SATURIASIS

For the past forty years cinematographers have been trying to perfect their art through good lighting, steady camera work, sharp colorful images and clear sound. Now that technology has perfected these elements, the directors and cinematographers seek now to subvert their medium as they have in this adaptation of Bleak House. The viewer is subjected to camcorder quality filming complete with blurred and grainy wobbly images, cut aways every two seconds and lots of whooshing sounds to affect a pulsing storyline. I felt I was watching NYPD Blue in a time warp. Unfortunately, all this clever editing gets in the way of the story rather than helps present it. And ultimately if you are admiring or otherwise the film work rather than watching the storyline then the production has failed in its adaptation. Contrary to the comment of a previous reviewer, Bleak House is one of the greatest Dickens novels, made more epic by the slow and pedantic way it traverses its subject to highlight the arcane British judicial system. In the end I decided to watch Bleak House with my eyes closed, which heightened my appreciation of the language, characterization and story far more than the theatrical gimmickry that the production employed.

I tried not to like the Brittas Empire, writing it off as just a banal offering churned out from the comedy mill at the BBC. But as I viewed more I began to see Gordon Brittas as a train wreck that you could just not avert your eyes from. Everyone, including the viewers are in the joke except him because he is the joke Gordon is a well-meaning do-it-by-the-book type of manager of a Sports Centre who thinks of everything except doing the one thing that a manager should do and that is to ensure that the customers enjoy themselves. Everyone sees his flaws; his staff, his customers even his hypochondriac wife, everyone except himself and his loyal if somewhat smelly acolyte, Colin. Nonetheless, there is a noble, virtuous streak in him which redeems him and makes him above all else a sympathetic character. After the first season, the writers got to grips with the character and placed him in even more embarrassing scenarios and he continued to grow ever more unaware of his wife's adultery, her pill popping, the staff's gay relationships and the fact that the receptionist is clearly delusional and keeps her two children hidden in a cupboard behind the reception desk. Clearly, the Brittas Empire is not as well observed as the David Brent's Office and is not quite as hopeless and error prone as Frank Spencer but as an iconic representation of post Thatcherite Essex Man you could not wish for more