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Have you seen ‘Dickensian’ on BBC1? It is – and we use the term advisedly – a bonkers mash-up of some of Charles Dickens’s best-loved characters, hung on a murder-mystery involving Scrooge, Jacob Marley, the young Miss Havisham and all your other faves. It’s a hoot: if you like Dickens, you can spot where the characters and plots join together. If you don’t, it’s just a handsome costume romp.
This show at the Charles Dickens Museum collects props, costumes and designs from the series and dots them around the house where the writer lived in the late 1830s as he became a literary megastar. It’s a great introduction to the museum, and an interesting study in how a canon is approached by different generations. People who’ve never read any of his books are fond of saying that if Dickens were writing today, he’d be doing it for TV. This is patently bollocks. What’s missing from ‘Dickensian’ is what makes his books extraordinary: a coruscating, sinuous, ever-inventive use of language. Still, his characters are robust enough that you could adapt most of his novels using the cast of ‘Hollyoaks’ without too much damage, and whether ‘Dickensian’ is your first experience of England’s greatest novelist or not, a trip to this show is a treat.