Gillian Anderson, Denis Lawson, Charles Dance, Alistair McGowan, Pauline Collins and Johnny Vegas lead a star cast in a groundbreaking adaptation of Dickens's Bleak House, written by Andrew Davies.
The skilfully crafted thriller and passionate indictment of the legal system is one of Dickens's most celebrated achievements.
Dickens wrote Bleak House as a monthly serial for popular consumption, complete with cliff-hanger endings that left his audience fervent for the next instalment.
Davies's adaptation is told in a series of half-hour episodes, to be shown twice weekly using the pace, multiple storylines and cliff-hanger endings more usually associated with popular drama.
This never-been-done-before adaptation of a timeless tale gives a fuller rendering of the book that is normally achievable in a classic adaptation.
The story revolves around orphan Esther Summerson (Anna Maxwell Martin), companion to Ada and Richard, the Jarndyce wards of court, whose connection to the aloof yet beautiful Lady Dedlock (Gillian Anderson) may bring ruin to both her and Jarndyce (Denis Lawson).
Charles Dance is the merciless lawyer Tulkinghorn, who seeks to uncover Lady Dedlock's dark secret. Johnny Vegas plays Krook, the drunken, sly shop owner/landlord; Alistair McGowan plays Jarndyce's lawyer, Kenge; and Timothy West is Sir Leicester Dedlock.
Alun Armstrong, Hugo Speer, Liza Tarbuck, Charlie Brooks, Matthew Kelly, Richard Harrington, Nathaniel Parker, Warren Clarke, Anne Reid, Richard Griffiths, Phil Davis and rising stars Carey Mulligan and Patrick Kennedy also star.