By K.A. Laity
It's the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. If somehow the news has escaped you, surely you could tell from the deluge of BBC productions assaulting us from every side (even if they don't always seem to be enjoying it).
It's only the second week in January and already we've had a new version of Great Expectations and fleshed out finish to The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and Arena has offered a neat recap of all this most-filmed author whose works have filled cinemas since its first stuttering steps.
Meanwhile on the radio you can find adaptations of The Old Curiosity Shop, Hard Times, Little Dorrit and David Copperfield running at present. There are over 200 hits when you search programmes for Dickens (you get almost double that when you search sports, but that's seldom due to Charles).
Suppose you want costume drama but you're sick of Dickens? Where to turn? Let's assume for the sake of argument you've likewise had your fill lately of both Austen and Downton Abbey—after all you can't swing a dead urchin without hitting one or the other. Here are some suggestions that may be less well known to those of you who hunger for yet more bonnets and waistcoats (I'd say hit the books, but we know that's not going to happen, is it?):
Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters: while for a time Gaskell also seemed to be in danger of blanketing the western world, it's been a few years and this adaptation is just about as perfectly cast as you can get with. If you develop a taste for Gaskell, do go on to the various Cranford episodes and the magisterial North and South, where Richard Armitage memorably glowered into a large number of fluttering hearts.
Anthony Trollope's Barchester Chronicles: Alan Rickman fans take note! The training ground for Severus Snape surely can be found in the odious Slope in Barchester Towers which combined with The Warden makes up the Chronicles. Trollope writes about reality in all its pains and pleasures with such knowing. You can get the DVD collection that also includes his most prescient work The Way We Live Now—scandal, swindles and desperate times—as well as the harrowing He Knew He Was Right.
George Eliot's Middlemarch: I've never understood the reputation of Eliot as "difficult"; she's witty and smart, observant of telling details and such a delight to read even when her characters slide into terrible fates. The brave and independent Dorothea Brooke (Juliet Aubrey) thinks she's doing the smartest thing in marrying an intelligent man so she can use her intelligence to help his work. Pity he didn't think the same thing. Oh Dorothea, don't look now—here comes the smoldering Rufus Sewell! I'm sure it will all end well.
If you want you heartbroken, there's plenty of Thomas Hardy as well: check out the suffering of the lovely Ciarán Hinds in The Mayor of Casterbridge or the somewhat more upbeat Far from the Madding Crowd, but if you really want to have fun, step up to the modern Hardy and see Tamara Drewe, a lively adaptation from Posy Simmonds' cartoon retelling. It will ease the transition back to reality.