Bleak House

This is quite difficult to come by because it is not on streaming anywhere in the UK so I had to buy the DVD (old school). I had already seen the 2005 Bleak House but despite its length and thoroughness I didn't find it as clear and as engaging as I would like so wanted to watch this version which is the only other currently available. This one is a little shorter than the more recent version but I found this one extremely impressive. I watch a lot of novel adaptations and TV period stuff from 1970 onwards, and this is one of the best adaptations of the 1980s for sure. Dickens' plot, which is multifaceted and complicated to follow, is presented in this version with really impressive clarity. I found this one made much more sense from a plot perspective than the more modern version, all the characters motivations were clearer and the scenes logically followed on from each other. The pacing is excellent for a production of this time which can tend to be rather slow but this was genuinely engaging all throughout. Casting was pretty decent all round, pretty similar to the 2005 version which definitely took inspiration from this. But Dame Diana Rigg as Lady Deadlock was superb. She exudes so much charisma and talent. I found it strange when watching the 2005 version that the novel is called Bleak House because the a lot of that version takes in place in Chesney Wold which is also presented as being the more literally bleak house. But in this version it made more sense to me why the novel is called Bleak House, because Esther Summerson is the main character and the her life at Bleak House is the centre of the novel and the current that runs through right till the end. This wasn't so clear in the 2005 version there was too much jumping around and they made too much use of Charles Dance as Tulkington to make it dramatic and suspenseful, where I think the ratio and proportionality of each of the plot lines was better in this version and made the overall story feel more cohesive and complete because of it.

This production was made in the middle 1980s, and appears to be the first serious attempt to put BLEAK HOUSE on celluloid. No film version of the novel was ever attempted (it is remarkably rich in subplots that actually serve as counterpoints to each other, so that it would have been very hard to prune it down). The novel was the only attempt by Dickens to make a central narrator (one of two in the work) a woman, Esther Summerson. Esther is raised by her aunt and uncle, who (in typical Dickens style) mistreat her. She is illegitimate, but they won't tell her anything about her parentage. Later we get involved with the gentry, Sir Leicester Dedlock, and his wife. Lady Honoria Deadlock (Dame Diana Rigg) is having an increasingly difficult time regarding her private life and the meddling involvement of the family solicitor Tulkinghorn (Peter Vaughn). We also are involved with the actions of Richard Carstone (Esther's boyfriend) in trying to win a long drawn out estate chancery case, Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, which everyone (even Richard's cousin John Jarndyce - played by Desmond Elliot) warns is not worth the effort.

Dickens had been a law reporter and then a parliamentary reporter before he wrote fiction. Starting with the breach of promise case in PICKWICK PAPERS, Dickens looked closely at the law. Mr. Bumble said it was "a ass" in OLIVER TWIST and Dickens would consistently support that view. He looks at the slums as breeding grounds for crime in TWIST, that the law barely tries to cure. He attacks the Chancery and outdated estate laws, as well as too powerful solicitors and greedy lawyers (Tulkinghorn, Vholes) in BLEAK HOUSE. In LITTLE DORRIT he attacks the debtors' prisons (he had hit it also in David COPPERFIELD). In OUR MUTUAL FRIEND he looks at testators and wills. In THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD he apparently was going to go to a murder trial. Dickens was far more critical of legal institutions than most of his contemporaries, including Thackeray.

But the novel also looks at other problems (like charity and religious hypocrisy, the budding Scotland Yard detective force, social snobbery in the industrial revolution). He also uses the novel to satirize various people: Leigh Hunt the writer, Inspector Fields of Scotland Yard, and even the notorious Maria Manning. Most of these points were kept in this fine mini-series version. If it is shown again on a cable station, catch it.

Atmospheric, evocative, any superlative you'd like to mention applies to this excellent adaptation.

The cinematography is such you can believe you're eavesdropping in on the London of the period, everything is perfect, with scenes often looking like paintings .

The acting is a true masterclass, this is far better than the later BBC adaptation, with performances more nuanced, and Diana Rigg and Denholm Elliott giving the definitive Lady Dedlock and John Jarndyce respectively.

Do seek this out on dvd if you've not seen it, you'll thank me for it.

This and the 2005 version can be regarded as complimentary to each other, as each contains elements of the story not present in the other. In general, the 1985 version is strong on BLEAK, and the 2005 version is strong on characterizations. But there is so much more to the novel than even both versions together have given us. For example, the character in the book who is most central to the story is NOT Lady Dedlock, but Esther Summerson -- in the novel, much of the story is told by her in the first person, and it is her goodness, her wisdom, and her selflessness that set up the needed perspective to the victim vs. victimizer nature of many of the other characters. But really, the problem is that the book is on such a vast scale, that watching either version is like listening to a 15-minute version of a Bruckner symphony. Ideally, some day someone will just go ahead and take the entire novel as it is and use it as the screenplay.

This version of Bleak House is the best adaptation of a classic novel known to me. The representation of the court of Chancery as a 'character' in the drama is magnificent. The acting is marvellous, from the sinister Tulkinghorn, to the Dedlocks, Smallweed, Crooke, Miss Flyte, and the two young lovers. But it is the spider's web of chancery that holds the whole thing together, and the cinematography is superb. What mistake did the BBC make about copyright that meant that this version could not be seen in the UK on either video or DVD for many years? I tried to find out from them, but faced a stone wall. In the end I got a DVD copy from Canada.