Dickensblog

Nicholas Nickleby, a small farmer in Devon, has died. As if this was not enough hardship for his wife and his children, Nick and Kat, he left them in a great deal of debt which makes them basically homeless. The only person they can turn to for help is their uncle Ralph, a successful businessman in London. As Ralph and Nicolas were not on good terms, the family does not really know their uncle, but they are confident he'll want to help his relatives. When they arrive in London, Ralph indeed decides to give Mrs. Nickleby and Kat a home there and provides Nick with a job in one of his care homes in Yorkshire. So far, so good? But what will Nick find when he arrives at Dotheolds Hall and what does Ralph need Kat for?

As those familiar with the story can see, the beginning of this modern adaptation sticks close to Dickens's original narrative. The main things changed are the fact that Nick is not sent to work at a boy's school, but at an elder care home (though with the same word-joke in its name: Dotheboys versus Dotheolds!). There he meets his companion for the rest of the story, the neglected elderly Mrs. Smike.

When the story continues, the plot of this adaptation starts to deviate more from the novel. Some characters and incidents are left out completely. This most likely had to do with the very limited budget the producers of Nick Nickleby had to work with. The interesting thing is, that despite these changes and modernization of the story, I believe it still has largely the same message that Dickens infused his work with: the message of powerful people not caring one ounce for their little subjects' lives. And the message of how good persons working together can change this.

Even the messages of the individual characters is maintained very well, such as Newman Noggs, Ralph Nickleby's clerk and in the beginning of the story a weak character and an alcoholic. But by becoming Nick's ally later on, he shows, both in the book and the adaptation, how people can change and discover what (good) they can really do. So, though I did miss the Cheeryble brothers and John Browdie in this adaptation, I think with the limited means they did an admirable job of maintaining Dickens's story.

There are not many well-known actors attached to this production. Nick himself is played by Andrew Simpson, a young actor with only a handful of credits to his name on IMDb. But if Nick Nickleby is anything to go by, Simpson is a promise for the future. He convinces as the slightly naïve, but very kind boy-next-door. An honorable mention should also go to Jayne Wisener as Kat Nickleby, who does a very good job as a teenage girl who is forced to grow up too fast. The best-known actress in the production is Linda Bassett as Mrs. Smike, who has a great role and plays together wonderfully with Andrew Simpson as Nick. 

Something interesting that occured to me watching this modern adaptation, was concerning Dickens's more eccentric characters. We are used to them populating his works and maybe we consider them as caricatures of Victorian Britain. But the way they have been portrayed in Nick Nickleby shows them as real people, but people at the edges of society, people that we'd like to turn our backs on when we meet them. And maybe that's what these characters stood for all along.

If I can mention one less positive point about the adaptation, is that I found it slightly rushed, despite simplifying the narrative of Nicholas Nickleby. This was probably also because of the many travels the characters, mainly Nick and Mrs. Smike, made across the country, from Yorkshire to London and back again. But if I had a say in it and if there had been a somewhat larger budget for Nick Nickleby, I would've liked a sixth episode, to give the characters and their relationships a bit more depth.

Nick Nickleby is a wonderful addition to the new productions for the Dickens bicentennial year. It shows the timeless message of one of Charles Dickens's classics and I would therefore recommend it to all fans of Dickens and his works!