Charles Dickens 200th Anniversary Collection
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Product Details
Collection of BBC drama series adapted from the novels by Charles Dickens.
In 'Great Expectations' (2011) eleven-year-old Pip (Oscar Kennedy) encounters
escaped criminal Magwitch (Ray Winstone) while out on the marshes and, out of
fear, helps him, an event which will shape both of their futures. When the
wealthy Miss Havisham (Gillian Anderson) seeks the presence of a boy at her
grand house, Pip is sent to her and becomes a playmate for her adopted daughter,
Estella (Isobel Meikle-Small/Vanessa Kirby). As a young adult, Pip (Douglas
Booth) learns that he will receive an inheritance from a mystery benefactor when
he turns 21. Now under the guardianship of lawyer Jaggers (David Suchet), Pip
moves to London where he hopes to become a gentleman worthy of Estella's love.
In 'Little Dorrit' (2008) the Dorrit family has spent years in a debtors' prison
due to the financial mess in which father William (Tom Courtenay) managed to
land himself as a youth. Youngest daughter Amy (Claire Foy), known as Little
Dorrit, finds work with the wealthy Mrs Clenham (Judy Parfitt) but knows that
her father will, in all probability, spend the remainder of his life in gaol.
However, when Arthur Clenham (Matthew MacFadyen), recently returned from abroad,
comes to suspect that his late father was in part responsible for the Dorrits'
plight, he becomes determined to make amends. But as he continues to delve into
the mysteries of the Dorrits' and his parents' shared past, he is unaware that
his own mother's house has been placed in peril by the arrival of a sinister
stranger.
In 'Oliver Twist' (2007) Oliver (William Miller) is born into a life of
seemingly hopeless poverty. Escaping the cruelty of the workhouse he has grown
up in, the young orphan makes his way to London where he meets a gang of
pickpockets, led by the charismatic Fagin (Timothy Spall), and receives the
first warm welcome of his life - unaware that this kindness comes at a price.
When he is mistakenly taken as a thief, the wealthy victim, Mr. Brownlow (Edward
Fox), brings Oliver to his home and shelters him but evil lurks on the horizon
in the form of Fagin's associate, the ruthless Bill Sykes (Tom Hardy).
In 'Bleak House' (2005) high and low life in Victorian London is explored to the
full when young Richard Carstone (Patrick Kennedy) and his cousin, Ada (Carey
Mulligan), are caught up in the interminable legal case of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce.
Drawn into a world where the icy and composed Lady Dedlock (Anderson) hides a
dark secret, and where their lives will be affected by the attentions of their
friend, Esther (Anna Maxwell Martin), their guardian, Mr John Jarndyce (Denis
Lawson), and the predatory attentions of various unscrupulous lawyers, boarding
house owners and debt collectors, the two young cousins will each meet with very
different ends as the case approaches its long-delayed conclusion.