Dickens comes home to roost

There are some exceptional performances, great settings and marvellous frocks, but the adaptor's wilful manipulation of the Dickensian characters into attitudes he projects on to them simply doesn't ring true. Davies seems to think he knows what Dickens 'really meant', even if the poor old Victorian couldn't or wouldn't acknowledge it. The Sapphic subtext is a notable example of this.

Tonight, I'm told, it's worth tuning in to see a grim murder by one of the hammiest actors currently working outside a bacon factory - one Andy Serkis, aka Gollum, whose French accent would have sounded too far out on 'Allo, 'Allo.

But the purpose of this little blog is to draw the attention of a wide public to another Premier League Dickens adaptation which has had nothing like the appreciation it deserves. It's a serious, in-depth version of Little Dorrit, now enterprisingly out on DVD - the production company is Squirrel and it costs £12.99 (cheaper than your HSM3 ticket).

You may think some of the actors in the current BBC version are pretty good (when they're not overdoing it) but the 1988 film by Christine Edzard is packed with legendary performances - Alec Guinness and Derek Jacobi being two of them.

It was also the final performance of the wonderful Joan Greenwood (pictured) as an extraordinary Mrs Clennam. She had been a beautiful leading lady in British and US films since the 1940s and here she was giving the performance of her life as a monster. I contend it's quite the equal of Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, the benchmark ghoulish performance for ageing stars.

Do yourself a favour and rent or buy it.

I look forward to the day when some brave writer does a version of Dickens leaving in the best bit - the voice of the author himself. But narration seems very out of fashion these days.

As long as they don't get Simon Callow to do it ...