Bleak House (2005) BBC Series

I watched Bleak House about two years ago and recently started watching it again. It strikes me that, in addition to it being a top notch production, I have to add that the real star of this story is Dickens' drawings of his characters. To be more specific, there is a very large range of human behavior and character / personality traits and behaviors that are on display here: obsessiveness, generosity, selflessness, vengefulness, naivete, authoritarianism, depression, regretfulness, forlornness, manipulativeness, stalwartness, greed, avarice, loyalty, banality, insightfulness, etc. This story comes with real flesh and blood characters that seem to interact realistically with one another, and there seem to be no small moments either. Every exchange that the characters have with one another, every seemingly small scene is rife with an authentic understanding (or as close to it as one can get in a drama) of how people really are.
 
I am looking forward to checking this out. I have a soft spot for British television, all the stuff I've watched from over there I've thoroughly enjoyed. Plus, what I have read of Dickens I've really enjoyed so this is like a double whammy. Gonna have to make a point to sit down and watch it soon.
 
Heimdallr said:
I am looking forward to checking this out. I have a soft spot for British television, all the stuff I've watched from over there I've thoroughly enjoyed.

Me too! My soft spot is such that I can re-watch a show now without subtitles and understand most of it. It was a long and very pleasant learning curve :lol: I watched the last episode of Poirot and in the end I was baffled to realize that I understood all of it without subtitles. :thup:

Bleak House is an all time favorite and I got the free copy for kindle on amazon for a nice positive dissociation reading.
 
Ennio said:
I watched Bleak House about two years ago and recently started watching it again. It strikes me that, in addition to it being a top notch production, I have to add that the real star of this story is Dickens' drawings of his characters. To be more specific, there is a very large range of human behavior and character / personality traits and behaviors that are on display here: obsessiveness, generosity, selflessness, vengefulness, naivete, authoritarianism, depression, regretfulness, forlornness, manipulativeness, stalwartness, greed, avarice, loyalty, banality, insightfulness, etc. This story comes with real flesh and blood characters that seem to interact realistically with one another, and there seem to be no small moments either. Every exchange that the characters have with one another, every seemingly small scene is rife with an authentic understanding (or as close to it as one can get in a drama) of how people really are.

This is typical, the signature you can say, of Dickens. His characterizations are almost impossible to describe. He seems to consistently use types for his characters, but they are the most well-defined types in literature. They are both so lifelike and at the same time larger than life that it's bewildering. It's almost impossible to imagine that types could be so unique that they are exactly like real-life people. This is among the extensive genius of Dickens.

The only thing the BBC adaptation really seemed to have sacrificed from Dickens' original is the moments of utterly hilarious comic relief, especially with some of the minor characters (some of which were understandably dropped altogether). This juxtaposition of very strong emotional impact, the sadness and tragedy, and every other note in the human emotional spectrum is usually contrasted with the kind of humor that makes you laugh out loud as you read not only Bleak House, but all of his work.
 
SeekinTruth said:
Ennio said:
I watched Bleak House about two years ago and recently started watching it again. It strikes me that, in addition to it being a top notch production, I have to add that the real star of this story is Dickens' drawings of his characters. To be more specific, there is a very large range of human behavior and character / personality traits and behaviors that are on display here: obsessiveness, generosity, selflessness, vengefulness, naivete, authoritarianism, depression, regretfulness, forlornness, manipulativeness, stalwartness, greed, avarice, loyalty, banality, insightfulness, etc. This story comes with real flesh and blood characters that seem to interact realistically with one another, and there seem to be no small moments either. Every exchange that the characters have with one another, every seemingly small scene is rife with an authentic understanding (or as close to it as one can get in a drama) of how people really are.

This is typical, the signature you can say, of Dickens. His characterizations are almost impossible to describe. He seems to consistently use types for his characters, but they are the most well-defined types in literature. They are both so lifelike and at the same time larger than life that it's bewildering. It's almost impossible to imagine that types could be so unique that they are exactly like real-life people. This is among the extensive genius of Dickens.

The only thing the BBC adaptation really seemed to have sacrificed from Dickens' original is the moments of utterly hilarious comic relief, especially with some of the minor characters (some of which were understandably dropped altogether). This juxtaposition of very strong emotional impact, the sadness and tragedy, and every other note in the human emotional spectrum is usually contrasted with the kind of humor that makes you laugh out loud as you read not only Bleak House, but all of his work.

I'm certainly going to find some of his books and check them out. At least in the BBC adaptations the characters are well done and are amazing caricatures of certain archetypes, you could say. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about how he developed some of his characters.

The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback.[5] For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens went on to improve the character with positive features.[6] Fagin in Oliver Twist apparently mirrors the famous fence Ikey Solomon;[7] His caricature of Leigh Hunt in the figure of Mr Skimpole in Bleak House was likewise toned down on advice from some of his friends, as they read episodes.[8] In the same novel, both Lawrence Boythorne and Mooney the beadle are drawn from real life – Boythorne from Walter Savage Landor and Mooney from 'Looney', a beadle at Salisbury Square.[9] His plots were carefully constructed, and Dickens often wove in elements from topical events into his narratives.

So Dickens altered his course based on feedback from others and social observations of the time. What I also found interesting is that Oscar Wilde apparently didn't like what Dickens wrote.

His creative genius has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to G. K. Chesterton and George Orwell—for its realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand Oscar Wilde, Henry James and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism

And if I remember correctly from Caricature of Love, he wrote extensively on "love" when he himself had some pretty pathological views on sexuality and was cheating on his wife. So I wonder if Dickens touched on certain caricatures that hit close to home to a few other authors who were of the pathological complexion that couldn't grasp the complexity of characters in his novels.
 
Turgon said:
SeekinTruth said:
Ennio said:
I watched Bleak House about two years ago and recently started watching it again. It strikes me that, in addition to it being a top notch production, I have to add that the real star of this story is Dickens' drawings of his characters. To be more specific, there is a very large range of human behavior and character / personality traits and behaviors that are on display here: obsessiveness, generosity, selflessness, vengefulness, naivete, authoritarianism, depression, regretfulness, forlornness, manipulativeness, stalwartness, greed, avarice, loyalty, banality, insightfulness, etc. This story comes with real flesh and blood characters that seem to interact realistically with one another, and there seem to be no small moments either. Every exchange that the characters have with one another, every seemingly small scene is rife with an authentic understanding (or as close to it as one can get in a drama) of how people really are.

This is typical, the signature you can say, of Dickens. His characterizations are almost impossible to describe. He seems to consistently use types for his characters, but they are the most well-defined types in literature. They are both so lifelike and at the same time larger than life that it's bewildering. It's almost impossible to imagine that types could be so unique that they are exactly like real-life people. This is among the extensive genius of Dickens.

The only thing the BBC adaptation really seemed to have sacrificed from Dickens' original is the moments of utterly hilarious comic relief, especially with some of the minor characters (some of which were understandably dropped altogether). This juxtaposition of very strong emotional impact, the sadness and tragedy, and every other note in the human emotional spectrum is usually contrasted with the kind of humor that makes you laugh out loud as you read not only Bleak House, but all of his work.

I'm certainly going to find some of his books and check them out. At least in the BBC adaptations the characters are well done and are amazing caricatures of certain archetypes, you could say. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about how he developed some of his characters.

The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback.[5] For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens went on to improve the character with positive features.[6] Fagin in Oliver Twist apparently mirrors the famous fence Ikey Solomon;[7] His caricature of Leigh Hunt in the figure of Mr Skimpole in Bleak House was likewise toned down on advice from some of his friends, as they read episodes.[8] In the same novel, both Lawrence Boythorne and Mooney the beadle are drawn from real life – Boythorne from Walter Savage Landor and Mooney from 'Looney', a beadle at Salisbury Square.[9] His plots were carefully constructed, and Dickens often wove in elements from topical events into his narratives.

So Dickens altered his course based on feedback from others and social observations of the time. What I also found interesting is that Oscar Wilde apparently didn't like what Dickens wrote.

His creative genius has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to G. K. Chesterton and George Orwell—for its realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand Oscar Wilde, Henry James and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism

And if I remember correctly from Caricature of Love, he wrote extensively on "love" when he himself had some pretty pathological views on sexuality and was cheating on his wife. So I wonder if Dickens touched on certain caricatures that hit close to home to a few other authors who were of the pathological complexion that couldn't grasp the complexity of characters in his novels.

Yes, it's very likely with Oscar Wilde to be the case. Also, ubiquitous jealousy. After all, in my humble opinion, Wilde's work is wildly overrated (something he claimed about Dickens' work), especially his plays such as "The Importance of Being Ernest," for example, which are kinda mediocre compared to others (plays or other types of literature) of the same genre. I guess, it could be made into a somewhat funny and entertaining stage production, but most of its worth would come from the director and cast and overall stagecraft, etc. and not the original play/text.

Wilde's best work is probably his novel The Portrait of Dorian Grey. But even this work is not on the level of any of Dickens' work - novels or short stories. It is however one that has some deeper "soul" issues examined honestly to some extent in Wilde's work. I remember many years ago reading somewhere that Oscar Wilde had said something like he burst out laughing uncontrollably and found the tragic death of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop one of the most comical moments in literature. The death of this Dickens character had had reverberations around the world of grief and shock when it was first published, as if it was an actual beloved person (child) that had died.
 
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