It seems like there’s a lot of attention being poured over the Victorian era at the moment and the good old BBC is up to its neck in it too with its new TV series, Dickensian. Bringing together some of Charles Dickens’ more infamous characters and wrapping them all up in a set of all new stories should be a lot of fun, and with twenty episodes there’s going to be a lot of creative license.
A part of the craze is the slightly misguided romanticism we have for the time height of the British Empire and the pomp of the well-to-do, but in all fairness Dickens did everything in his power to show the bleaker side of life during Victoria’s reign. In more recent years this honesty has been portrayed in everything from Assassin’s Creed Syndicate to They All Love Jack: Busting The Ripper by Bruce Robinson, but that doesn’t stop us from being absolutely fascinated by the bizarre world that used to be Great Britain only 150 years ago.
Air date
Dickensian will be making its way to BBC 1 this Christmas with a Boxing Day air date at 7pm. The thirty minute episode will then be followed shortly afterwards by the second part in the series, also airing on the 26th December 2016, and going out at 8:30pm. The remaining episodes will be going out weekly from then on.
Story
The plot is centred around Market Street, in the heart of Victorian London, where the lives of characters from Dickens’ novels are brought together for our grim amusement. Scrooge and Jacob Marley’s office sits next to the The Old Curiosity Shop, with Bumble’s workhouse just around the corner and Fagin’s Lair tucked away in the shadows by the dock.
At the outset of Dickensian we’ll see Miss Havisham’s dark and tormented ordeal of a life get into its full, engulfing undertow; Fagin pimping Nancy out with cutthroat ruffian Bill Sykes along for the dark journey; and Jacob Marley wreaking his rent-demanding havoc on anyone unfortunate enough to be indebted to him only to wind up at Death’s door himself. It’s like the back story to some of Dickens’ more complicated characters, like X-men: First Class, but with nefarious 19th century figures in place of the well-meaning young mutants.
Cast
An enormous cast has been put together for the series and some of the the bigger names on the list include Stephen Rea as Inspector Bucket from Bleak House, Peter Firth as Jacob Marley, Tuppence Middleton (Jupiter Ascending) as Miss Havisham from Great Expectations, Caroline Quentin as Mrs. Bumble from Oliver Twist, Omid Djalili as Mr. Venus from our mutual friend. You can see the full cast list below:
Inspector Bucket – Stephen Rea
Jacob Marley – Peter Firth
Arthur Havisham – Joe Quinn
Honoria Barbary – Sophie Rundle
Amelia Havisham – Tuppence Middleton
Frances Barbary – Alexandra Moen
Meriwether Compeyson – Tom Weston-Jones
Bob Cratchit – Robert Wilfor
Martha Cratchit – Pheobe Dynevor
Peter Cratchit – Brennock O’Connor
Tiny Tim – Zaak Conway
Ebeneezer Scrooge – Ned Dennehy
Bill Sykes – Mark Stanley
Mrs Gamp – Pauline Collins
Grandfather – Karl Johnson
Edward Barbary – Adrian Rawlins
Nancy – Bethany Muir
Fagin – Anton Lesser
Captain James Hawdon – Ben Starr
John Bagnet – Oliver Coopersmith
Nell – Imogen Faires
Emily Cratchit – Jennifer Hennessy
Silas Wegg – Christopher Fairbank
Fanny Biggetywitch – Ellie Haddington
Jaggers – John Heffernan
Mr Bumble – Richard Ridings
Sir Leicester Deadlock – Richard Cordery
Mr Venus – Omid Djalili
Mrs Bumble – Caroline Quentin
Mary – Amy Dunn
Artful Dodger – Wilson Radjou-Pujalte
Production
Tony Jordon is the series creator and writer and his previous credits read like a list of some of the BBC’s biggest productions with Boon, Minder, Eldorado and Eastenders. He’s joined by production designer Michael Ralph, who has crafted the incredible set, which you can see in the picture above and get more of a sense of the scale of things from the street map below:
First impressions
Dickensian looks like a very ambitious production, both in terms of the concept of bringing so many well known Charles Dickens characters to life and recreating such a visually captivating set that looks and feels every bit the Victorian back street it’s meant to be. Looking ahead at some of the episodes it’s pretty clear that this isn’t going to be a sanitised Christmas collection as there’s murder, intrigue, death and duplicity wrapped up in the Dickens mash-up. It also makes a nice time-line orientation sert-up ahead of the air date for Sherlock: The Abominable Bride, which will be going back to the Victorian era on New Year’s Day.
