Everything old is new again, especially Charles Dickens, two of whose works undergo stunning new adaptations on PBS next month.
The latest update on one of his greatest novels, “Great Expectations,” airs over two consecutive Sundays, April 1 and 8, locally at 9 p.m. on Rocky Mountain PBS. Gillian Anderson (“Bleak House,” “The X-Files”) does a haunting, wonderfully psycho Miss Havisham, she of the decaying wedding dress.
Dickens’ less well-known and famously unfinished last novel, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” follows on April 15 with Matthew Rhys (“Brothers & Sisters”) nailing the role of the wicked choirmaster. The psychological thriller gets a clever ending by screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes (“Five Days,” “Miss Austen Regrets”), to support a standout, nomination-worthy performance by Rhys as the opium- and laudanum-abusing John Jasper.
Why now? This year marks the bicentennial of Dickens’ birth, which might have been reason enough to celebrate and update. As it happens, with the 99 percent protesting the wealth of the 1 percent, Dickens’ wry observations on social inequalities have never been more relevant.
Dickens was a superstar in his day and has never gone out of style. As the steampunk movement elevated Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to sci-fi hero status, maybe we need a Victorian-based form of art, fashion and literature that worships Dickens.
Imagine: The Victorian writer was paid by the word. His stories were initially serialized in printed periodicals made from dead trees, published at intervals and handed out on street corners. He worked the serial to advantage.
PBS has aired numerous Dickens adaptations, including “Bleak House,” “Little Dorrit” (which snagged seven Emmy awards in 2009) and “David Copperfield,” starring a young Daniel Radcliffe. Fans know the care PBS and the BBC co-productions have lavished on these adaptations in the past and are right to expect excellence from the next two.
This version of “Great Expectations” was adapted by Sarah Phelps, who previously delivered the rich “Oliver Twist.” (Not to be confused with the coming big-screen version of “Great Expectations,” in which Helena Bonham Carter takes the Havisham role.)
Sue Zemka, an English professor and Dickens scholar at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said the effects of serialization continue to be felt in TV as in Dickens’ original writings. That’s why we see a show like “The Wire” as Dickensian:
“Knowing the characters and watching stories unfold over a period of time has a peculiar effect on us,” Zemka said. The recent “Downton Abbey,” for instance, “did a fantastic job of serializing the plot at a Dickensian pace.” (She thinks the producers goofed in one instance, however, resolving one cliffhanger much too quickly: when Matthew and William are MIA in WWI, “Dickens would have extended the time of our anxiety,” Zemka said.)
In Dickens’ day, the suspense went on for months and months, as when readers were tortured with uncertainty over whether Little Nell would live or die in “The Old Curiosity Shop.”
It was brilliant, Zemka notes, when Allan Woodcourt’s absence in “Bleak House” matched the time elapsed in the serialized publication time, providing readers an extra layer of suspense.
Dickens remains relevant not least for his attention to the plight of the poor and abuses in the business world. Screenwriters have reworked Dickens again and again, thanks to his ability “to look at suffering with sense of warmth and humor, open-heartedness through grief that doesn’t get closed down by despair,” Zemka said.
His writing was cinematic before there were movies.
“He anticipates cinema in his writing style. That’s a very old line on Dickens … he creates certain cinematic techniques such as montage, flashback and flash-forward, and thrusts you in the middle of the action. He is very visually oriented, sounds and sights rather than interior monologue.”
He certainly understood the appeal of violence in popular culture and used it to dramatic effect.
Dickens created enough characters in his short lifetime (1812-1870) to populate innumerable prime-time seasons. Luckily, this spring brings a crowd of fine examples.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
