Bleak House (2005) Episode Recaps 10-12

by The Adaptation Stationmaster

Episode 10

This is the first episode to be directed by Susannah White rather than Justin Chadwick. I feel like I can kind of tell the difference but it’s so subtle I can’t explain it.

Anticipating her secret’s exposure, Lady Dedlock tells Rosa that circumstances have changed and she’s sending her with Mr. Rouncewell to be educated as his daughter-in-law.

Remember what I wrote about how we know Mr. Jarndyce intends to propose to Esther in this adaptation and wonder how it’s going to go? Well, the first thing we see him doing in this episode is trying to write a letter to her and discarding his every attempt. Much to his discomfiture, Esther herself interrupts, asking for permission to visit Caddy Jellyby in London who is now married and expecting a child.

Hortense confronts Tulkinghorn at his office, reminding him he hasn’t gotten her a job yet. He replies that he only said he would considering do so and has decided she’s too fiery to be a ladies’ maid. (“To a lady who was kind to me,” says Hortense, “I could be as meek as a cooing dove.” Because of her accent, I thought for the longest time that she said queen dove.) She and Tulkinghorn exchange threats, hers fiery and vague, his cold and specific.

Miss Flite tries to sneak past her landlord up to her room-only to find that he’s changed the locks because she hasn’t been able to pay her rent. In the book, we hear that Smallweed has thrown Miss Flite (and her birds) out after the fact, but we don’t actually see it. This a pretty devastating scene and it gets points for including a reference to another Dickens book. (“Who do you think I am? The Christmas spirit?”) It’s odd though that while we see in the final episode that Miss Flite has a new apartment, we never see how she gets it after devoting a whole scene to her losing the old one. (In the book, her new apartment building is actually the Necketts’ old one, Dickens’s London being such a small place.) I wonder if there was a scene that got deleted.

Caddy shows Esther around the dance and deportment academy, which is running along very well, entirely thanks to her and Prince, old Mr. Turveydrop being useless. I maintain that this adaptation’s Caddy doesn’t show as much range in her personality as she does in the book, but Natalie Press does a good job conveying a more mature, relaxed Caddy in this scene. She credits Esther with inspiring her, but she waves this praise off, saying that Caddy deserves the credit herself. “I wish I could say I have done as much with my life as you have with yours,” she says.

After this visit, Esther goes to Guppy’s house. The door is answered by his mother (Sheila Hancock) who’s gleeful to meet the object of her son’s desires. Mrs. Guppy only has two scenes in the miniseries and the book but she’s hilarious. As for Guppy himself, once Esther takes off her veil, he loses all attraction to her and is terrified she’s come to take him up on his marriage proposal. Quickly, he goes into lawyer mode, reminding her she went on record as rejecting it. To his relief, she’s just come to ask him to stop investigating the mystery of her birth. It’s a really fun scene but it’s a sad moment when Esther, leaving, discards her veil for good with an air of “why bother?” You might expect her to see her scarred face as a disguised blessing since it frees her from Guppy, but she can’t help feeling depressed at this reminder that she’s lost her beauty.

Ada comes running up to Esther in the street. She tells her that Richard wasn’t at his lodgings when they agreed to meet. Naturally, he’s at court or rather was. We cut to him leaving, fuming about the lack of progress, though Vholes assures him that they are making it slowly. He also tells him he there’s more money he needs to sign away. Ada confronts Richard and he sincerely apologizes for forgetting their appointment. She forgives him as always.

Sir Leicester mentions to his wife that he’s miffed that Jarndyce, her old acquaintance, and his wards stayed with Boythorn, not him, and that he’s sent them an invitation to visit. In the book, he sees them in London and invites them personally. This is a rare instance of the miniseries taking a face-to-face encounter and turning it into a letter rather than vice versa. It was probably done because having both the Dedlocks and the Jarndyce constantly going back and forth between their London homes and their other ones was getting to be a nuisance. There’s a sad moment as Lady Dedlock knows how Esther will have to respond to the invitation but can’t do anything about it.

Esther and Ada return to Bleak House. At dinner, Jarndyce tells them about the invitation to Chesney Wold. Esther has a little panic attack and abruptly leaves the room, saying she can’t go. Later that night, she speaks to Jarndyce privately in his study and tearfully explains about her mother. He comforts her and reveals a secret of his own: the woman who brought Esther up and entrusted her to his care was Lady Dedlock’s sister. As Esther points out, this makes it rather odd that he wouldn’t have guessed her mother’s identity, especially as he knows her former guardian was her aunt. Still, you could argue this is no less plausible than the book where he didn’t actually know her aunt was Miss Barbary even though they communicated with each other about Esther. Jarndyce also reveals that Esther’s aunt was engaged to Boythorn but broke off with him to raise Esther in seclusion. I’m grateful to the miniseries for including that detail since it’s such an intriguing one that makes the characters more interesting, though it’s rather odd that they just randomly mention it here with no foreshadowing earlier and no other references afterwards.

Esther reiterates that it would have been better if she had never been born. Jarndyce argues that then he would never have known her who has filled his life with so much joy. This, I think, is the best time to write about something from the book that’s lacking in this adaptation: its religious dimension. When Miss Barbary speaks of Esther and her mother’s disgrace in the miniseries, she seems to mean simply their disgrace in the eyes of society. We don’t hear about her attending church or reading the bible or anything. There’s no indication as to why Esther’s culture considers sex out of marriage disgraceful. On the flipside, the thing that really comforts Esther in the book and convinces her to stop regretting her very existence is the belief that “before my Heavenly Father I should not be punished for birth, nor a queen rewarded for it.” In the miniseries, it’s only the love of her friends that comforts her though, to be sure, that played a major role in her literary counterpart’s character arc too. Thus, the miniseries avoids both negative and positive depictions of Christianity. This makes it less likely to offend anyone on either side of the issue and more relatable to viewers that don’t care about it one way or the other, but I can’t help feeling that some thematic depth has been lost. Anyway, Jarndyce takes this opportunity to propose to Esther. He does so verbally rather than by letter and doesn’t use the euphemism of asking her to become “mistress of Bleak House.” I feel like those things better communicated that Jarndyce himself felt guilty and uncomfortable with what he was doing. But having him make the proposal to her face is more natural for the medium of television and modern audiences might have been confused by him asking Esther to be a “mistress.” She expressionlessly asks him for time to think about her answer.

Meanwhile, Hortense is taken to the police station. Inspector Bucket warns her against annoying respectable citizens. “Who gives you your orders?” demands Hortense. “Is it my lady? Or is it that devil Tulkinghorn? They are both as bad as each other!” This scene is original to this adaptation and it does a good job developing Hortense’s mounting anger. When she complains about the lack of “liberty, fraternity, equality,” Bucket tells her they’ve “had no revolution here.” I guess he’s not an exactly an expert on his country’s history. He makes Hortense write down her name and address, which turns out to be a plot point in this version of the story.

In her room, Esther regretfully burns Woodcourt’s flowers, a handy visual indicator of what’s going on in her head, one which Dickens handed the miniseries on a silver platter. Then she goes to Jarndyce’s study and tells him she’ll marry him. At breakfast the next morning, Esther is about to tell Ada the news, but Jarndyce stops her. “I hate secrets,” says Ada. “So do I,” says Esther pointedly. This is the episode where I feel the miniseries starts to get annoyingly heavy-handed about the theme of the story being secrecy. They do everything except hold up a big neon sign saying that.

BTW, Ada mentions that nobody makes blackberry jelly like Esther does. Would a housekeeper have made jelly herself? I thought she just bought the ingredients, and the cook would make it. But I’m not an expert on this time period so nobody should cite me on that.

Privately, Esther asks Jarndyce why she shouldn’t tell Ada about their engagement. He says he’s not sure about it and asks her not to tell anyone until they’ve both thought about the matter more. This conversation never takes place in the book. There, Esther puts off telling Ada as long as possible of her own accord and Jarndyce never says anything about it. I think that better expresses the idea that she’s not really happy about the idea, but it might have been confusing onscreen.

At Vholes’s office, Richard tells him and Skimpole that he’s considering selling out of the army to pay his many debts. Hopelessly, he asks if he can be assured of a speedy settlement in the Jarndyce case. Vholes says he can’t say that with the implication that that just goes to show his honesty. Once Richard has left, Skimpole and Vholes discuss what to do as they’re both relying on him for money. (This is the one scene in the miniseries where Vholes mentions his three daughters and his aged father in the Vale of Taunton that he has to support. It’s something of a catchphrase of his in the book.) Skimpole advises him to apply to John Jarndyce for help. “But Mr. Carstone has broken with him, has he not?” says Vholes. “Perhaps he has,” Skimpole says cheerfully, “but I fancy my friend Jarndyce has not broken with him.”

At Chesney Wold, Tulkinghorn comes across Rosa doing some needlework and questions her about her relationship with Lady Dedlock who happens to enter the room just then. She sends Rosa on an errand and tells Tulkinghorn she’ll soon be dismissing her for good. He objects that they agreed she wouldn’t do anything out of the ordinary without his permission. (“If any action is to be taken, Lady Dedlock, I will decide what and when, not you.”) In the book, Tulkinghorn never specifically forbids Lady Dedlock from dismissing Rosa though it can be inferred she knew how he’d react from what he did explicitly say. But having him do so is a good idea IMO. Afterwards, we get another scene original to this adaptation, a briefer one but very effective. Lady Dedlock burns her secret stash of old letters from Hawdon but can’t bring herself to burn Esther’s handkerchief that she got from Jenny.

Smallweed comes to George’s shooting gallery and gleefully announces that he’s calling in his debt. As I wrote before, I don’t remember this happening in the book but, as Smallweed says to George, my memory might be playing tricks on me. When George angrily grabs Smallweed by throat (remember what I said about him being a darker, less amiable character here), he pleads that it’s not him who’s going back on their deal, it’s Tulkinghorn. As the episode ends, we now have three characters with really good reasons to hate Tulkinghorn. Clearly, something is about to go down.

Episode 11

At Bleak House, Vholes gets Jarndyce to pay Richard’s debts, some of them anyway, behind his back. In the book, he just tells him of Richard’s bad news so no one will claim he hid anything. Esther suggests she go to Deal, where Richard is stationed, to reason with him. “If he’d only give up this wretched case,” she says, “everything could be put right even now.” Vholes concedes this but says that as Richard’s lawyer, it’s his duty to point out that Richard has an interest in Jarndyce and Jarndyce and a right to pursue that interest.

When Esther relays this conversation to her, Ada gets angry that Mr. Jarndyce didn’t send for her when Vholes came. This is something of a forced excuse for Ada to rebel and I’m cynically included to say the screenwriter just employs it because rebelliousness was for a time the default setting for modern writers when giving a heroine personality. But there are some changes to Ada’s character from the book that I actually really like in this scene. In Dickens, she just sends Esther with a letter for Richard. Here she decides to go herself. (Don’t ask me why she doesn’t do that in the book.) Also, she gets angry at Esther for speaking of Richard as if he’s crazy and needs to be cured somehow. This is consistent with her character early in the book, where she initially was willing to believe the best of Richard no matter what, but by this point in the story the scales had fallen from her eyes though the love never left her heart. Having her be the only one in Bleak House to keep defending Richard’s decisions makes for more interesting character dynamics. She resolves that once she’s come into her inheritance, she’ll sign it all over to Richard. Esther gently tries to tell her this would be a dumb thing to do given his track record, but she won’t hear of it.

At Chesney Wold, Lady Dedlock tells Rosa Mr. Rouncewell will be coming to take her away. Rosa breaks down crying and hugs her. It’s a really sad scene, especially Lady Dedlock’s final wish that Rosa think kindly of her whatever she may hear. The relationship between these two characters is one of the seemingly minor but really vital ones in the story that this adaptation nails.

Ada and Esther take a room in Deal. The innkeeper (Barry Ewart), making conversation, tells them that a ship, the India, has just arrived. BTW, while Ada doesn’t accompany Esther to Deal in the book, Charley does so but not here. There’s no reason given why not so I assume it was because child actors can only work so many hours.

Esther and Ada visit Richard at his barracks. If they’d come a few hours later, he tells them, they’d have found his rooms vacant. His third attempt at a career is going the way of the previous two though this is the first one we see him feel ashamed of quitting. “It’s not just the debts,” he says. “The regiment’s ordered abroad. How could I go abroad? How could I trust even Vholes to see to my affairs unless I was at his back?” Ada explains her plan of giving him her inheritance. Richard is moved but still insists on selling out of the army and devoting his energies to Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

The women return to the inn to find a celebration in progress. Allan Woodcourt, the hero of the shipwreck is there. He and Esther lock eyes across the room. Ashamed of her face, she runs away.

We finally see Jo again. (That’s not a complaint. I’d forgotten about him, and I think we’re supposed to do that and then feel guilty about it.) Things don’t look good for the boy as he wanders the streets of London by night. He’s beginning to cough up blood. He bangs on the door of Mr. Snagsby’s shop, but the police send him away before Snagsby himself can answer.

Esther is pacing the floor of her room at the inn when there’s a knock at the door. It’s Woodcourt. Esther rallies her courage and answers. This is a rare case of the miniseries making her a less “strong female character” than she is in the source material. In the book, while she initially panics and runs away upon Woodcourt showing up, she then scolds herself and sends him an invitation to see her. In this version, it looks like he comes without that. Anyway, the ensuing dialogue scene isn’t as well written as what Dickens probably would have written if he’d actually depicted it in detail, but he didn’t so it’s an improvement on the book by default. I like the parallel it draws between Woodcourt and Esther who have both gone through harrowing experiences, the shipwreck and smallpox, and behaved heroically. They discuss Richard whose obsession with chancery is leading him to neglect his health as well as his finances. Woodcourt promises Esther to be a good friend to him.

Richard, Ada, Esther and Woodcourt eat together at the inn. Richard’s frenzied, feverish behavior and ill appearance worry the other three. He seems to be the only one enjoying the meal and that seems to be because he’s in denial.

As Mr. Rouncewell waits to speak to the Dedlocks at Chesney Wold, he sits with his mother and they reminisce about his troublesome brother, her favorite son who ran off to the wars and never came or wrote back. There’s no dialogue between Mrs. Rouncewell and her more well-to-do son in the book, just between her and her grandson, but this scene is very in keeping with what we know about them and their relationship from there.

Lady Dedlock and the resentful Sir Leicester hand Rosa over to Mr. Rouncewell. Rosa is sorry not to receive a last kindly look from her lady before she goes. In the book, Tulkinghorn is present for this scene, and I feel like his absence makes it much less exciting. Maybe the miniseries felt that there was so much going on with every character, what with the animosity between Sir Leicester and Mr. Rouncewell, Rosa’s pain at Lady Dedlock’s seeming coldness and Lady Dedlock’s own concealed pain, that including Tulkinghorn would just be too much. Or it could be that Tulkinghorn is in London at the moment, and they wanted this scene to take place at Chesney Wold so they could have the conversation between Mr. Rouncewell and his mother. I can understand that; it was pretty great.

Esther and Ada tell Jarndyce about Richard and Woodcourt. There’s a great moment when Ada teases Esther about the latter, not realizing how inappropriate that is in front of Mr. Jarndyce. Ada also gets angry when Jarndyce speaks gloomily about Richard’s decisions, saying they should “allow him to know what’s best for him.” Again, I like this change to her character.

Jenny, who’s come back to Tom-All-Alone’s for the moment, and Woodcourt find the ailing Jo. They’re not angry at him for running away as they are in the book, which I suppose would have made them come across as too cruel but also would have made the scene more interesting IMO. At Miss Flite’s suggestion, Woodcourt takes Jo to George and Phil’s shooting gallery for shelter. They readily agree to care for him. Jo asks to see Mr. Snagsby and Esther, his few friends, again. He also reveals that he’s been hounded not just by Inspector Bucket but Tulkinghorn as well. George’s face says, “as if I needed another reason to hate him!”

Clamb informs Tulkinghorn that the Dedlocks are in London and Rosa has been dismissed. He confronts Lady Dedlock at her home and says he intends to tell Sir Leicester the truth about her, possibly tomorrow. This is the last scene between these two outwardly frosty, inwardly fiery characters and they make it a good one. Gilliam Anderson and Charles Dance both deserve so much credit. Tulkinghorn makes a rare mistake as he doesn’t notice Hortense hanging around the Dedlock house and spying on him.

All the characters who care about Jo, which include Jarndyce, Esther, Ada, Miss Flite, Phil, George and Snagsby (not Charley though; see what I wrote about her earlier), are present for his last night alive. Esther takes Woodcourt’s role in the book of trying to teach him the Lord’s Prayer in his final moments, which I think makes sense though you could argue since Woodcourt has less to do in the story than Esther, he should have kept that moment. Anyway, it’s a heartbreaking scene. Mr. Jarndyce gets some lines similar to Dickens’s prose at this point in the book. (“Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, your worships. Dead, right reverends of every order and degree. Dead and dying thus around us every day.”) If I recall correctly, the 1985 miniseries does this as well.

Tulkinghorn returns to his office. Meanwhile, Lady Dedlock goes for a walk outside in the middle of the night. One of her footmen witnesses her leave. There’s a fun little in-joke for fans of the book here. Dickens jokingly referred to the Dedlocks’ footmen as “Mercuries in powder.” (Mercury was the classical messenger of the gods/god of messengers.) Here one of them actually has Mercury for a surname. (It’s the one played by Richard Cant.) Hortense also sees Lady Dedlock go and follows her at a distance. Sgt. George goes for a walk after making it clear to Phil whom he blames for Jo’s death. (“It all comes back to Tulkinghorn. He’s like the old Enemy himself.”) He doesn’t tell Phil where he’s going but the latter notices that he’s taken a pistol with him.

It’s crystal clear to what this episode is building up. I don’t mean that as a criticism. The anticipation is electrifying. Tulkinghorn is such a jerk that in my experience most viewers are now rooting for Lady Dedlock, George and Hortense to team up and play a game of Russian Roulette with him. That doesn’t happen but here is what does. Clamb leaves the office and brushes against George as he goes past him. We get a point of view shot of someone entering the building. Tulkinghorn recognizes them but doesn’t get to say their name before they shoot him dead.

Episode 12

Clamb comes into work in the morning to find his boss’s corpse on the floor. I don’t know why the miniseries omits the book’s detail of the painted figure on the ceiling pointing at it.

Meanwhile, George is washing his hands. Phil asks him why he took a pistol with him last night but before he can answer, Mr. Smallweed shows up to take inventory of the shooting gallery. George just cocks a pistol at him and scares him away. “Mr. Tulkinghorn will hear of this!” Smallweed calls back over his shoulder. George smirks. We may be meant to wonder whether it’s because it’s fun to scare Smallweed or because he knows Tulkinghorn will never hear anything again.

At the murder victim’s former offices, Inspector Bucket begins his investigation with his typical casualness or surface casualness. (“You’ve had a shock,” he tells Clamb as he offers him some wine, “at least, I hope you have.”) I wrote before that this adaptation follows the various detectives through every step of their investigations. As Bucket is the most obvious detective in the story, we spend a lot more time with him here than we do in the book. Happily, he feels very in character with what we do see of his counterpart there and Alun Armstrong is perfectly cast. Unfortunately, we spend so much time on this particular mystery, that another “investigation” of Bucket’s a few episodes later doesn’t get the time it should IMO. But never mind that now. He asks Clamb about any people who knew Mr. Tulkinghorn and didn’t like him. Clamb reluctantly tells him about Sgt. George and how he practically ran into him just outside the night before.

While the miniseries tries harder than the book does to make George and Lady Dedlock likely suspects in the murder mystery, it’s pretty obvious from Lady Dedlock’s reaction to the announcement that Clamb has come to see her and her husband that she’s bracing herself for Tulkinghorn to reveal her secret. Her reaction to the news that he’s died is also obviously genuine shock and guilty relief. Sir Leicester demands to see the officer in charge of the investigation.

The police won’t let Smallweed into Tulkinghorn’s office at first but when he puts up a fuss, Bucket gives them the go-ahead, probably because he wishes to question him. (The way Bucket casually partakes of Tulkinghorn’s food and drink as he searches his office is hilarious.) When questioned about whom the murderer might be, Smallweed asks what the information is worth. “Three years hard labor for withholding evidence if you don’t cough up, my friend,” says Bucket. Smallweed accuses George of the murder and gives an exaggerated account of his threats. Bucket calls this interesting but cirumstantial. In a great suspenseful moment, Smallweed sees Lady Dedlock’s old love letters on the desk and claims he’s come to collect them but Bucket, more or less, throws him out without them.

Esther gets a letter saying that Caddy has had her baby. I love that the miniseries keeps the book’s detail of Esther having to remind herself of Caddy’s married name. It’s little things like that that make fans smile. Neither Caddy nor her child are doing well, and Esther and Ada go to see them. In the book, Jarndyce suggests that the Turveydrops’ doctor isn’t very good and that they get Woodcourt instead. The adaptation expands on this with the character of old Mr. Turveydrop’s “personal physician,” Mr. Growler (Brian Pettifer.) He’s hilarious and feels just like one of Dickens’s caricatures. Caddy weakly tells Esther that she thinks his “black mixture” might do her good if she could just keep it down. I have to praise that line for sounding exactly like it was written by Dickens even though he never wrote jokes about vomiting that I can remember. Esther dismisses Growler and tells Ada they’ll send for Mr. Woodcourt.

At the Dedlocks’ London residence, Sir Leicester tells Inspector Bucket that he’s offering a hundred guineas to anyone who can provide information about Tulkinghorn’s murder. Bucket tells him he has a suspect, George, already but he doesn’t feel the need to arrest him yet. Sir Leicester insists he do so before the man flees. “I suppose you have to consider every possibility,” says Lady Dedlock with studied casualness. Clearly, she’s worried about what might be discovered about herself in this investigation. BTW, Inspector Bucket’s tic of constantly addressing Sir Leicester by his full name comes from the book but Sir Leicester’s annoyance at this is original. Timothy West’s looks of irritation are highly amusing.

Woodcourt and Esther tend to Caddy and her baby as they sleep, further developing their relationship. Meanwhile, Ada goes to Vholes’s office and asks for directions to Richard’s new lodgings. He hesitates to give them to her until she says she hasn’t come to persuade Richard to drop him though that’s what she’d like. At Richard’s miserable new apartment, he and Ada get a bit more physical with each other than respectable unmarried people would in this time period. Actually, they’ve arguably been doing that before this, but I think the viewers are supposed to be aware of it for once in this scene.

Night has fallen and George and Phil are sadly reflecting on their inevitable loss of the shooting gallery. Phil gently urges George to try to reconnect with his family, but he refuses. Phil also reveals that it’s his birthday. “I’m sorry, Phil,” says George. “I’ve ruined that as well.” In the book, Mrs. Bagnet had a birthday around this point. I guess Davies felt that even though she’d been cut, someone close to George having a birthday was important to the spirit of the scene.

Meanwhile, Woodcourt has been invited over to Jarndyce’s London house to celebrate Ada’s birthday. (No, this isn’t leading up to the reveal that she and Phil are twins who were separated at birth though that’s always a possibility with Dickens.) There’s a great moment of awkwardness as Woodcourt wants to take Esther’s arm and lead her into dinner but Jarndyce does so first. Esther also gets a great deer-in-the-headlights look on her face when Mr. Jarndyce offers to get Woodcourt a position in the North country. Woodcourt says there’s too much to keep him here at the moment and then it’s Jarndyce’s turn to get that look. Richard is also a guest at the birthday party, looking in bad health and palpably hostile to Mr. Jarndyce. He nearly makes a big scene at dinner, accusing him of standing between him and his rights, though to his credit, he sincerely apologizes to everybody afterwards. Jarndyce raises a toast to Ada, mentioning that she’s legally an adult now and she sends Richard a significant look.

In their room, Ada teases Esther about Woodcourt again and she has to confess her engagement to Jarndyce. Ada is hurt that she didn’t confide this in her before.

George and Phil are celebrating Phil’s birthday as much as they can under the circumstances, which isn’t much, when Bucket drops by the shooting gallery. He partakes of the refreshments, makes seemingly friendly conversation and then arrests George for the murder of Mr. Tulkinghorn. In the book, all the friendly conversation and refreshment partaking happen at the Bagnets’ party where Bucket doesn’t want to make a scene and the arrest comes when he and Geroge leave together. His behavior makes less sense here. Maybe it’s because George has a sword in hand when Bucket enters, and he wants to make sure he’s disarmed before he makes the arrest.

In prison, Bucket questions the devastated George who confesses that he considered killing Tulkinghorn, unlike in the book, but claims he didn’t go through with it. When Bucket questions him further, he remembers a woman with a black fringed shawl coming up the stairs to Tulkinghorn’s as he was going down them. At Tulkinghorn’s funeral procession, Bucket notices Hortense among the observers and calls to her but she runs away. “All right, Missie. Later will do as well as sooner,” he says.

Jarndyce, Woodcourt and Esther visit George in prison. I wish Hugo Speer gave more of the impression Esther gets in the book that he’s more like the prison guard than the prisoner, but he’s wonderful in the role in general. He tells them he doesn’t intend to get a lawyer because all the lawyers in this story are evil. I wish the miniseries had the time to go into his full explanation from the book. Esther believes that Phil is the only one who could persuade George to change his mind. When she, Jarndyce and Woodcourt urge him to do so though, he says he couldn’t do it. Is there anyone who could? Phil says there is “but it’s a great secret. I promised never to speak of it.” (See what I mean about this adaptation hitting you over the head with theme of secrecy?) Woodcourt presses him and he admits that Geroge has a mother. That mother is…Mrs. Rouncewell! The first time I watched this miniseries, I had read the book once, but I had skimmed the parts about George, Mrs. Rouncewell and the Bagnets and I did not see this revelation coming though I could clearly see the setup in retrospect. Well done.

Back at Tulkinghorn’s office (former office, I should say), a police officer gives Bucket a piece of paper someone left. It has “Lady Dedlock Murderess” written on it.