Bleak House

[meddow]

Four a couple of days I got completely addicted to the BBC's 2005 adaptation of Bleak House. Epic love! Repression! Spontaneous combustion! Seething criticism of the inefficiency of the Court of Chancellery! I could recommend it for Gillian Anderson's fantastic Lady Deadlock alone, and Denis Lawson also stands out as his Jarndyce is just a bit heartbreaking, and also because it may well be one of the highest concentration of Doctor Who actors a BBC costume drama has managed to achieve.

Those particular reasons to watch aside, all together its one of the best costume drama's I've watched in ages. And having it in the form of half-hour episodes rather than hour-long episodes works incredibly well.

I'm really going to have to watch Little Dorrit now.

Although, I'm now kind of booked up. I introduced flatmate to BSG two days ago when she finally after a month of me nagging her agreed to watch the miniseries and we ended up watching the majority of season one yesterday. So yes, a short while after being done with BSG, I'm right back there. No complains from me though since I love it, plus it's fun watching it with someone who hasn't been spoiled and doesn't know where the show's going, who's a Cylon and who's not or the deal with Earth. I find the next best thing to watching an new episode of something is watching it with someone who hasn't seen it. However, her boyfriend and our other flatmate spent yesterday not-so-obliquely telling us how lazy we were sitting on the couch watching TV all day, ruining the fun a bit.

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[hibernate.livejournal.com]

However, her boyfriend and our other flatmate spent yesterday not-so-obliquely telling us how lazy we were sitting on the couch watching TV all day, ruining the fun a bit.

Pfft, spoilsports. That's what weekends are for! :)

[meddow.livejournal.com]

Exactly!

[airie-fairy.livejournal.com]

It's Saturday. What are you supposed to do if not marathon TV?

I'm watching Little Dorrit as it airs on Masterpiece Theatre right now. It is looong, 4 parts so far at one and a half--two hours each and not yet done, but good. Oh Dickens. I should see that Bleak House; it's supposed to be very good. But for once I'd like to read a given Dickens before I watch it. I'm not sure if Great Expectations counts, as everybody knows the story anyway.

[meddow.livejournal.com]

Worse, it was actually a Sunday (time zones). It's pretty much a given that you can get away with being completely lazy on a Sunday. It's free pass day.

To my great shame, I've never read anything by Dickens (well, never more than the first five pages). I really want to though, his plots are always so twisty and he had these great colourful characters with often fantastic names and wonderful commentary about the conditions of the time which excited my inner history geek. I just struggle so much get into him.

Although, saying that, I think Bleak House is one of those things that'd be better if you don't know the plot before you watched it.

[airie-fairy.livejournal.com]

Oh, pft. What were they even thinking?

I love Dickens so. He's got some of the best great big families of idiosyncratic characters, and while his sentences are dense, they're virtually always dense with convoluted, ultra-dry mocking wit. He's got one of those authorial voices I'd recognize instantly.

[alexiscartwheel.livejournal.com]

Gillian Anderson is so good in Bleak House. The whole series is just beautifully done. Little Dorrit is fabulous as well. Both books have complex fabrics of characters and subplots, so they're much better suited for a mini-series adaptation than a two hour film.

An all day BSG marathon sounds like a great time to me.