The trouble with Dickens is that there’s just far too much plot. How do you make sense of his incredibly complex stories in just three hours as the BBC tried to do at Christmas with its TV version of Great Expectations? It looked fabulous but the storyline made no sense because there was no depth to any of the characters. The melodrama was laughably inept, the plot so confusing you needed to have read the book to understand what was happening. Over on Radio 4, the writer Ayeesha Menon has also been given just three hours to retell one of Dickens’s least popular novels in a three-part edition of the Classic Serial (Sunday afternoons, repeated Saturdays).
The Mumbai Chuzzlewits takes us to India for a story containing all the usual Dickens ingredients — wicked old men, greed and jealousy, tragic orphans, thwarted love and unexplained death. Three hours on radio, though, is equivalent to at least six hours on TV.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in