Anecdotes

Last television drama role of Gerald Flood (Coroner).

The series was the second adaptation of Bleak House (1985) by the BBC (the first being in 1959). It ran for eight episodes and starred Diana Rigg as Lady Dedlock, with Denholm Elliott in the role of John Jarndyce.

John Oliver television debut role in Episode No. 1.2 as "Felix Pardiggle."

The novel has many characters and several subplots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the center of Bleak House is a long-running legal case in the Court of Chancery, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which comes about because a testator has written several conflicting wills. In a preface to the 1853 first edition, Dickens said there were many actual precedents for his fictional case. One such was probably Thellusson v Woodford, in which a will read in 1797 was contested and not determined until 1859. Though many in the legal profession criticized Dickens's satire as exaggerated, Bleak House helped support a judicial reform movement that culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.

As opposed to the standard of videotape for studio-based scenes and film for location-based scenes, the series was shot entirely on 16mm color film.