Bleak House Gets Soaped

In an attempt to lure pre-teens, the latest BBC adaption of Dickens' Bleak House has been serialized and given a soap opera treatment by scriptwriter Andrew Davies, whose work includes the Colin Firth version of P&P(!), Middlemarch, and Vanity Fair (The Independent).

The adaptation will span over 16 half-hour episodes and stars Gillian Anderson, Charles Dance, Denis Lawson, Johnny Vegas, and Alistair McGowan. If it's good, I'd like to see Little Dorrit done next! Davies' next project is Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty, which has been on my must-read list for quite some time. --Kim

Related: Can you "Survive Dickens' London?"

Dodge through Victorian London, avoiding the gangs and villains and trials and tribulations of Dickensian London in order to seek out Charles Dickens in his chalet hideaway in Rochester.