Dickensblog

By Amy Hoisington, guest blogger

(Please note that the review contains major spoilers.)

On Thursday, the 8th of December, I attended a preview of the first episode of The Mystery of Edwin Drood (airing on BBC2 this January) at the BFI Southbank in London. They had been previewing other BBC productions like Great Expectations and Sherlock earlier in the week.

As a fan of both Dickens and of miniseries, I couldn't have been more impressed. It was mentioned in the Q&A session after that it was the particular dream of one writer, Gwyn Hughes, to adapt the book for television. It seems in tackling Drood there are some benefits (a more compact story compared to, say, Copperfield) and drawbacks (the invention of an ending — comments suggested it will be different from previous attempts).

It's not word-for-word Dickens but effectively streamlined (notably as regards the Landlesses). It's quite faithful to the events of the book with a couple of interesting exceptions. The episode opens with Jasper in the midst of an opium daze, having a dream about killing Edwin while Rosa looks on, and what does he use? Strangulation by black scarf — and it was famously related that Dickens wanted Jasper depicted in an illustration with one for that purpose, though he never reached that point in writing.

There are some entertaining and varied alternate-killer theories people have come up with over the years, possible as Ned is killed "off-page," so to speak, but this miniseries is going firmly with Jasper, as he in this case he is actually shown onscreen as the murderer.

The only other change I could notice from the book is a minor one in terms of plot but somewhat emotional. In the book, Edwin runs into Princess Puffer but he never recognizes what she could warn him of; however, here she explicitly tells him about Jasper's intentions toward Rosa. Edwin feels this betrayal and thus the last few moments before he is murdered are more melancholy.

The first episode ends with Edwin's murder and the second will include the sundial scene between Rosa and Jasper, but beyond that there were no hints dropped about what direction they may go. I think it's bound to be a fascinating take on the "mystery."

As opposed to Bleak House, which utilized lots of shaky-cam handheld style shots, and Little Dorrit, which I recall to be more stationary, the camera work on The Mystery of Edwin Drood is very cinematic and glides around the cathedral interior in some beautiful ways. It was reported in Q&A that they used Rochester (the obvious choice, given Dickens's inspiration) for the exterior shots, but not for the interior. And unusually for Dickens, very little of the action is set in London, so they were able to avoid doing those "busy street" scene with people loading up carts and such that we've all seen in our period films.

The acting is of course uniformly excellent. A couple of old hands make their appearance: Alun Armstrong as Grewgious, and Ron Cook as Durdles. (It's amazing how Alun Armstrong can play Inspector Bucket, Flintwinch, and Grewgious and have them all seem so different.) Matthew Rhys, best known to me from the U.S. series Brothers and Sisters, absolutely blew me away as Jasper, jumping easily from directing a choir of young boys to downing bottles of laudanum, exhausted by pretending to be good. Freddie Fox does very well with Edwin, one of the more ambiguous Dickens protagonists. Tamzin Merchant does what she can with Rosa, but Rosa doesn't get much to do in the first half.

This version of Edwin Drood makes Neville and Helena Landless very clearly mixed race, and Sacha Dawan and especially Amber Rose Revah do a great job as strangers in a strange land, struggling with dignity on her part and pride on his.

Rory Kinnear is perfect as Crisparkle and his interactions with his mother (that he still lives with) are a nice light note.

The Q&A panel included a couple of the BBC people involved and cast members Freddie Fox and Rory Kinnear (and I spotted Tamzin Merchant in the crowd as well as the young boy who plays Deputy). It was wonderful to hear them discuss the production of this very fine adaptation of Charles Dickens's final novel. It's going to be rather more low-profile than Great Expectations (BBC1 during the holidays vs. BBC2 in January) but it's so marvelously well done — so far — I can't imagine anybody wouldn't enjoy it. Once it was over I realized I would have to wait to see the second half . . . it's going to be hard to wait so long.