Dickensian

Production

Dickensian was commissioned by Danny Cohen and Ben Stephenson. The executive producers are Polly Hill and Tony Jordan, and the production company behind the series is Red Planet Pictures. Red Planet Pictures's Alex Jones vowed to lobby HM Revenue and Customs and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to relax the tax-relief rules for Dickensian; tax relief is only given for dramas longer than 30 minutes and each episode of Dickensian lasts 30 minutes.

In April 2016, the BBC confirmed that they had cancelled the show after one series.

Cast

The cast includes the following:

References to other Dickens' characters and works

Honoria Barbary and Martha Cratchit work in a dress-shop, Mantalini's—a reference to Madame Mantalini, a milliner in Nicholas Nickleby. The toy shop in the neighbourhood, Gruff and Tackleton, appears in The Cricket on the Hearth. The coffee-house on the street is Garraway's, frequented in real life by Dickens and appearing in The Pickwick Papers, Martin Chuzzlewit, Little Dorrit, and The Uncommercial Traveller. Amelia Havisham's first dog here is Jip, the spaniel that is Dora Spenlow's lapdog in David Copperfield. Constable Duff, who appears briefly in a few episodes, is a character from Oliver Twist.

Episode 1: Jaggers mentions his clerk "Mr Heep"—Uriah Heep from David Copperfield; Silas Wegg, the tapman at The Three Cripples (a tavern in Oliver Twist), gives barmaid Daisy a tray of drinks to take back to "Mr Pickwick and his guests" (The Pickwick Papers).

At the New Years reception hosted by the Haversham siblings, the tune being played during the dancing is called "Sir Roger de Coverly" and is played at Fezziwig’s Christmas party in A Christmas Carol.

Episode 4: Jaggers talks of often considering an end to his partnership with Mr Tulkinghorn (from Bleak House).

Episode 6: Scrooge snaps at Cratchit that, in renegotiating terms of a loan, he must surely "have consulted with Jacob Marley's ghost"—a foreshadowing of A Christmas Carol. Mrs Gamp talks of seeing a "Mr Wemmick," like Silas Wegg, go gray and lose his leg—this may be a reference to the father of John Wemmick, in Great Expectations, referred to by his son as "The Aged Parent" or "The Aged P".

Episode 7: In mishearing "Barbary" as "Barnaby," Silas Wegg happens to allude to the title character of Barnaby Rudge. Compeyson's and Matthew Pocket's drunken leaps between rooftops echo Bill Sikes' death in Oliver Twist, when he accidentally hangs himself while trying to descend from a rooftop.

Episode 9: Edward Barbary calls on a Mr Darley for help with his finances, to no avail; the last name suggests F. O. C. Darley, a nineteenth-century American artist who did illustrations for a number of Dickens editions that appeared in the United States.

Broadcast

Internationally, the series premiered in Australia on BBC First on 7 February 2016, but it was broadcast as 13 45-minute episodes in contrast to the 20 half-hour-long instalments broadcast in the UK.

It also premiered in The Netherlands on BBC First on 5 January 2016.

In Finland the series was broadcast on YLE as ten one-hour episodes beginning 2 December 2016.

In Norway, the series was broadcast on NRK as ten one-hour episodes beginning 26 December 2017.

In Sweden, the series was broadcast on SVT as ten one-hour episodes beginning 2 December 2017.

Critical reception

Reviewing the first episodes in The Guardian Sam Wollaston noted its jumble of characters and events: "Tony Jordan has taken a whole bunch of Dickens characters from their novels and put them into something else. […]. It's like EastEnders meets A Christmas Carol meets Great Expectations meets Oliver Twist meets Bleak House meets Our Mutual Friend, and I've certainly missed some out. Meets Agatha Christie, too, because here's another body – Marley's this time – coshed over the head and left lying in the snow". He added, "The set is beautiful, and there are showy Dickensian performances from a starry cast. It's clever, certainly, and must have been a labour of love, unpicking all these people from their works, weaving them into something else." But he had a problem "with the whole exercise – starting with the characters, someone else's, and then figuring out what they're going to be doing. Are things not better if they grow together, as one, characters, stories, style, themes etc? And the problem with these particular characters is that the new thing is never going to be as good as the thing they came from". He concluded, "And I'm having real problems figuring out what the bleedin' 'ell is going on. It's clear like the fog down by the dock where Fagin lives. It – the fog – does lift a bit; by the end of the second episode (of 20! that’s a big ask), I'm a bit less fuddled. And it begins to pick up momentum of its own. But I wonder how many of the viewers who set off will get this far".

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Michael Hogan was more impressed, giving the opening two episodes a full five stars: "Jordan put a pacy, playful and subtly sudsy new spin on much-loved material. Its debut double bill left me saying, 'Please, sir, I want some more'". He observed, "Dickensian will unfold in 20 half-hour instalments, its format reminiscent of the BBC's landmark serialization of Bleak House a decade ago. Such soap-style scheduling isn't far removed from how Dickens told his original stories, published in short instalments with cliffhanger endings, the multiple plot threads drawn inexorably together over time". Hogan concluded, "Jordan is a Dickens super-fan and his love of the great man's works seeped through every line of the sparkling script. This 200-year-old treat in 21st-century wrapping was an ingeniously conceived, handsomely crafted gift - signed, with love, from Jordan and Dickens. Consider this my thank-you letter".

In The Independent on Sunday, Amy Burns found the opening episodes to be a "brilliant BBC re-imagining" and a "clever and compelling Dickens mash-up". She praised Stephen Rea for playing Inspector Bucket "utterly faultlessly", adding, "His mannerisms and vocal intonation were absolutely spot-on and the script was excellent".