Movie Maven

Bleak House (2006)
Starring: Gillian Anderson, Denis Lawson, Anna Maxwell Martin
Written by: Andrew Davies
Directed by: Justin Chadwick (Episodes 1-4); Susanna White (Episodes 5 and 6)
PBS, Sundays 9 p.m. Eastern
Official Website

(Photo: Gillian Anderson, courtesy of PBS)

Normally I would not delve into the magical world of TV, simply because I am such an addict there would be too much for me to talk about. But I feel the inescapable need to tell about my new obsession:

Has anyone been watching Bleak House? If you haven't, please TiVo it, put it on the calendar, write it on your hand right now, because this lush new miniseries from Masterpiece Theater is too good to miss.

The series, based on Charles Dickens' classic, has a magnificent host of characters. Among others we meet cold and beautiful Lady Dedlock (The X-Files's Gillian Anderson, looking like she's been through the ringer, but still fabulous), corrupt lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn (a snakelike Charles Dance), charitable aristocrat John Jarndyce (Denis Lawson), and his sweet, sensible housekeeper Esther Summerson (Anna Maxwell Martin). The plot centers around (among other things) an interminable inheritance case that, if won, will make Jarndyce's ward Richard Carstone (Patrick Kennedy) rich beyond his wildest dreams. All the characters appear to be in some way connected to the case, as well as a mysterious vagrant known only as Nemo, who dies in a boarding house in the first installment. In Dickens' world, everyone has something to hide, and skeletons appear to be bursting out of every closet from London to the ironically idyllic "Bleak House," where the Jarndyce's live.

I'll admit I began watching the series because of Anderson, who I enjoyed greatly in her work on The X-Files. And Dedlock does end up being the most interesting one to watch; she glides across the screen like a wraith, and is never fully present in the scene- she's completely consumed by a past not yet revealed. But all of the actors in Bleak House (and there is a mob of them) are interesting to watch in their own right. Dickens' specialty was always accurately portraying every class and personality of Britain with ease, and it's translated very well to the screen. Even the obligatory street urchin Jo (Harry Eden) is satisfactory.

I've never been much of a Masterpiece Theater gal; prior series I saw were too stiff, the camera shots were long and uninteresting, and the droning British dialogue a little stupefying. But Bleak House is different. Most of the installments take place in London, where everything is dirty and diseased, and all the extras look just a little miserable. There are jerky montage cuts which snap noisily between different shots of the same scene, throwing the audience off-kilter and keeping heart rates up. The characters are completely engrossing, and the plot is more scandalous than a modern soap opera, and far more well-acted.

Davies' patience in plot-development is reminiscent of the developments of the hit show Lost- he isn't worried about giving too much away, opting instead to allow the story to reveal itself at a steady, languid pace. Instead of making the audience lose interest, it captivates them. I've been staring impatiently at the clock the last few Sunday afternoons, tapping my foot and waiting for 9 o'clock (in fact, that's what I'm doing right now). And when it ends I always want more. In many ways the very fact that it's a miniseries is homage paid to Dickens' work. Salon film reviewer (and much more talented writer than myself) Stephanie Zacharek explained it very well:

"Bleak House" will be available on DVD on Feb. 28, almost immediately after the series completes its TV run. But nearly everyone I know who has begun to watch the show prefers to see it the old-fashioned way, on successive Sunday nights, as it airs -- a way of approaching Dickens' work that's not far off from the way his earliest reading public would await each installment of his newspaper serials. Dickens' biographer Edgar Johnson has written about how American fans waited at the docks in New York, shouting out to the crew of an incoming ship, "Is Little Nell dead?"

So while the rest of the world will be eagerly awaiting the outcome of the Super Bowl tonight, you can catch me sitting by the docks of my television set, hollering at the crew of the USS PBS "Tell me, who is Nemo?!"