Bleak House 2-19

Tonight's installment, which continued to dwell on varying shades of black whenever possible, also spent more time rapidly cutting between scenes in different geographical locations and temporal moments.  As a way of translating the novel's infamously interlocking plotlines into visual form, this procedure was serviceable enough; I think we could all do without the bizarre transitions, however. 

I'm not sure how I feel about the episode's handling of Jarndyce's proposal.  In the novel, Jarndyce proposes by letter, not in person, and there's a full two weeks between the letter and Esther's affirmative response.  Davies preserves the essential content of Jarndyce's letter (which, in the novel, we only know through Esther's paraphrase), but I think he was in error to up the emotional stakes as he does.  Esther's decision in the novel, which rests painfully on her sense of obligation--"To devote my life to his happiness was to thank him poorly, and what had I wished for the other night but some new means of thanking him?" (ch. 44)--is all the more melancholy for the physical distance between her and Jarndyce.  And the novel's Jarndyce is preternaturally calm about the whole affair, so much so that the conclusion doesn't come as much of a surprise.   Moreover, by accelerating the speed at which Esther accepts the proposal, Davies escalates the actually non-existent passion--something he then abruptly tones down again in the dialogue that follows, which spells out Esther's utter lack of romantic attraction to Jarndyce in excruciating detail.  Dickens achieves the same effect, with rather more economy, in the chapter's final sentence: "I put my two arms around his neck and kissed him; and he said was this the mistress of Bleak House; and I said yes; and it made no difference presently, and we all went out together, and I said nothing to my precious pet about it" (ch. 44).  What ought to be a "something" turns out to be "nothing."

Speaking of preserving Dickens' text, I'm also not sure that taking the narrator's famous excursus on Jo's death and handing it over to Jarndyce was the best idea.  It's not really in character, to begin with, and it's even less in character for the miniseries' Jarndyce; the language sits awkwardly with his other dialogue.  (Why was everybody hanging about Jo's deathbed, anyway? In the novel, it's just Woodcourt.)