A bustling neighborhood in Victorian London.
Gaslight and cobblestone streets. Air choking with fog and human activity.
Back histories, if you like, are revealed here of events and individuals before Mr Dickens began crafting their later selves.
Where a healthy Little Nell keeps company with Bob Crachit’s eldest son.
Amelia Havisham is young and ravishing beautiful.
Mr Venus acts as a Bernard Spillsbury to Inspector Bucket, of the newly created Detective branch.
And where Jacob Marley is very alive, thank you ever so much, satisfying impulses gross, sadistic and repellent.
A half dozen stories, inspired by Dickens’ characters, weave and intersect.
Another dozen characters thread this way and that.
The rotten core that binds all is coin. Coin of the realm. Debt, bills, the workhouse, poverty that means starvation or slavery, and the means by which some will do anything for gain.
And there, three villains reign supreme in inflicting harm, ruination and despair.
Scrooge - Fagin - Compeyson
Grim series of misery and mystery, calculation and manipulation.
Fans of humanity as monsters will find themselves besotted.
Scripts are faithful, yet reverent, lacking antiseptic writing room compromises.
Excellent storytelling, masterful use of a handful of sets, superb casting.
