The Old Curiosity Shop
From the sublime--or, at least, the well above average--to the ridiculous: Masterpiece Classic descends from Little Dorrit to the Old Curiosity Shop. (The latter aired in the UK before the former.) OCS occupies the miscellaneous "talked about but almost never read shelf" with M. M. Sherwood's History of the Fairchild Family series (singlehandedly responsible for all those stereotypes about evangelical children's fiction) and Coventry Patmore's The Angel in the House (singlehandedly responsible for, well, the angel in the house): everybody knows that Little Nell dies, tears flow, and Oscar Wilde snarks. Modern readers who do have a go at the novel tend to agree with Wilde more than the spellbound original audience; Dickens' reliance on sentimental and melodramatic tropes now seems excessive, not to mention ridiculous--the sort of approach that makes most sense when viewed in historical context. Unlike, say, Great Expectations, the novel has never had an iconic TV or film adaptation. It is safe to say that OCS continues not to have one.
As it looks like PBS has knocked thirty minutes off of the UK original (for reasons which are, as usual, entirely unclear), I will refrain from complaining about the incoherent and jumpy plotting. Scratch that: I will complain about the incoherent and jumpy plotting, but with the understanding that it may have been less incoherent and jumpy with those additional thirty minutes. The adaptation heightens the episodic quality of the original, much of which relies on the picaresque tradition, but frequently obscures why the characters need to remain on the move. Nor does it do much with the stationary characters' motivations: Dick Swiveller's change of heart is inexplicable and--thanks to the truncated plot--Mr. Brass' pent-up frustration comes out of nowhere. The script does suggest some interesting parallels between Little Nell and Mrs. Quilp, two female characters whose love mostly (or completely) fails to influence the behavior of their respective male authority figures, but we don't see enough of Mrs. Quilp for the link to develop fully. Similarly, the perverse eroticism underlying Quilp's interest in Nell appears, then disappears (along with Nell's brother, who disappears even faster than he does in the novel).
The direction and cinematography try to play up the gothic. This is one of those Victorian adaptations in which everything urban appears in shades of black, gray, and muddy brown (or just mud), in stark contrast to the sunlit greenery of the countryside. Interiors are usually dark to the point of total obscurity; the characters, frequently shot in closeup, seem to be bodiless heads floating in the gloom. We're close to the action, but cannot see it. There are occasional surreal moments, like Nell's visit to the prison, but with the exception of Quilp, the novel's physical grotesques have all been toned down to mere eccentricity. (I couldn't help thinking that Derek Jacobi seemed a little too hale and hearty for the grandfather, which was also a problem when he played Clennam in the two-part Little Dorrit film.)
But the adaptation truly departs from the novel at the end. Yes, Little Nell still dies, but the reworked conclusion doesn't rework or engage with Dickens (and, for that matter, Victorian narratives about repentance); it just ignores him. Here, the "single gentleman" is the grandfather's son, not his younger brother, and Little Nell's death prompts not her grandfather's final breakdown, but instead his complete repentance and, indeed, restoration: when we last see him, he is playing chess with his returned son in the reclaimed Old Curiosity Shop. In other words, the innocent's death produces a rejuvenated, properly disciplined middle-class family; the reward for repentance is domestic and financial happiness. (Never mind that the grandfather bears direct responsibility for his granddaughter's death--you'd think that Nell's father would be a little peeved.) But this conclusion makes no sense from either Dickens' perspective or any other Victorian novelist's perspective, no matter what their religious orientation. The man or woman who destroys the good and innocent may well truly repent, but s/he then either a) dies or b) spends the rest of his/her life performing literal or figurative penance. Such penitents go off to monasteries or convents; they embark on self-denying lives of charitable work; they achieve their worldly goals but never find true happiness1; they find true happiness, but they also lose their money and social position in the process2; they become missionaries and abandon everything they once knew; they are (rightly) executed. And so forth. In other words, on this earth, repentance is neither therapy nor a get-out-of-jail-free card. The meek inherit the earth, not the repentant oppressors. At the end of The Old Curiosity Shop, we should feel pity and sympathy for the bereaved grandfather whose gambling addiction inadvertently leads to his granddaughter's death, but his death is part and parcel of the justice handed out to good- and evil-doers at the novel's conclusion.
1Charlotte Yonge's The Heir of Redclyffe is the ultimate example of this trope: the ending, in which the converted skeptic and his wife find considerable political success but also a lifetime of domestic discombobulation and stress, aggravates a lot of modern readers, but in historical context there's nothing odd about it.
2 Dickens' Mr. Dombey of Dombey and Son, for example.