Bleak House (2005) Episode Recaps 1-3

by The Adaptation Stationmaster

In this series, I’m going to go through each episode of the 2005 miniseries adaptation of Bleak House, more or less, scene by scene. (There may be a few scenes I pass over but not many.) In other words, it’s going to spoil everything so anyone who hasn’t watched an episode should avoid reading my recap for it. However, if you’re a fan of the book who’s trying to decide if this adaptation’s style will appeal to you, reading the first episode’s recap may give you some idea. My language isn’t going to be as formal as in the other articles of written for Dickens Club, more like my comments. (There may be some LOLs and BTWs.) I hope no one feels like I’m lowering the tone of this site too much.

If you’re watching the Amazon Prime version of this miniseries, you may be confused since it cuts a couple of scenes, which I’ll be covering. (I’m using the DVD version.) Those scenes aren’t vital to the plot, but they do serve to develop the characters and are enjoyable to watch.

Episode 1

Episode 1, which is twice as long as a normal episode, begins on a dark and stormy day. A carriage with skittish horses pulls up beside a roadside inn. Boxes are hastily packed. A cloaked and hooded young woman is helped aboard the carriage, and it speeds away. The young woman is our heroine, Esther Summerson (Anna Maxwell Martin), but we don’t know that yet. It’s a much more energetic beginning than the book’s, the better to hook viewers.

Then we cut to something more like the beginning of the book. The Court of Chancery is in session and the generations-long case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce is proceeding-or rather not proceeding-as usual. I wish screenwriter Andrew Davies were better at writing incomprehensible legalese to show how the lawyers are dragging the case out, but I can’t blame him for not wanting to write it or viewers for not wanting to listen to it, not right off the bat anyway. Ian Richardson is great as the Lord Chancellor with his air of resigned boredom. Oddly, he mentions that a lawyer named Mr. Brownlow (Alastair Galbraith) is speaking for Lady Dedlock. Isn’t that Mr. Tulkinghorn’s job? Brownlow does look to Tulkinghorn (Charles Dance) for a signal before answering, so I guess they’re working together somehow. (I’d love it if a chancery expert could shed some light on this.) Anyway, Charles Dance is absolutely chilling as Tulkinghorn. To be sure, the music by John Lunn helps him out a lot but some of the credit has to go to Dance too. I don’t know how he conveys such creepiness with so few actions.

Speaking of Lady Dedlock (Gillian Anderson), we cut to her at her manor at Chesney Wold. (In the book, the Dedlocks are at their London house at this point in the story but having them be at Chesney Wold makes for better exposition.) Gillian Anderson isn’t an actress you’d normally think of for Lady Dedlock since she’s most well known for her role on The X-Files but she’s riveting in the role, every bit as great as Dance in his. Her creepy monologue in this scene about how bored she is isn’t from Dickens, but it sounds like it could have been written by him. Timothy West is also great as her cheerfully oblivious husband, Sir Leicester Dedlock.

Back at the Court of Chancery, there’s a development in Jarndyce and Jarndyce for once. There’s an application for two young wards of the court, Richard Carstone (Patrick Kennedy) and Ada Clare (Carey Mulligan), to live with their cousin, John Jarndyce. As Jarndyce’s lawyer, Kenge, Allistair McGown doesn’t have quite the charismatic presence Dickens describes, but he still makes something of an impression, Really, it says great things about this series’ cast that he’s one of the less charismatic presences in it. This scene also introduces two shabby characters who always attend chancery: the angry Mr. Gridley (Tony Haygarth) who’s always trying to address the chancellor even though only written evidence is permissible in this court, and the dotty Miss Flite (Pauline Collins) who’s turned chancery into some kind of religion and reveres the wards in famous cases.

As she sits in the carriage, Esther Summerson has a flashback to her childhood (when she was played by Ruby Williams) and a confrontation she had with her stern guardian, Miss Barbary (Kelly Hunter) about her unknown parents. The book spent a lot of time on Esther’s formative years, but this brief flashback is all we get in this adaptation. Fortunately, what the scene lacks in quantity, it makes up for in quality. BTW, both this miniseries and the 1985 have Miss Barbary explicitly tell the illegitimate Esther that it would have been better if she had never been born. In the book, Esther just “sees this in her face.” This makes her a bit nastier in adaptations than she is in the original, not that it’s much of a stretch.

Arriving in foggy sooty London, Esther is met by the goofy young legal apprentice, William Guppy (Burn Gorman) who escorts her to court. Gorman’s hilarious in the role. Then we get a coincidence even Dickens didn’t imagine. Esther bumps into her long-lost father, Nemo (John Lynch), who stares at her, reminded of his lost love. Lynch is great as Nemo with the haunted look in his eyes. Nemo speaks to his friend, the homeless crossing sweeper boy, Jo (Harry Eden.) Eden is great too. He comes across as much less cute than you’d expect for a poor orphan in a Charles Dickens story, which I’d argue is appropriate since Jo in the book was portrayed unsentimentally by Dickens’s standards. (I said by Dickens’s standards, OK?) Perhaps tellingly, Eden also played a version of the Artful Dodger, an even less sentimentalized Dickensian street urchin.

Nemo drops off a legal document he’s copied at Snagsby’s shop. Sean McGinley is perfect as the mild Mr. Snagsby. When he casually tells Nemo to be careful how he spends his pay, the man gets rather defensive. Then we get brief hazy images of him buying opium.

As she waits to see the chancellor, Guppy flirts with Esther and tries to impress her with his legal expertise, such as it is, by explaining Jarndyce and Jarndyce. This both serves to develop Esther and Guppy’s characters and provide exposition. Interestingly, this adaptation gives more of a reason why the case is seemingly unresolvable than the book does. The original Jarndyce made different wills at different times of his life (apparently, he was kind of a nut) and no one agrees which one is valid. This makes more sense of the story though you could argue there not being a good reason in the book was precisely Dickens’s point; he was saying that chancery lawyers make mountains of molehills so they can earn as much money as possible.

The chancellor discusses Esther, Ada Clare and Richard Carstone’s futures with them. Esther has been provided by Mr. Jarndyce as a companion/chaperone for Ada at his residence, Bleak House in Hertfordshire. Patrick Kennedy and Carey Mulligan are wonderful as Richard and Ada. In the 1985 miniseries, Richard seemed angry, and Ada seemed depressed from the get-go, so there wasn’t much room for them to develop. Here they start out as charmingly innocent and hopeful though the actors convey an underlying sadness in keeping with their orphaned status and uncertain futures. Though Esther and Ada warm up to each other immediately, they don’t instantly start hugging and kissing, which, even as someone who will defend Dickens against charges of sentimentality, I’ll admit is an improvement on the book. (My defense isn’t so much that Dickens isn’t sentimental as that his is good quality sentimentality.)

At his office, Tulkinghorn tells his clerk, Clamb (Tom Georgeson), to give him the Jarndyce documents, the same documents Nemo copied though we don’t necessarily know that yet. He’s going down to Lincolnshire to give them to the Dedlocks. A clerk for Tulkinghorn is mentioned once or twice in the book but isn’t given a name. To Andrew Davies’s credit, Clamb sounds like the name of a Dickens character and to Georgeson’s credit, he’s great in the role. This scene also provides exposition about Lady Dedlock. (“Not from a great family but a beauty as you say. That’s the world.”)

Guppy takes Richard, Ada and Esther to spend the night at the home of Mrs. Jellyby (Liza Tarbuck), a local philanthropist. When they get there, one of the Jellyby children, to Esther’s horror, has his head stuck in the railing. Guppy tries to impress Esther by pulling him out but just makes things worse. Esther ends up being to one to save the boy. This serves to cement her character as kind and competent, as in the book, while getting in some great Guppy comedy original to the miniseries.

Mrs. Jellyby’s house is in a state of chaos and her neglected children run wild as she focuses entirely on her social work for “Borrioboola-Gha.” Liza Tarbuck is perfect as the character with her eyes that “can see nothing nearer than Africa.” It’s a pity she only appears in this episode though I can understand some of the reasons why.

At night, Mrs. Jellyby’s bitter eldest daughter, Caddy (Natalie Press), whom she uses as a clerk, complains to Esther about her mother’s treatment of her. This miniseries tries to make the book’s antifeminist message more palatable to modern viewers by blaming some of the Jellyby family’s dysfunction on the (unseen) father (“She makes such an ass of herself about Africa and Pa does nothing at all!”) where Dickens portrayed him as another victim of the mother. Esther gently tries to reason with Caddy who melts and tearfully says she wishes she’d had Esther a long time ago to teach her better manners. Natalie Press is great, but I have to say I’m not a big fan of Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther. (This may be controversial.) Don’t get me wrong, she’s a great actress but she doesn’t convey the empathy making it plausible for so many characters to confide all their problems in her when they’ve barely met. (I’ve known people like that in real life, like one of my cousins-in-law, so it wouldn’t have been impossible for an actress to convey.) This isn’t an example of the adaptation changing the character. It’s pretty clear they still need her to be that kind of person. In fact, the miniseries needs that more than the book does since it’s faster paced. This scene with Caddy is a case in point. Still, Anna Maxwell Martin’s Esther is more convincingly friendly than Suzanne Burden’s weirdly chilly one from the 1985 miniseries.

In her lousy apartment at Krook’s rag and bone shop, Miss Flite feeds her many pet birds. She calls them by their thematically significant names from the book (Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach) but I don’t think viewers who haven’t read it will understand that’s what she’d doing. Fortunately, a scene in a later episode explains it.

Miss Flite speaks with her landlord, supreme hoarder, Mr. Krook (Jonny Vegas, another actor I wouldn’t immediately think of this kind of miniseries but who’s great here) about seeing the wards in Jarndyce. He ominously alludes to the fate of old Tom Jarndyce, but we don’t get the full story yet. Much of Krook’s dialogue comes from a scene in book at this point where Miss Flite shows the characters around her home. I guess Davies felt that was too complicated to develop in the miniseries and, to be fair, a bit contrived in the source material but it would have made Caddy visiting Miss Flite in a later episode make more sense. We learn here that Nemo also lodges in the building as Krook badgers him for rent money. Krook gets Miss Flite’s line about Nemo (“People say he sold his soul to the devil but if he has, I don’t know what he’s done with the money”), making it even funnier.

We see Nemo copying a document and particularly focus on his distinctive way of writing the letter J. This makes it clear what’s happening to modern viewers, who don’t spend much time writing or reading letters, when Lady Dedlock reacts violently to the document Tulkinghorn shows her and asks who copied it. Making it even clearer, we later see Lady Dedlock looking through a secret stash of old love letters with the same handwriting. (I’m not criticizing the miniseries for being unsubtle; I really do think this was helpful.) Anderson and Dance do a great job of implying that these characters dislike each other even before this scene. Wheels can clearly be seen turning in Tulkinghorn’s head. Lady Dedlock swoons and we get our first look at her housekeeper, Mrs. Rouncewell (Anne Reid who played Mrs. Bagnet in the 1985 version), and her French maid, Hortense (Lilo Baur), as they rush in to help her. Neither actress has a chance to make much of an impression yet but they’re great.

Back in London, Tulkinghorn asks Clamb to find out who copied the fateful document. Meanwhile, Esther and co finally arrive at Bleak House in Hertforshire where they are warmly greeted by John Jarndyce (Denis Lawson.) In the 1985 version, Denholm Elliott made the character come across as schizophrenic the way he went back and forth between friendly kindness and bitter ranting. Lawson is far superior.

At Chesney Wold, Sir Leicester tells Lady Dedlock they’re going to Paris to cheer her up. “You are too good to me,” she says.

As Esther and Ada unpack in their room, Jarndyce’s servant, Harriet (Lisa Hammond) shows up with a present for Esther from him: the housekeeping keys. We don’t really think of being a housekeeper as being a particularly important position nowadays (though for the people who actually have housekeepers, it’s important) and the miniseries does a good job of showing why it feels so empowering for someone with Esther’s background.

That night, Guppy stops at Chesney Wold with some letters of affidavit for the absent Dedlocks from Kenge. Mrs. Rouncewell reluctantly lets him spend the night. As Rosa (excellent Emma Williams), a maid, conducts him through the house, he’s struck by a portrait of Lady Dedlock in her youth which he’s sure he’s seen somewhere else. The miniseries is rather hampered here by the fact that Gillian Anderson and Anna Maxwell Martin do not look much alike. To tighten the pacing, the series doesn’t give us the creepy legend of the Ghost’s Walk here, saving it for later, which is kind of too bad because the dark and stormy atmosphere would have been great for it.

Bleak House’s new residents are introduced to the pseudo bohemian Harold Skimpole (Nathaniel Parker) at dinner who pride himself on being “a perfect child” in worldly matters like finance. Regrettably, Nathaniel Parker is one of the less perfectly cast actors in this series. He’s not bad but he doesn’t convey much of the character’s disarming charm. Part of the blame for that goes to the writing which includes all of his most transparently selfish lines from the book and none of his really funny and somewhat endearing lines. I don’t necessarily mind expanding on his villainy or having Esther be suspicious of him earlier than in the book. (You could argue she was always suspicious in the book too; she was just more in denial about her suspicions.) But I’d really have liked some explanation for why Mr. Jarndyce is friends with Skimpole. Dickens goes into the topic at some length. (The most this adaptation says about it is that “Mr. Jarndyce has always had a soft spot for him.”) As it is, you just get the impression that everyone besides Esther is kind of dumb in this scenario.

Esther is summoned from her bed in the middle of the night because a debt collector, Mr. Neckett (Rod Arthur), has come to arrest the cheerfully unembarrassed Skimpole. Neckett has a bit of a cough, foreshadowing his fate. Rod Arthur does a good job with a small amount of screentime. In an attempt to make her a “stronger” character than in the book, Esther objects to Richard that Skimpole has no right to expect them to pay his debts, but then she just gives him all her money anyway so that little update was pretty pointless IMO. The scene is fine as it is, but I believe it really could have benefited from more of the book’s humor.

The next morning, Mr. Jarndyce privately makes Esther’s money good to her and tells her to come to him if Skimpole asks for more. He also confides in her about why he wants to help Richard and Ada, who are technically his rivals in the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. “The claims are passed down through generations and we can’t get out of it,” he laments, “none of us! On any terms!” He explains about how the suit drove his uncle, Tom Jarndyce, to suicide hence Bleak House’s name. I’m under the impression that it would have been considered inappropriate in this time period to talk about that kind of thing to sheltered young ladies unless you were a creep like Krook. But I could be wrong. I’m far from an expert on historical cultures. I just read a lot of old books. Jarndyce asks Esther if there’s anything else he can do to help her, and she asks about her mother’s identity. He tells her the secret died with the aunt who raised her, and she may be better off not knowing. In the book at this point, Esther wonders about her mother when Jarndyce offers to tell her all he knows about herself but refrains from asking on the grounds that if there were anything she needed to know, he would tell her. The way the miniseries does the scene makes for a clearer exposition for its nonliterary medium and, honestly, just makes more sense in general than what the book does. (Why would Esther hesitate to learn the answer to the question she’s wondered for so long? Maybe she was afraid of what it might be.)

Nemo, desperate for rent money, sells his old naval medals to a pawnshop, a detail that seems like it’s just to demonstrate his poverty but which turns out later to be a plot point. This episode shows us a lot about Nemo whereas we only learn about his character after he’s dead in the book. In general, when he adapts novels, Andrew Davies tends to make them less claustrophobic, showing scenes from the perspectives of other characters which we only learn about in the originals when they tell the main characters about them. Sometimes, as in his 2008 Sense and Sensibility, this just feels like pointless padding. But it works wonderfully in Bleak House.

Local busybody Mrs. Pardiggle (Roberta Taylor) takes Richard, Esther and Ada with her on a charitable expedition to a poor neighborhood of brickmakers. In the book, the brickmakers’ living conditions are one of Dickens’s most wince-inducing depictions of poverty and the miniseries does them justice. However, I feel like they did the character of Mrs. Pardiggle dirty. I know that sounds crazy since she’s supposed to be a negative character but hear me out. She still tells the brickmaker (Cosh Omar) whose home she invades that he can’t discourage her because she loves hard work “and the harder you make mine, the better I like it.” But as soon as he tells her hasn’t been reading her pamphlet and that he continues to spend his money on drink and beat his wife, she gives up and leaves, saying that there are others more deserving of her time. Mrs. Pardiggle was a jerk and a nuisance in the book, but I weirdly admire her stubbornness. The absence of her resentful children also means this scene loses a lot of comedy though I can certainly understand the practical reasons for their omission.

Of course, there’s a good reason why the miniseries has Mrs. Pardiggle leave before everyone else. She would be totally out of place in the ensuing scene where the brickmaker’s baby dies and Esther tries to comfort its weeping mother, Jenny (Charlie Brooks), giving her a handkerchief. This shows that Esther is capable of real empathy unlike Mrs. Pardiggle who just preaches at people, and it even earns her the respect of Jenny’s abusive husband. In the book, there are two poor brickmakers’ wives, Jenny and Liz, but this miniseries only has time for one.

Nemo defends Jo against an angry man whose shoes he’s accidentally dirtied and gives him a little money. This is especially touching since we know how badly he needs money himself.

Esther returns home to Bleak House and Jarndyce tells her Guppy wishes to speak to her confidentially. We get his ridiculously awkward proposal to her, with him downing multiple glasses of wine to steady himself first, though I have to agree with Rachel that his phrasing in the book is a little funnier. She turns him down and he reluctantly departs, leaving his card behind him.

Having been informed by Clamb where the document that so disturbed Lady Dedlock was copied, Tulkinghorn goes to Snagsby’s shop by night. Snagsby looks at it and tells him that it was done by a man who calls himself Nemo. “That is Latin for no one,” says Tulkinghorn, which means the title of Finding Nemo really means Finding No One. (That’s not important; I just thought it was funny.) Snagsby directs him to Krook’s shop and Krook directs him to the door on the left on the second landing. There Tulkinghorn finds Nemo dead, a great cliffhanger ending for this first episode.

Episode 2

Tulkinghorn calls for Krook to bring a light. When he sees that Nemo has died, Krook starts going through his things to make up for the rent money he’s owed. We actually see Krookf pocket a bundle of old letters, hiding them from Mr. Tulkinghorn. In the book, we only learn he did this chapters and chapters after the fact. As we’ll see, this is typical with how the miniseries substitutes mystery for suspense. The scene ends with Krook sending Jo for a doctor.

At Bleak House, Richard pretends to read Ada’s palm and we get some foreshadowing of their romance. (“Some fellow’s going to be very lucky. Whoever he is, I hope he deserves you.”) Esther, doubtless thinking of Miss Barbary’s cruel words, says she had her fortune told long ago and doesn’t want it done again. Mr. Jarndyce discusses Richard’s own future with him, and they decide that he should train as a surgeon. Richard is instantly enthusiastic about this idea but in the very next scene, when he hears Skimpole talking about his own bad experiences as a surgeon, he starts second guessing it just as instantly. This is our first clue to Richard’s defects. (The second if you count him not raising an eyebrow at Skimpole’s admission that he doesn’t know how his wife and children take care of themselves. It’s a pity we never see that wife and those children BTW, but I understand why not.) Skimpole’s failed medical career comes from the book, but it wasn’t used there to plant doubts in Richard’s mind in this way. I think it was a brilliant idea on the part of the miniseries.

Jo, Snagsby and Miss Flite have gathered as young surgeon Allan Woodcourt (Richard Harrington) diagnoses Nemo as having died of an overdose. There’s an inquest over the death and Jo has to testify. Heartwarmingly, Snagsby encourages the nervous boy. Peter Guiness makes an impression in the minor role of the coroner. It’s effectively depressing to see how cavalierly Nemo’s death and “pauper’s burial” are treated. Despite him being an important character in the book, Dickens does little to develop Allan Woodcourt at this point. Davies does a little more, showing him defend Jo when Tulkinghorn sternly interrogates him. Snagsby is also disturbed by Tulkinghorn’s treatment of Jo but he’s too mild to do anything about it. Tulkinghorn also questions Woodcourt, one of the closest things Nemo had to a friend besides Jo.

Remember what I wrote about the miniseries expanding on Skimpole’s villainy? Well, here we see him given a role in corrupting Richard. He raises doubts in Richard’s mind as to why Jarndyce should help him, technically his rival in court, all while posing as the innocent child who points out that the emperor has no clothes. Not a bad idea but Skimpole actually raises a good point that the miniseries never answers. If Jarndyce thinks it so important for Richard to have a profession, why doesn’t he have one himself?

As Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock ride home from Paris, he tells her that Tulkinghorn has mentioned in a letter that he’s seen the man who copied the letter that disturbed her. Lady Dedlock seems unruffled on the surface but asks to get out of the carriage and walk for a while. Her husband, oblivious to her real feelings, gallantly offers to walk with her. This is one of the scenes where the dialogue is very close to the book. It’s great.

Mr. Kenge arrives at Bleak House. Richard is eager to hear if he has any news about Jarndyce and Jarndyce. This is a great detail that seems innocent at first but becomes ominous in retrospect. Kenge has a few papers to be signed but has mainly come to tell Richard that a cousin of his in London, Mr. Bayham Badger, is willing to tutor Richard in the medical profession and have him live with him. Richard is disappointed to hear this since he’s already fallen in love with Ada. Mr. Jarndyce proposes they all go to London on holiday to help Richard move.

Upon returning to Chesney Wold, Lady Dedlock is charmed by the innocent beauty of Rosa the maid. This makes Rosa feel honored, Mrs. Roucewell proud and Hortense competitive. All the actresses do a great job in this brief but vital scene.

Mr. Jarndyce takes his wards to his house in London, and we see that Guppy is stalking Esther. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if that stalking is meant to be funny or creepy but that’s true of the book’s portrayal as well.

As Tulkinghorn’s carriage heads toward the manor at Chesney Wold, it’s stopped by Laurence Boythorn (Warren Clark) who is always fighting with Sir Leicester over the dividing line between their respective properties. It’s weird that they use such creepy music for the introduction of Boythorn who is supposed to be a bluff lovable comic character. I suppose the creepiness is for Tulkinghorn but it still strikes me as odd.

As Hortense helps her dress for dinner, Lady Dedlock asks her whether Mr. Tulkinghorn has arrived. We see that Hortense notices her unusual interest in this. We also see how negatively she reacts to being told that Lady Dedlock plans to take on Rosa as a second ladies’ maid.

Mr. Jarndyce and co dine with Mr. Bayham Badger and his wife (Richard Griffiths and Joanna David, both very fun) at their house. Esther is introduced to Allan Woodcourt. Dickens wrote no dialogue between their characters at this point despite them being love interests since Esther was ostensibly narrating that part of the story and she was embarrassed to get into her love life. I don’t blame her for that as a human being, but it made it rather hard for readers to get invested IMO. The dialogue we get here between Esther and Woodcourt isn’t the most memorable thing in the world but it’s arguably an improvement on the book by existing at all. I like that the miniseries retains Esther’s insecurity about herself (she tells Woodcourt she’s never going to be anyone of consequence, which he disputes) even though some readers find it annoying since I’d argue there’s no reason the heroine of a story shouldn’t ever feel insecure about herself even if Dickens’s portrayal of that crippling insecurity didn’t totally work. Jarndyce notices the chemistry between Woodcourt and Esther and is troubled by it.

Tulkinghorn briefly refers to the “matter concering her ladyship” in front of Lady Dedlock while discussing the dispute with Boythorn with Sir Leicester. Unlike in the book though, he doesn’t pursue it in front of him, just throws it out to gage Lady Dedlock’s reaction. The various cousins staying with the Dedlocks at Chesney Wold are cut from this adaptation. I’m fond of them in the book, mainly of Cousin Volumnia, but, on the whole, I sympathize with the decision not to include them. This story’s pretty crammed with characters as it is.

Lady Dedlock can’t resist the bait and visits Tulkinghorn in his room to inquire about the mysterious man whose handwriting interested her. She tries to maintain her casual air as Tulkinghorn tells her about his dismal death and possible suicide. She doesn’t succeed quite as well as I imagine her doing in the book but otherwise the scene might just be confusing. The tension between these two characters is gripping. Intercut with this, we get Krook confiding in his grumpy Persian cat, Lady Jane (Persian cats are wonderfully grumpy looking creatures) about the bundle of old letters he’s pocketed from Nemo. He can’t read but he thinks the bundle “smells like ladies” and he apparently intends to make money off them somehow. We never get a scene like this in the book where the reader never encounters Krook alone, so to speak, but we can infer this was his motive in hoarding them. In the book, we’re not quite sure what many of the characters are trying to accomplish until it finally all comes out. The miniseries typically lays it all on the table and we wonder when, how or if they’ll succeed. As I wrote before, it trades mystery for suspense. A good trade if you ask me though some more ardent fans than I might reasonably disagree.

Episode 3

Ada confides in Esther that Richard is in love with her. As in the book, Esther laughingly tells her that was pretty obvious. “Has he spoken to Mr. Jarndyce yet?” she asks. Ada’s face says no and she’s worried.

The same basic thing happens as in the book when Richard and Ada tell Mr. Jarndyce all: he tells them they should wait until they’re older and more mature to officially get engaged and they ultimately agree. But Jarndyce is less indulgent and more disturbed than he is in the book and Richard is more vexed by the delay. Doubtless, the motive behind this change was to add more tension at Bleak House in the early parts of the story. In the book, everyone there gets along initially, which can make their scenes a tad dull. Personally, I think having Richard be totally friendly and obedient to Jarndyce makes for a better contrast with what comes later but I don’t hate this change to their relationship or anything.

Tulkinghorn dictates a letter to Clamb. In a great touch, he initially intends this letter to be addressed to Lady Dedlock, then changes his mind and has it be ostensibly for Sir Leicester, only mentioning his lady in a postscript.

Esther seems to sympathize with Richard and Ada but when Jarndyce asks her if he did right, she can’t bring herself to say he didn’t. “Perhaps what we want for ourselves and what is best for us are not the same thing,” she says. Jarndyce’s reaction can be interpreted as him thinking that he wants her (Esther) but knowing that wouldn’t be for the best. He asks her what she wants for herself. She forces a smile and says she doesn’t want anything. I’ve criticized the casting of Anna Maxwell Martin and I’ll stand by that criticism, but she really is great at forced smiles, a necessity when playing Esther.

Caddy Jellyby, whom Esther has mentioned as wanting to see again, shows up with big news. In an effort to better herself, she’s enrolled at Mr. Turveydrop’s Academy for Dance and Deportment and is in a romantic relationship with her young instructor. She takes Esther to the school to see him. Bryan Dick as Prince Turveydrop and Matthew Kelly as his pretentious, manipulative father, old Mr. Turveydrop, are perfect. They manage to completely convey their characters from the book with very little screentime though, to be sure, the makeup and hair departments help them out a lot. I do wish though that Caddy could have been taken in by Turveydrop Sr. as she is in the book rather than seeing through him as she does here. Her being so painfully aware of the problems with her own family while being oblivious to those in her boyfriend’s made her more interesting character and made it more believable that she could be happily married to Prince who’s so blindly devoted to his unworthy father. (I also wish the miniseries could have included her line about how Prince’s name, which was in honor of the Prince Regent, makes him sound like a dog.) But I understand that it was more convenient to have Caddy explain about the dysfunctional Turveydrops rather than a random old lady. Speaking of old ladies, Caddy ends the scenes by telling Esther she’s promised to check on Miss Flite which doesn’t make sense since they haven’t shared a scene in this version.

Sir Leicester tells Lady Dedlock what Tulkinghorn has written about Jo and asks if she’d like him to question the boy about Nemo. (In the book, Lady Dedlock just read about Jo and his relationship to the deceased in the newspaper.) She’s too smart to take the bait twice and tells Tulkinghorn through Sir Leicester that she’s not interested.

As he and Ada go for a walk in London, Richard gives Jo a shilling. This brilliantly serves to both keep Jo in the viewers’ minds and establish Richard as a spendthrift but a likeable one. He suggests to Ada that they stop by court to hear how their case is getting along. She reminds him of how Mr. Jarndyce would feel about that. “Mr. Jarndyce is a dear good man,” says Richard, “the best man in the world but his aversion to the law and lawyers seems hardly rational.” He says that he’s thinking of studying law on the side to keep an eye on their chancery interests. Ada is worried for a moment about this distracting him from his medical studies, but her adoring smile can’t seem to waver for long and she agrees to go to court with him.

Who should Ada and Richard see attending court though but Jarndyce himself? This was probably done to give Richard a good reason to be suspicious of his protestations of uninterest in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. I don’t necessarily mind that, but they never give another reason as to why he’s in court that day, so it seems like Richard is right and Jarndyce really has been slightly corrupted by Chancery. Can’t say I’m a fan of that. To be fair though, there is another reason the miniseries places him at court in this scene. Miss Flite’s friend, Gridely, has an outburst about how he’s unable to do anything with his land because of how Chancery can’t decide anything. (In the book, he explains to Jarndyce about this in a later scene that’s much shorter in the miniseries.) He calls all the lawyers villains, singling out Tulkinghorn in particular. Miss Flite faints from the excitement and Richard has to help her out. Mr. Jarndyce being present justifies him going to Krook’s shop to check on her. Tulkinghorn tells Clamb to get a warrant for Gridley’s arrest, something we hear about him doing in the book but don’t see.

Esther, Ada, Caddy, Richard and Jarndyce watch as Allan Woodcourt tends to Miss Flite at her apartment. Krook gets some dialogue with Richard that he had in the earlier visit in the book. He gleefully tells Miss Flite’s guests the names of her birds. I like how everyone smiles at the first pleasant names and get increasingly uncomfortable as they hear the creepier ones. Before the Bleak House gang leaves, Jarndyce invites Woodcourt to dine with them and Skimpole that night.

At dinner, Skimpole expresses incredulity at how Woodcourt can make a living as a doctor for poor people like Miss Flite, which I feel gives away too much about his character too soon even if he does immediately backpedal. Sure, Skimpole cares more about money more than he lets on, but it shouldn’t be that obvious at this point. Woodcourt mentions that he’d like to get a salaried position somewhere. Esther hopes he won’t leave London soon. Ada and Jarndyce can tell she’s attracted to him-and they’re not the only ones. Outside, Guppy paces the ground and jealously rants against Woodcourt. (“What’s he got that I haven’t got? I saw her first!”) I’m not sure why he’s pegged him as a rival for Esther’s affections so soon (maybe the miniseries is just showing that he’s paranoid) but it feels in character for his literary equivalent though I imagine Dickens would have written more original dialogue for his ranting than what I just quoted.

Later (or possibly another night), Esther notices Guppy moping around outside for the second time and starts to get annoyed by his stalking but she refrains from pointing it out to her friends. Mr. Jarndyce announces that he and his young friends are invited to Boythorn’s at the village of Chesney Wold. Skimpole says he detests Boythorn but changes his tune once he learns he’s also invited. (Never pass up a free meal.) I love how Richard laughs indulgently at this while Esther barely keeps from rolling her eyes. Then Skimpole cheerfully mentions that his persecutor, Neckett the debt collector, has died, leaving behind three children. A concerned Mr. Jarndyce asks him to take him to see those children the next day. Richard assumes he’s coming too but Jarndyce reminds him he has studies. “Ah, yes, of course,” says Richard through his teeth, “to be sure.”

Before she sets out the next day, Esther goes over to Guppy and tells him to leave off. This is one of the adaptation’s more successful attempts to make her a “stronger” heroine. (I put that word in quotes because “strong female character” is such a worn-out phrase and writers often take it to mean a female character resembling the most boring and generic of male action heroes. Having said that, since Dickens’s heroines could be described as generically Victorian, making them generically modern in new adaptations is arguably appropriate in a closest-equivalent translation kind of way.) Guppy says he’ll stop hounding her but insists that his feelings won’t change.

Skimpole takes Jarndyce and co to the Neckett’s apartment which almost looks worse than the ones at Krook’s. There little Tom Neckett (Billy Hill) and Baby Emma are locked in all day while their sister, Charley (Katie Angelou), not much older than Tom, works as a washerwoman to support them. This scene is much shorter than in the book, but it includes a lot of details from it and is very sad. Katie Angelou is great as Charley.

Tulkinghorn receives a reply from Sir Leciester, saying Lady Dedlock has no further interest in Nemo. “Well, well. We’ll see about that,” he says. After giving some final instructions to Clamb, Tulkinghorn leaves his office and goes for a walk. In a heart-stopping moment, he passes right by Lady Dedlock, poorly disguised in an outfit of Hortense, without recognizing her. (This moment sort of comes from the book but there she just passes by his office window.) Lady Dedlock finds Jo and pays him money to show her where Nemo lived, died and was buried. This adaptation arguably makes her nicer to him than she was in the book (“What does the horrible creature mean?”) but then it also arguably makes her ruder to Hortense, so they’re not softening the character that much.

Jarndyce, Esther and Ada visit Richard. He tells them his studies are going fine but Mr. and Mrs. Badger suggest that he’d be better suited for something else. (Richard Griffiths and Joanna David make it hilariously clear that their characters are disgusted by Richard’s laziness, something at which Dickens only hints.) Richard agrees on a dime and tells Mr. Jarndyce he wants to study law under Mr. Kenge. Jarndyce agrees but he’s obviously not happy.

Jo shows Lady Dedlock Krook’s shop and the unhallowed burial ground in which her old lover’s coffin was crammed. As in the book, it’s a haunting scene.

Back at Bleak House, Mr. Jarndyce confides in Esther that he wishes Richard had her steadiness. “He has Ada’s heart, you see,” he says, “he has her heart.” Woodcourt pays them a call to inform them that his financial situation has forced him to accept a position on a ship bound for the Indes. In the book, his mother accompanies him for this visit, and I think that would make her visiting Bleak House later more believable, but it would also have been distracting to introduce a minor character at the very end of an episode. Later, Ada gleefully gives Esther a bouquet that Woodcourt left for her, making for one of the few happy cliffhanger endings in this series.