Bleak House (2005) Episode Recaps 13-15

by The Adaptation Stationmaster

Episode 13

Inspector Bucket asks Clamb if he saw a woman with a black fringed shawl outside Tulkinghorn’s office the night of the murder. Clamb says he didn’t but that might have been because of the dark. (“I only saw the sergeant because he just about bumped into me.”) He also asks why the investigation is still going on after an arrest has been made. “Sometimes you have to do something and be seen to do something,” says Bucket, “and sometimes just doing something for the sake of doing something will make something else happen.”

Mr. Jarndyce brings George’s mother to his cell. It’s moving to see him break down crying and rest his head against her bosom when he’s been so tough up till now. She gets him to agree to have a lawyer defend him but requests that his wealthy brother not learn about his circumstances. In the book, he framed this more in terms of not wanting to bring shame to him. Here, it’s more of a matter of pride, though you could make the case that that was always George’s motive in the book, and he was just trying to make himself sound good by saying otherwise. “Oh, George, you’re just as silly as you ever were,” says Mrs. Rouncewell affectionately.

Jarndyce tells Esther the good news. She’s happy for George but is obviously a little on edge. She confides in Mr. Jarndyce that she’s worried if anyone finds out the hold Tulkinghorn had over her mother, she’ll be a suspect. In the book, of course, Esther never expresses this fear aloud to anyone that we see. There’s no need for her to do so in the literary medium since the reader has direct access to her thoughts. The fact that Jarndyce is the one in whom she can confide such personal things in this adaptation nicely demonstrates the bond between them. “If ever there was a woman above suspicion,” he assures her, “it’s Lady Dedlock.” Naturally, this leads to an ironic change of scene though it’s an unusually subtle one in that we don’t really know until the end why it’s ironic. (Well, we do if we’ve read the book but not otherwise.)

Mrs. Rouncewell makes a visit to Lady Dedlock at her London house. (Amusingly, despite all the stress she’s under, she still takes a moment to run her gloved finger under a tableside to check for dust. Maybe that’s how she copes.) She tells Lady Dedlock about George and protests his innocence. Unlike in the book, she mentions Jo by name and occupation and the part his death played in putting George under suspicion. It might have been interesting to explore how Lady Dedlock felt about the knowledge that a boy died because of her. Mrs. Rouncewell gives Lady Dedlock a note that someone left at Chesney Wold, asking her not to read it in her presence. She says she doesn’t believe what it says but begs Lady Dedlock, for George’s sake, to confess anything she knows about the murder that she’s not telling. The note is another one saying, “Lady Dedlock Murderess.” In the book, Lady Dedlock receives this simultaneously with the information that her secret is about to be exposed to Sir Leicester. It forms part of her motivation for running away. In this version, those things don’t happen until after she’s been cleared of suspicion, arguably making the whole subplot of George and his mother pointless. Ah well, it’s still gripping drama.

Esther and Woodcourt visit Caddy and her baby who are recovering nicely. As they leave together, Esther casually offers to mend Woodcourt’s coat for him. His intense gratitude worries her, and she quickly changes the subject to Richard. She thinks Ada is hiding some bad news about him. Woodcourt offers to go see him at his lodgings that night.

Woodcourt confides in Richard that he’s in love with Esther. After a cliche misunderstanding where Richard thinks Woodcourt is saying he’s in love with Ada, which the scene gets out of its system with merciful quickness, he’s happy for him and encourages him in this. It’s good to see that Richard still has some good qualities even though he can’t resist getting in a swipe at Jarndyce in the scene. (“Not even a fellow like that would keep a girl cooped up for the rest of her life just to sort out his linen cupboards.”) As with Jarndyce’s earlier proposal, we now know Woodcourt’s is coming, unlike in the book, and wonder how it will play out. (True, it’s easier to guess that Woodcourt is going to propose to Esther in the book that it is to guess that Mr. Jarndyce is going to do so, but we don’t specifically learn either character is planning to propose until the big scene.)

Esther suggests that she and Ada, who is acting unusually withdrawn and stoic, go to see Richard. (Don’t ask me why the miniseries has them be back at Bleak House for this scene when they’re going to immediately return to London.) Ada agrees but says Esther doesn’t have to go with her. Jarndyce thinks they should both go though and Ada doesn’t put up a fight.

At the Dedlocks’ London house, Mercury the footman gives Inspector Bucket another note saying, “Lady Dedlock Murderess.” Bucket’s reaction is entertainingly blasé. (“That’s old news, that is.”) While pretending to make friendly conversation with Mercury, he questions him and learns that Lady Dedlock went out for a walk the night of the murder, though Mercury can’t remember if she was wearing a black fringed shawl. It’s a lot more obvious what Bucket is doing in this scene than in the book, partly because the miniseries doesn’t give the character enough time to be really subtle.

At Tulkinghorn’s office, Bucket realizes that the mysterious notes are written in Hortense’s handwriting. He sends Clamb, who is hilariously exasperated by Bucket taking up space in the office by this point, to fetch her. To send a police officer, he says, would strike her as unfriendly.

Ada leads the way to Richard’s apartment. Esther is surprised she knows it so well. Richard has a bad cough. Esther suggests a change of air would be good for him, but he insists on staying near Vholes’s office and the court. (“We shall rouse up that nest of sleepers, mark my words!”) It’s deeply sad to see how pathetic he’s become. Even Richard himself seems aware of it now. (He was arguably self-aware a little earlier in the book.) Ada announces to Esther that she’s not going back to Bleak House. She and Richard have secretly married. “I’m sorry I kept it a secret from you,” she says, “but you kept a secret from me.” (Because the theme of story is secrets and secrecy. Do you get that yet? Do you get it?) I consider it something of an improvement on the book how Ada’s attitude in this scene is stoic rather than tearful. Not that there’s anything wrong with her being tearful but there are so many scenes of her being that way that it starts to lose its impact. There is a bit I miss from this scene in the book. It’s Esther trying to be cheerful and even playful to cheer the weeping Ada as she bids her farewell, only to break down in tears herself once she’s out of her sight. Still, I do think adaptations of books for film and television should be a little more fast paced than their source material if they’re to work well and scenes of characters leaving when we can easily infer that they leave eventually are certainly good candidates for the axe.

At Tulkinghorn’s office, Hortense freely admits that she wrote the notes. She says she knows Lady Dedlock is the murderer since she followed her to the office that night. When Bucket asks her if she can recall what she (Lady Dedlock) was wearing, she describes a black dress and a black fringed shawl. “If you was to go to her house, could you find that shawl for me?” he asks. “Of course,” says Hortense. “I know where all her clothes are kept! I was her maid, stupid man!” That night, she and Bucket by agreement go to the Dedlocks’ London house. Mercury lets Hortense in through the back. Out of her sight, he and Bucket exchange significant looks. All this is quite different from the book, but it makes for great suspense.

Meanwhile, Smallweed goes to Tulkinghorn’s office in Bucket’s absence. (When I describe Smallweed as going anywhere BTW, read that as him being carried there.) He offers Clamb a deal for Lady Dedlock’s love letters to Capt. Hawdon, reminding him that he’s out of a job and could use the money. Up till now, Clamb has seemed like a sympathetic character. That he might be one of the bad guys in the story is a great twist that again is original to this adaptation.

Back at the Dedlocks’, Bucket says he has some questions to put to her ladyship. He offers to ask them privately, but she says she’s fine with Sir Leicester being present. He asks her if she went for a walk the night of the murder, saying that Mercury says she did. Lady Dedlock concedes this but claims not to remember where she was going. She also says she can’t remember what she wore. Bucket tells her that a woman wearing a black fringed shawl was seen near Tulkinghorn’s office that night. Lady Dedlock says she doesn’t believe she possesses such an item. With Sir Leicester’s permission, Inspector Bucket rings a bell. This summons Hortense who is wearing that very shawl. She smugly says that she found it in Lady Dedlock’s closet with Mercury as a witness. Bucket lists all the evidence that Lady Dedlock was the one seen outside Tulkinghorn’s office. She “remembers” that she did go there to speak with him but that she never actually saw him or even entered the building as no one answered the door. Bucket rings the bell again, this time summoning a police officer whom he tells to “arrest this lady for the murder of Mr. Tulkinghorn.” The officer claps his hand on…Hortense! This scene is true to the spirit of the book in that it fools us or tries to fool us into thinking Bucket has come to arrest Lady Dedlock. There though it was just Dickens fooling his readers. The character of Bucket wasn’t fooling Hortense. (Well, he was but not in that particular scene.) It makes for really great television though I don’t think it really makes sense when you think about it. Was there really a reason for Bucket to go through this elaborate charade? I guess it allowed him not to lose track of Hortense, but it seems rather cruel to the Dedlocks and you’d think he could have done the same thing in a simpler way. Oh well. As I wrote, great television.

Episode 14

This episode picks up directly where the last one left off. Inspector Bucket asks Hortense if she knows where Lady Dedlock supposedly hid the murder weapon. Hilariously, she instantly goes from struggling furiously to standing still and giving a very meek “no.” Inspector Bucket reveals that he’s had a man following her who saw her drop a pistol down a well out in the country. In the book, it’s actually Bucket’s wife who follows Hortense for him and discerns her hiding place. I suppose that would have been too complicated for this miniseries. Ironically, while the miniseries generally seeks to soften or eliminate the book’s antifeminist themes, by cutting Mrs. Bucket and Mrs. Bagnet, it actually removes two of the more feminist-friendly characterizations in it. As she’s dragged out of the room, Hortense yells at Bucket, “I wish I could send you straight to Hell!” “I’m sure you do, my dear,” he replies cheerfully. I love that exchange. It’s original to the miniseries but feels perfectly true to the characters from the book.

Sir Leicester also gets a great line. After the police have gone, he laments Tulkinghorn’s demise. “What an end! To be shot through the heart by a domestic servant!” As if that’s worse than being shot through the heart by someone else. Lady Dedlock is just relieved. She has another tense moment when her husband asks her what she wished to speak to Tulkinghorn about, but he believes her when she says she can’t remember, and it must not have been important.

The next morning or so, Bucket releases George. Mrs. Rouncewell and Phil are there waiting to greet him. Mrs. Rouncewell tells her son that Sir Leicester has given him and Phil jobs working in his stables at Chesney Wold. “I expect you’ll be wanting to thank me, George,” says Inspector Bucket. “If I hadn’t wrongfully arrested you, none of this would have happened, would it?” That’s one of my favorite lines from a Dickens adaptation not to come from Dickens himself. George starts to get angry but controls himself, showing that’s he undergone character development in this version.

Lady Dedlock privately speaks to Inspector Bucket and asks that she not speak at Hortense’s trial and that her name be kept out of it as much as possible. Her vulnerability here after having been so proud and aloof for so much of the miniseries is very powerful. It’s implied that Bucket has figured out her secret, the gist of it anyway, but he agrees with her that it’s not worth embarrassing the Dedlock family. Hortense has confessed, rather defiantly so, and they don’t need many witnesses to convict her. “Whatever Mr. Tulkinghorn may have known or not known,” he assures her, “he’s taken it with him to the grave.” Naturally, we cut from that line to a scene of Clamb showing the fateful bundle of letters to Smallweed.

Esther returns to Bleak House and breaks the news to Jarndyce about Richard and Ada. There’s another forced conflict between the generally congenial characters as Esther is angry at him for not being more upset. As usual with these obligatory conflicts, it immediately gets resolved. I wouldn’t mind so much if there weren’t so many of them. Jarndyce and Esther reflect on how differently things have turned out from what they expected. He asks her if she’s not completely unhappy with things as they are, obviously meaning her engagement to him. Esther says she’s not, but she doesn’t sound very sincere.

Woodcourt, true to his word, visits Richard at his lodgings and invites him for a walk. He finds him, seated between Vholes and Skimpole with papers in front of him, looking like he’s being held hostage. Ada sits in the background, looking miserable. Woodcourt reports back to Esther, telling her Skimpole is continuing to leech off of the financially floundering Richard. He also tells her Bucket told him that Skimpole accepted a bribe for handing Jo over to him. In the book, Bucket himself tells Esther this as they search for her missing mother later. Having her learn it earlier here fits in better with the miniseries’ pacing. The revelation would be a distraction during the suspenseful search and otherwise Esther would have practically nothing to do in the episode beforehand. “I think I might have to speak to Mr. Skimpole about this,” she says grimly.

Guppy goes to Krook’s shop and tells Mr. Smallweed his anonymous client would still pay for the letters. Smallweed tauntingly tells him that he’s “selling to the husband” instead. (“How’s that for the highest bidder? And nothing for Guppy of Kenge and Carboys.”) To his credit, Guppy runs to Lady Dedlock’s London house to warn her, but Mercury informs him that the Dedlocks have gone to Chesney Wold.

That evening at Bleak House, Esther privately confronts Skimpole about his betrayal and effectively blackmails him into leaving Richard alone by threatening to tell Mr. Jarndyce about it. This is far and away the adaptation’s most successful attempt to make Esther “stronger” than she is in the book. I should probably mention that I also love the version of the scene in Dickens. Esther’s exasperated helplessness there makes her very relatable to me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t also enjoy cheering for this awesome moment the miniseries gives her.

Guppy arrives at Chesney Wold and warns Lady Dedlock about Smallweed. She instructs a footman (John Sheahan) not to admit the man under any circumstances but it’s too late. Smallwed and Judy are already talking to Sir Leicester in the library. The scene of them showing the letters to Sir Leicester and getting him to pay five hundred pounds from them (or agree to do so later anyway) is even more devastating than its counterpart in the book. Unlike Inspector Bucket, Smallweed makes no attempt to break the news about Lady Dedlock gently. After they’ve gone, Sir Leicester wearily asks Mrs. Rouncewell to send for his wife. She tells him that she’s disappeared, leaving behind a note for him. The note tells him Lady Dedlock is running away and will “encumber him no more.” It might not necessarily be a suicide note but it sounds like one. Sir Leicester passes out from shock and is unable to form words when he’s revived but he manages to send for Inspector Bucket and write “find her” on a slate.

Bucket finds Esther’s handkerchief in Lady Dedlock’s room. This gives him an idea. He goes to Esther in London and asks if her mother has made contact with her. (Characters in this miniseries seem to be able to travel long distances faster than would be realistic in this time period.) Allan Woodcourt happens to be in the room and learns about Esther’s parentage this way. Esther volunteers to accompany Bucket on his search and Woodcourt goes too. I wish the miniseries could have included the reason Esther goes in the book, that Lady Dedlock would be more likely to reveal herself to her than to the police, but oh well. Unlike in the book, we only see them go to Tom-All-Alone’s and examine the bodies of recent suicide victims retrieved from the river. They don’t question Jenny’s husband or Snagsby’s maid or anyone we’ve seen before. Lady Dedlock doesn’t bribe anyone to lead Bucket on a wild goose chase and he doesn’t realize what she’s done too late and backtrack. (We do get a brief scene of Lady Dedlock at Jenny’s house, but she doesn’t switch clothes with her or anything.) Instead, after searching several places offscreen, the searchers go back to Jarndyce’s house, stumped, where Charley hands Esther a letter left for her by a boy. It’s a farewell letter from Lady Dedlock, concluding with “the place where I shall lie down if I can get so far has been often in my mind. Forgive me.” Inspector Bucket guesses from this that Lady Dedlock has gone to Hawdon’s burial place. But by the time everyone gets there, she’s lying in the gateway, dead from overexposure. It’s really a pity the miniseries didn’t have the time (or possibly the inclination) to dramatize the search as the book does. As it is, this final part of the episode is less exciting and more simply miserable. Still, if that was what their goal was, they achieved it. The image of Esther clinging to her mother’s corpse is one of the most heartwrenching in all of Dickens.

Episode 15

Sir Leicester, accompanied by George, lays flowers on Lady Dedlock’s grave where she’s been buried with honor alongside the other less scandalous Dedlocks. “If she had only known, George Rouncewell, how much I loved her,” he laments, “and how little I cared about what the world would think of her!” OK, now I’ve got to go into a really weird example of the Mandella effect. I distinctly remember reading a recap of this episode somewhere online that described what was apparently a deleted scene of Sir Leicester encountering Boythorn at the graveyard. I can’t find this recap online anymore (it’s not the official one from the BBC, not now anyway), but I can’t have imagined reading it because it never occurred to me watching the episode that this opening scene had been trimmed. But having read it, I have to talk about it because it makes so much sense. Apparently, Boythorn was going to sincerely express condolences over Sir Leicester’s loss and offer to let him have the much-disputed right of way over his land. Sir Leicester would then respond indignantly, not wanting to be pitied, and Boythorn would pretend to rail against him as usual, seeing that’s what would comfort him. This would have provided closure for the characters and been a really cute scene in general. It’s such a shame it had to be cut for time.

I remember reading about another deleted scene in the elusive recap. (I feel like Guppy, thinking he must have seen Lady Dedlock’s portrait in a dream.) It would have shown George and his brother reuniting. I’d have enjoyed seeing that, but I don’t mind it being cut nearly as much.

We cut to Esther on her way to visit Ada and Richard. Enough time has passed for her to recover from her grief over her mother and her smallpox scars have entirely faded too. This is reasonable enough as the book implies, even states, that Esther recovers her good looks eventually. It’s not clear there that she’s recovered them at this point though and I do feel it lessens the impact of Woodcourt’s continued attraction to her. Esther crosses paths with Miss Flite who tells her she has two new birds whom she calls “the wards in Jarndyce.” Seeing Esther distressed by the symbolism of this, she assures her that all the birds will fly free “on the Day of Judgment.”

Esther sees Ada alone at her apartment. Almost instantly, she breaks down crying and tells Esther that Richard is killing himself with his fruitless obsession with Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Except for Ada revealing that she’s pregnant, this scene arguably doesn’t serve much of a point since the last episode already showed us scenes of the Carstones’ married life. But I’d argue we needed a scene of Ada telling Esther about it to her face and Carey Mulligan really hits it out of ballpark with her performance. Richard, looking more haggard than ever, arrives with Woodcourt. It’s a bit heartening to hear him say he “gave Vholes the slip for once” and jokingly refer to chancery documents as “a lot of old rubbish.” This shows he isn’t completely deluded, just ninety eight percent deluded.

As he walks back with her, Woodcourt tells Esther Richard is suffering from Consumption. (Does he ever get an official medical diagnosis in the book? I can’t remember.) On a more cheerful note, he tells her that Mr. Jarndyce has helped him obtain a salaried post in the North country. When she says she’ll miss him, he asks her to marry him. She says she’s honored by his proposal but has to refuse. I actually find his response kind of funny. (“I don’t want you to feel honored by my proposal! I want you to marry me!”) Reluctantly, she tells him about her engagement to Jarndyce and hastens away before she breaks down crying. We see her do so at night in the privacy of her room while Mr. Jarndyce listens sadly from the hallway. I feel like this scene doesn’t work for me as well as it should as I’m honestly more invested in Esther’s relationship with Jarndyce, despite the lack of sparks between them on her part at least, than I am in her relationship with Woodcourt. Still, that’s less true of this miniseries than it is of the book. It’s truer than I’d like but it’s less so.

That same night, Smallweed is still making his inventory of Krooks’. He pushes the dead man’s cat off her accustomed seat to find the last will and testament of the original Jarndyce! Realizing that the true version has been lying there all this time is enough to make viewers howl with frustration. (I mean that as a compliment to the writing, not a real complaint.)

Meanwhile, Esther rallies herself and tells Jarndyce she has something to confess to him. He braces himself for her to say she’s in love with Woodcourt but all she says is that she’s broken their agreement by telling Ada and Woodcourt of their engagement. She also tells Jarndyce their wedding should be as soon as possible, but she does so with an air of “let’s get this over with.” Jarndyce can’t help but pick up on this. Nevertheless, he names the date and the two of them share an awkward kiss.

Before Smallweed can figure out how to make money off his discovery of the Jarndyce will, Bucket shows up, presumably to make sure Smallweed isn’t going to blab the Dedlocks’ dirty laundry to anyone else. He notices him pocketing the document and intimidates him into handing it over. This comeuppance is annoyingly less satisfying than it is in the book. That’s partly because Smallweed has been built up as a much bigger villain here. We’ve actually seen him throw out Miss Flite rather than just heard about it and he’s arguably responsible for Lady Dedlock’s death. (In the book, the Chadbands are blackmailing Sir Leicester with the information about his wife too, so it feels as if it were going to come out one way or another and she also thought the police suspected her of murder at that point.) It’s also because he doesn’t suffer the indignity of his grandchildren betraying him though I’m sure this version of Judy would have been happy to do so.

Jarndyce and Esther are brought to Kenge’s office. Guppy notices that Esther is looking much better than the last time he saw her, which is a reasonable interpretation of the book but isn’t completely clear there. Typically, this miniseries makes Guppy more sympathetic than he is in the source material. Here, they interestingly make him more explicitly mercenary. Anyway, the lawyers explain that the unearthed will completely resolves Jarndyce and Jarndyce. It diminishes Mr. Jarndyce’s bequest while increasing Richard and Ada’s inheritance, which they’ll receive at the beginning of the next term. We see Richard joyfully albeit feverishly dressing for the big day in court, telling Ada, who is laughing and almost crying with relief, how wonderful everything is going to be for them. If you’ve read the book and know what’s coming, this is an extremely painful scene to watch.

Esther and Jarndyce are about to leave for court too. He can’t quite believe in anything good coming from the Jarndyce fortune. “But if you tell me it’s a happy day, then of course I must believe it,” he says to Esther. They’re interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Guppy with his mother in tow. He tells Esther’s he’s no longer a mere legal apprentice and renews his proposal to her. She politely declines, explaining that she’s engaged. (Jarndyce speaks for her in this scene in the book.) Mrs. Guppy is furious at this, saying her son is too good for Esther and yelling at her and Jarndyce to “get out!” It’s a hilarious scene though not quite as hilarious as the one in book since Guppy is able to quiet her before they leave here. Dickens had him drag his mother out the door with her still screaming. I loved that.

Jarndyce and Esther arrive at court to find all the lawyers celebrating and tearing up old documents. Since in this adaptation, it’s not been announced yet that the whole Jarndyce estate has been absorbed in costs, they don’t come across as cruel as they do in the book where they seem to be amused that only members of their profession benefited from the inheritance while the rightful heirs got nothing. Here it feels more like they’re just happy that they’re finally through with the tedious legal case. The Lord Chancellor gets some of Kenge’s lines from the book about how Jarndyce and Jarndyce has been “a monument of Chancery practice.” Unlike Kenge though, he sounds genuinely sorry to announce that the real will was found too late. (Vholes doesn’t look guilty at all.) Also unlike the book, we get to see Richard’s first reaction to the news. He starts to protest only to begin violently coughing up blood.

Ada, Jarndyce and Esther gather around Richard’s deathbed. Sadly, unlike in the book, Woodcourt isn’t there despite his friendship with Richard. I imagine this was because the miniseries didn’t want him and Esther to officially get together until the very end of the episode and having them be in the same room after her rejection of his proposal would have distracted from the main drama of the scene. Richard begs forgiveness of Jarndyce and Ada for having wronged them. They grant it of course. As in the book, Richard remains hopeful to the end, maintaining that “everything’s come clear” now that Jarndyce and Jarndyce is over and that he’ll be able to recover and “begin the world’ a second time. The miniseries perfectly captures the mingled pain and relief of Dickens’s version of this scene.

Then we see Miss Flite releasing all her birds, something we only hear about from her in one sentence in the book. I interpret it as more of a sad thing there, but here it comes across as happier. After the deaths of Lady Dedlock and Richard, I guess viewers could do with an uplifting moment.

Sometime later, long enough for Ada’s pregnancy to be visible but not long enough for her to be out of mourning, Jarndyce announces that he’s taking her and Esther on a holiday to Yorkshire. There he shows Esther an exact replica of Bleak House for her to live in with her husband whom he’s realized should be Woodcourt, not him. I imagine the miniseries wanted this to come at the very end of the episode so they could keep viewers in suspense and end on a less depressing plot point than Richard’s death. (I’d argue they ended up making that death more depressing since Richard no longer dies knowing Woodcourt and Esther will get married but oh well.) I wrote earlier that the adaptation changed Jarndyce dreaming of making Esther his wife when she was very young, but I was forgetting he actually gets that line in this scene. Denis Lawson actually manages to make it not creepy. I guess we should just assume he was lying in that earlier scene with Boythorn. Apart from that, this scene is not as interestingly written as its counterpart in the book or even compared with the best written scenes in the miniseries itself. In his audio commentary, Andrew Davies admitted he was mentally exhausted by the time he got to writing the final scenes and it kind of shows though who can blame him? Jarndyce telling Esther he knows she loves him but “in another way” is particularly predictable. But, hey, the scene is still good in its workmanlike way. Esther hanging her head as soon as Jarndyce mentions Woodcourt’s name is a particularly nice touch and it’s cathartic when she ultimately laughs through her tears.

For a finale, we see a wedding celebration at Bleak House II for Esther and Woodcourt. (I think it’s Bleak House II. It could be Bleak House I. They really do look alike.) Jarndyce gives away the bride and all the supporting characters are in attendance, including Ada with her baby. Even the Jellyby kids from Episode 1 are present. I would have preferred something closer to the book’s epilogue where we see Esther years later, happily married with many friends and a couple of kids of her own. But it’s still great to see all these unforgettable characters and charismatic actors one last time, almost as if they’re taking a bow.

So that’s the 2005 Bleak House. Sometimes, I admit, I wonder if it’s a little overrated but that doesn’t mean I don’t consider it great. This is one of the few Dickens adaptations I recommend both to fans of the book and those who would never get into it and if anyone makes the argument that it’s better than the book, well, I’ll argue the point but not as enthusiastically as I would if we were discussing your average adaptation of, say, A Christmas Carol or Great Expectations.