miquellee This series brought Dickens to life in such a refreshing way. It was fun to see all the different books being brought together. The dark retelling is superb. And omg what acting!! I want more!

maik434 I think it's a totally original and powerful series that actually magnetizes you from the first episode to the last one. Amazing interpretations, beautiful and appropriate costumes and scenery and generally very careful work at every point. Congratulations to all contributors, thank you!

trimmerb1234 A newspaper reviewer of Dickensian wrote of Dickens' novels being "much loved". Indeed they were and are. But more than that they are enormously admired and respected. Dickens, also, was very much a popular entertainer. And all this with just words, without a flake of snow falling, atmospheric music or costume. His casts of characters are exactly that - individuals instantly memorable - some now immortal - and, typically Dickens, instantly recognisable by their manner of speaking. I am a great great admirer of Dickens' writing and it irks me to hear adaptations where additional (and usually inessential) dialogue is added - it's like driving along a smooth road and going over badly repaired noisy sections. It's not only that it doesn't sound like Dickens, but that it seems either like padding or plain exposition, and Dickens was never just plain. But I thoroughly enjoyed The Muppets' Christmas Carol - the characters were as per the book, quite a bit of the original dialogue used, an excellent Scrooge in Michael Caine and the moral message the same and undimmed - and, apart from being terrifically competent, it was thoroughly entertaining. Paradoxically it showed greater respect to Dickens than some "serious" adaptations. My feeling is that radio adaptations which keep close to the original are the most impressive. The BBC's radio adaptation of Bleak House was the very finest - the scenes between the haughty Lady Deadlock and lawyer Tulkinhorn (Anton Lesser) were if anything even more claustrophobic than in the book. When Dickens did a public reading of Oliver Twist some of the audience fainted at the dreadful scene where Bill Sykes, previously egged on by Fagin, bludgeons, the audience is encouraged to imagine, Nancy. There was a tradition of the Victorian stage monologue and nothing had a more powerful effect on an audience (A tearful audience at Simon Callow's rendering of Dickens "Dr Marigold" one case in point).From the sublime to the scarcely credible. The problem for me with Dickensian is that it blithely dispensed with Dickens' genius, replacing it with the very humdrum, just sprinkling it with a coating of Dickensian-style flavouring. There is nothing to love, to admire and little to entertain. Dickens can rest in peace - while his name can be stolen, his genius cannot.

jc-osms The idea of bringing together into one narrative different fictional characters has been done recently and brilliantly in the likes of "Penny Dreadful" but this new BBC series takes it up a few notches more, not only in the number of disparate characters but of course that they are all from the world of Charles Dickens.I must admit I was concerned when I read that the series was devised by the producer of the Beeb's dreadful soap opera "Eastenders" but, five episodes in, these Londoners I can stand. It is slightly confusing to see some resurrected characters walking about like Nancy from "Oliver Twist", Little Nell from "The Old Curiosity Shop" and Miss Haversham from "Great Expectations" and one wonders if they are going to meet the same end as before, also in my reading of the former, I didn't have Nancy pegged as a call-girl as here and attending, shall we say, to Jacob Marley too.The show is set up along the same lines as the channel's previously successful adaptation of "Bleak House", i.e. in thirty minute programmes, usually with a kind of cliff- hanging climax at the end of each episode, which of course ties in well with the weekly publication method that Dickens himself worked to. The main story of the many plot strands appears to be the death of Jacob Marley from "A Christmas Carol", with Inspector Bucket of "Bleak House" on the trail, but a close second appears to be the anticipated jilting of Miss Haversham too.As you'd expect, the production values are high, the settings are superb, interiors and exteriors, the latter especially played out in the winter snow. I'd imagine the eyes of the various agencies for actors in the UK all lit up when they got wind of this production, so many of them are employed here, although not too many big names that I can see, perhaps Stephen Rea in another mannered portrayal of Bucket, Caroline Quentin as the domineering Mrs Bumble and Pauline Collins having fun as that old soak Mrs Gamp being the most identifiable. There's also a smattering of new characters too just to help the plots develop and to date these creations are fitting in seamlessly well.Anyway, I'm thoroughly enjoying it now that I'm familiar with the main characters and can see the plot coming nicely to the boil. I'm just wondering if some of the best known nicer characters like Pip from "Great Expectations", Nicholas Nickleby or David Copperfield might yet show up, but really there's more than enough to be going in with. With another fifteen episodes to go, there's plenty of time for surprises yet.Some might see this interpretation of Dickens as manipulative or even sacrilegious but with modern writers devising authorised use of characters by say Charlotte Bronte and Ian Fleming to give two very different examples, personally I'm finding it fun and rather enjoying it so far.