The Charles Dickens Collection, Volume 1 (Oliver Twist / Martin Chuzzlewit / Bleak House / Hard Times / Great Expectations / Our Mutual Friend) (Slim Packaging)

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Product Description Charles Dickens Collection 1, The (DVD)This collection includes six Charles Dickens masterpieces in 32 hours of classic television. The grotesque comedy and dark tragedy of Victorian London's streets comes to vivid life in these original productions from the BBC, remastered for DVD.]]> desertcart.com As can be clearly seen from the care lavished on these six BBC adaptions of Charles Dickens' novels, the British love their Dickens! And why not--Dickens is ideally suited to television, with his elaborate but vigorous plots, each a compendium of comically odious personalities (and one or two nice folk, just to keep things from getting too awful). Actors dig into these meaty roles with zeal, delighting in the hairpin turns from macabre horror to sweet sentiment. The more popular (and most frequently adapted) of the books at hand--Great Expectations and Oliver Twist--are the most conventional. The 1981 mini-series Expectations (in which young Pip learns the pitfalls of wealth through his relationship with the rich and bitter Mrs. Havishamand and her warped ward, Estella) is dutiful to its source but not adapted with much inspiration. Twist, from 1985, fares better; it's a zippy treatment of this tale of childhood deprivation and juvenile delinquency, and the horrors of Victorian orphanages will raise your hackles. The adaptation is capable but a little flat--still, any story where an undertaker observes, "Every tear is another shilling in the till," is clearly not lacking in wicked wit. Fortunately, the others are considerably juicier: Martin Chuzzlewit, a lesser-known but richly satirical book, has a star-studded production from 1994, featuring Paul Scofield, Tom Wilkinson, Pete Postlethwaite, and Julia Sawalha, among others. The wealthy Martin Chuzzlewit, deeply suspicious of all mankind due to being hounded by greedy, grasping relatives, threatens the happiness of his ward Mary and his namesake grandson. In addition to the sterling and energetic cast, Chuzzlewit has outstanding production values, as does the 1998 version of Our Mutual Friend, which goes to great lengths to evoke the textures of life in Dickens' London. The mysterious death of a man about to inherit a great fortune sets in motion a complex plot that intertwines two love stories (it's one of Dickens' most romantic works), social scheming, and murderous obsession. The names aren't quite as famous (such as Paul McGann, Timothy Spall, Anna Friel, and Keeley Hawes), but the performances are top-notch and the script is particularly dynamic. Bleak House, a Kafka-esque story of young innocents caught in an all-consuming, multi-generational lawsuit, cultivates a rich and potent Gothic horror; the 19th century seems like an unnerving alien world, through which lawyers and policemen stride like cruel predators. Diana Rigg is the most famous face in this 1985 production, but strong performances abound. The final component of this box set is the most curious: A 1994 version of Hard Times starring Alan Bates and Richard E. Grant, which turns this dark story--about a schoolmaster/politician who raises his children on reason at the expense of all feeling and finally reaps the bitter rewards--into a compact, theatrical feature film that's so swift it's almost jaunty. Adapted and directed by Peter Barnes (writer of The Ruling Class), it's the most stylized production of the bunch, and while lacking the depth and narrative detail of the others, it effectively cuts to the essence of Dickens. The 2009 edition of this set comes in six slimpaks. --Bret Fetzer Review: Dickens Done Just Right - This box of Dickens dramas is a wonder. My wife and I rate it probably as the best "literary" made-for-TV drama series that we've seen yet. Yes, we've both read most of the books, and I've actually lectured on a few of them. But what a treat to see these solid, caring, often imaginative presentations, with fine direction, a few star actors filling key roles, abetted by superb work from the other players. The sets and costumes. too, open up the Dickens world in their own persuasive way. Very rarely do the productions seem narrowly stagy or limited; they have a real movie feel. Could anyone conceivably do these as well as the British, or more specifically the BBC? Hard to believe. Most of the Dickens novels are big sprawling productions where a great many characters appear, cross paths, and become part of a story that illuminates some key aspects of the social reality of the Victorian Age. The wonder is that, as presented here, the stories also seem very contemporary and relevant. The script-writers are really expert at leaving out certain things in the texts and yet conveying the complexity and sweep of the story. There are so many delicious moments in these shows: Lady Dedlock's confrontations with Tulkinghorn, Tom Pinch's seeing the light about Pecksniff in Martin Chuzzlewit, the wonderful opening of Bleak House where Lizzie helps her father fish corpses from the Thames. Yes, these are not played just as entertainment; there is real darkness here, moral darkness, the darkness of poverty, of narrowness and stupidity, and the filth that accompanied the glitter of Victorian life is not concealed. These are balanced, of course, by the warmth Dickens always generates when things go right, and when good people work together. Compulsive viewing, we found. I often found that the language of the great Victorian writers was too much for the slick and quick readers among my students. Well, here is a way of tasting something of the Dickens language, of entering the Dickens world, without straining to master the idiom. I'm not advocating that we stop encouraging people to read Dickens, but here is another road to his wonderful world. Those who have read him will enjoy almost all of this, while others may be led into a print-world they will treasure. One sour note: speaking of language, why does the BBC preface these dramas with such idiotic advertisements for their other productions? These noisy, stupid come-ons are totally out of place and show complete contempt for the (presumably) North American viewers at whom they're directed. Review: Great movies but crappy disc quality - Don't buy this set. We were so disappointed- the disc quality is terrible! We could barely get through Bleak House. The disc would not play Oliver Twist, episodes 4 and 5. Who knows if the others would play! These movies are fantastic but the company that produces these collections needs to use better-quality discs. I'd be happy to pay more if I was assured they would play without problems. I won't even try collection #2. And why cram a huge production like Bleak House on 1 disc??