An excellent production, superb performances.

celia78

Dickens creates a fascinating world of characters in Bleak House and Davies does an excellent job of capturing the essence of those characters while bringing the production into the realm of 21st Century viewing. The camera work with the quick changes was distracting at times but sometimes accentuated the fast pace of this drama or emphasised plot points.

Watching for well known faces was fun but didn't detract anything from the performances of this superb cast. Anna Maxwell Martin gave a wonderful performance as Esther; outwardly stronger than in the book but this focused the viewer on Esther's strength of character, her compassion, common sense, loyalty and love. Lawson's Jarndyce was touching and gentle; Burn Gorman's Guppy a revelation and Charles Dance was eerily scaring and deliciously malicious.

Gillian Anderson also demonstrated her extreme talents as the aloof, lonely, bored, haughty yet vulnerable Lady Dedlock. Anderson subtly revealed the inner turmoil, fear and long hidden love of the outwardly cold 'My Lady'. With a turn of the head, a facial movement and those eyes that speak volumes she revealed the inner character, very often with no words at all. More Ms. Anderson, please BBC. The colourful performances of Timothy West and Pauline Collins also deserve a mention.

A fabulous production by all. Well done BBC.

score 10/10

celia78 9 January 2006

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1260790/