Following the success of Bleak House, Little Dorrit is the BBC’s latest Dickens offering, here serialised for television by Andrew Davies. Ever relevant, the rags-to-riches story centres around the fickle nature of money and its treacherous effect on people. As the tale unfolds we trace the vacillating fortunes of the Dorrit family after the kindhearted Arthur Clennam (Matthew Macfadyen) follows his father’s dying wish to set the mysterious wrongs of his family right. He is led to Amy Dorrit and her family in Marshalsea Debtors’ prison.
The picks of the large and star-studded cast (which mixes veteran actors such as Roy Hudd and John Alderton with more recent names such as Freema Ageyman and Ruth Jones) are Judy Parfit, who is magnificent as the crumbling, resolutely mean Mrs Clennam, and Alun Armstrong, who steals the show with his unmitigatedly evil and highly manipulative Jeremiah Flintwinch.
Presented, as Dickens originally intended, in instalments, this fourteen-part serial is perfect for the season.
A victim of her father’s debt, Little Dorrit has spent her childhood behind the heavy iron doors of Marshalsea Prison. But will a chance meeting change her life? Andrew Davies’ new adaptation brings to life Dickens’ classic tale of hardship and struggle in 1820s London, where larger-than-life characters leap from rags to riches (and back again), and fortunes can be reversed in an instant.
Returning home after many years abroad, Arthur Clennam is surprised by the mysterious presence of Amy Dorrit, a young seamstress, in his mother’s house. Troubled by the Dorrits’ plight, and suspecting his own family’s involvement in their downfall, he resolves to help them. Delving into the puzzling connections between the two families, Arthur entangles himself in a mystery that transcends the walls of Marshalsea. A the truth unfolds, Arthur discovers that the shadow of debt can fall in the most unlikely of places…
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Little Dorrit (BBC, 2008)
