Bleak House, etcetera
Jan. 23rd, 2006 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienI saw the first installment of "Bleak House" on PBS last night. I read the book several times in my teens; it was one of the old dark-red volumes, four orphans of a uniform edition, that my grandmother passed on to me when I was slightly too young for them, and I have it still, though it's been a while since I reread it. In my youth, I've been realizing lately, I read Victorian fiction almost entirely without twentieth-century filters; I suspect they'd read differently today. I remember I loved Esther, tiresomely obtuse though she could be at times; I was fascinated by the mystery aspects of the plot, and enthralled by the atmospheric descriptions of poor inner-city life.
The TV version is very dark, in the literal sense, and moves briskly and convincingly through the labyrinths of the story; I'm not sure how much sense it would have made to me, in my fried post-Phoenix state, if I hadn't been familiar with the book beforehand. The only jarring note was when Caddy referred to old Mr. Turveydrop as Prince's 'Dad', which I'm fairly sure was completely out of period. ETA or at least out of character for a middle-class young woman of the time. The usual cast of British character actors was nicely deployed, and Gillian Anderson made a fine Lady Dedlock, though the plot-required striking resemblance between her and the actress playing Esther wasn't very evident.
In other TV news, I'll miss The West Wing, but maybe its time had come. And Surface is ramping up nicely to a conclusion, for sufficiently corny values of nice. I'm a little surprised that it airs on NBC rather than as a Sci-Fi Channel Original, really.
Has anyone else noticed that the 'Recent Entries' view now goes back to 400 entries? It used to be 75.
The TV version is very dark, in the literal sense, and moves briskly and convincingly through the labyrinths of the story; I'm not sure how much sense it would have made to me, in my fried post-Phoenix state, if I hadn't been familiar with the book beforehand. The only jarring note was when Caddy referred to old Mr. Turveydrop as Prince's 'Dad', which I'm fairly sure was completely out of period. ETA or at least out of character for a middle-class young woman of the time. The usual cast of British character actors was nicely deployed, and Gillian Anderson made a fine Lady Dedlock, though the plot-required striking resemblance between her and the actress playing Esther wasn't very evident.
In other TV news, I'll miss The West Wing, but maybe its time had come. And Surface is ramping up nicely to a conclusion, for sufficiently corny values of nice. I'm a little surprised that it airs on NBC rather than as a Sci-Fi Channel Original, really.
Has anyone else noticed that the 'Recent Entries' view now goes back to 400 entries? It used to be 75.
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Date: 2006-01-24 01:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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