Gripped

We've now completed the third episode (from fourteen) from the BBC's Little Dorrit adaptation. Noi is well and truly hooked, and I'm just a fanboy anyway so my allegiance was secure from the opening frames. Great pace to the series. The opener was an hour long but after that we're dealing with thirty minute episodes and they just shoot along. Unlike the film the adaptation stays true to the secondary characters - so far, at least - so we get all the melodramatic rigmarole of Rigaud and Miss Wade and Tattycoram, and very fine it is, especially in this medium.

Was a bit disconcerted by the relative youth of Arthur at the beginning, probably influenced by the definitive Derek Jacobi performance in the film, but I reckon I'll come to terms with it. It certainly makes the idea of some kind of attraction on the part of Amy more believably normative, but perhaps I sort of prefer the odd unnaturalness that the film achieved. I think there should be something a little uncomfortable about it all.

London is splendid, teeming with life, resplendent with jarring contrasts. The huge canvas a reminder not just of Dickens's extraordinary ambition, but also of a compelling moral vision that sought to bring these things together in some sort of coherence.

There's always a churning, powerful sense of outrage simmering beneath the swiftly-shifting surfaces. But this is a kind of generous, controlled outrage - the kind that somehow gets things done.