What the Dickens

Prismark10

Tony Jordan a long time writer for Eastenders created this soap opera type serial based on various Dickens novels and mixes various characters.

There were main story threads involving the killing of Jacob Marley that is investigated by Inspector Bucket. Then there is the pending marriage of Miss Havisham.

The series started in Christmas 2015 in a 30 minute format usually ending with a cliffhanger very much in the mould of the weekly editions of the Dickens stories. The series went on until late February 2016 and being irregularly scheduled which meant hard work to follow it around and find out when it was shown.

The final episode tied up some story strands leaving the fate of the characters to be carried on in their respective novels. For example we last see Scrooge being bothered by ghostly sounds and images.

However the show did not work for me, familiar characters but never really developed my interest. We have enough soap operas on television without having a Dickens based one and the final double episode was patchy in places.

Maybe a shorter, sharper serial would have worked better.

score 5/10

Prismark10 21 February 2016

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3419377/