cast are absolutely superb, and it\u2019s brilliantly realised in every way, from the music, to the visual look of it. Few such adaptations could, I think, sustain such repeated viewing, and not pall. That this … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “MEDiA: Bleak House, BBC, 2005”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-2Rl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10995"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10995"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11001,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10995\/revisions\/11001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}