Little Dorrit and other Dickens

Currently watching the BBC miniseries, Little Dorrit. It's an adaptation of a Charles Dickens novel.....that I actually didn't know about. Or perhaps I'd forgotten this title, but how can that be? My English teacher in junior high and high school loved Charles Dickens...and Shakespeare and Bronte and a whole slew of British authors - maybe a few American ones too. Our English classes with Ms. J. Baker (I had her for a total of 3 years) were all about the study of the classics. No boring vocabulary or grammar study.

Anyway, the series is pretty good. Waiting on my second DVD to arrive in the mail. The actors who play Little Dorrit and Arthur Clennam are effective and subdued. Creepy Andy Serkis is a bit heavy-handed as the creepy Rigaud...or maybe I'm just scared of his character. I felt for poor, young Chivery when he was rejected. Does he kill himself over it? Wondering when it will dawn on Clennam that he loves Little Dorrit, or perhaps he doesn't (?). I shall see. 

I thought I recognized the actor, Matthew Macfayden, who plays Arthur Clennam. He was less puffy when he played Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightley. He's much more amiable in LD than he was in P&P, which is probably what threw me for a sec. Also the puffiness. 

For a junior high project on Charles Dickens, I chose The Old Curiosity Shop because I wanted a lesser-known work. Had to give a presentation about the novel. Although I've forgotten the plot, I'm pretty sure it shares many similarities with Dickens' other (better?) works we  tend to hear more about (Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield). I've not thought about this novel in a long while. I think it's time to watch the movie for the very first time. There happen to be 3 versions on Netflix: 1975, 1995 and 2007. I've added the '95 DVDs to my long movie list.

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