BLEAK HOUSE BEGINS: The BBC production of Charles Dickens' Bleak House begins this Sunday night on Masterpiece Theatre on PBS stations. This adaptation has received glorious reviews in Europe, especially for Gillian Anderson, who plays Lady Dedlock. From the clips I've seen, Anderson continues to demolish her image as Scully from the X-Files that she started with the criminally underrated The House of Mirth. Gillian, who is one of my favorite actresses...and yes, I was a huge X-Files geek, has done an amazing career revitalization. She moved back to England (where she grew up, and hearing her speak in an English accent is still bizarre after all those years of the fairly flat tones of Scully), won numerous awards for her theatre work in the West End, has done a ton of charity work and is now filming or completed five films in Europe. You go, girl.Here's a bit about Bleak House:
The icily beautiful Lady Honoria Dedlock nurses a dark secret... and the merciless lawyer Tulkinghorn seeks to uncover it. Acclaimed writer Andrew Davies turns his talents to one of Charles Dickens' most brilliant novels, arguably the greatest ever depiction of Victorian London -- from its splendid heights to its most wretched depths.
The charitable John Jarndyce, struggling with his own past, and his two attractive young wards Richard and Ada, are all caught up, like Lady Dedlock, in the infamous -- and interminable -- legal case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, which will make one of them rich beyond imagination if it can ever be brought to a conclusion. Jarndyce takes Esther Summerson, a girl without a past, under his wing as a companion for Ada, but he falls in love with her and her connection with Lady Dedlock may ruin to them both.
I know what I'll be doing for the next six Sundays...
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Clare