I Just Finished Part One of Little Dorrit, Am I Blowing Your Mind?

Am I? Blowing your mind? Because usually the closest I get to Dickens these days is rewatching The Unquiet Dead episode of Doctor Who to see Eve Myles pre-Torchwood.

(And the Gelth, of course.)

And the closest I usually get to the classics on TV is vintage Bewitched (not the black and white years but anything after that, and especially Serena episodes, that's what I call a classic).

Instead of my usual Sunday morn ritual of watching SNL before I get out of bed even (thank the Gods of Tech for DVRs) I sat at my desk and watched the first of the fourteen-part Dickens adaptation of Little Dorrit .

Why? Well, a lot of my UK TV faves, first of all. Especially Ruth Brown (above), who is upcoming in episode two. In this the first stanza we spend a lot of time with Doctor Who companion Freema Agyeman (top) as Tattycorum (image above). 

Later on we get to see the aforementioned Myles as Maggy, which should be interesting. She plays a very Dickensian character, a life-long resident of the debtor's prison whose childhood illness brought developmental disorders. She has the capacity of a 10-year-old.

Brown plays Flora, the kind but somewhat overbearing childhood love of Arthur Clennam (Matthew Macfayden from Spooks, known in the US as MI-5).

I can't promise I'll see the whole thing through. Or, maybe I'm not as shallow as I think.

As this is a WGBH-Boston Co-Production, I presume we will see this on Masterpiece Theatre next year.

And given the current financial condition of the country, Little Dorrit is especially prescient, per Toby Young at the Independent:

So far, the only unqualified beneficiary of the credit crunch has been Little Dorrit, the BBC's new 14-part costume drama. When this serial was given the go-ahead, the head of BBC Drama Productions couldn't possibly have known just how relevant a story about a young woman raised in a debtors' jail would be.

Watch the BBC trailer after the jump.

LINK