The BBC has just released onto iPlayer, until late 2019, all fifteen hours of one of their greatest productions of a classic book, that of Bleak House.

I must confess that it is my favourite classic, and, at 928 pages, one of the thickest. Some rate Christmas Carol as their favourite Dickens, and certainly is highly accessible and its central, elongated metaphor matches the spirit of Christmas (as it were) perfectly. Others prefer Oliver Twist (oh, Lionel Bart, what did you do?), David Copperfield or Great Expectations, but these are simpler, lighter fare than the Towering achievement typeset through the pages of Bleak House.

The complexity and characterisation are breathtaking and the constant friction, wearing away at the failings of the legal and political fabric of the day, flaws now long removed, is masterful. For me his parody of Parliamentary affairs in his day hits laugh out loud hilarity when he writes:

“the Right Honourable William Buffy, M.P., contends across the table with some one else that the shipwreck of the country … is attributable to Cuffy. If you had done with Cuffy what you ought to have done when he first came into Parliament, and had prevented him from going over to Duffy, you would have got him into alliance with Fuffy, you would have had with you the weight attaching as a smart debater to Guffy, you would have brought to bear upon the elections the wealth of Huffy, you would have got in for three counties Juffy, Kuffy, and Luffy, and you would have strengthened your administration by the official knowledge and the business habits of Muffy. All this, instead of being as you now are, dependent on the mere caprice of Puffy!”

The pure innocence of the heroine, Esther Summerson, whilst Dickens’ uses her as his mouthpiece even with some complex matters, by narrating with her voice, is perhaps the novel’s only weakness, and yet this approach, using a character lacking in unpleasant wiles and loved by all to tell the tale, also appears a great strength.

The triumph of the tome, though, is in its characters, too many to count and all richly drawn, not least the victims of the legal perambulations of Chancery, mostly ground down by the weight of their burden, but not the sanguine John Jardine. He bears with calm, benign resignation the misfortune blighting his years and warmly nurtures his charges but for the times when (blissful allegory) ‘the wind changes direction’.

This is contrasted with cool, mannered indifference of Lady Dedlock until happenchance breaks through the emotional firewall with which she has surrounded herself in order to become a respected member of society and the wife of an MP. But whilst her buttoned up pretence leaves her husband oblivious, it does not escape the suspicion of the respected and yet malevolent lawyer, master of the machinations of Chancery, Tulkinghorn………

Despite a number of archaic references, lost on today’s readership, it is a real page turner with so many finely woven threads drawn together into a masterpiece.

For anyone daunted by Dickens, watch the BBC series and marvel at the blue ribbon acting from a star studded cast featuring Anna Maxwell Martin, Denis Lawson, Gillian Anderson, Charles Dance, Timothy West and a host of other giants of the small screen. Then, knowing the story, tackle to tome and revel in the nuances in the prose that are impossible for the dramatist to bring to the visual media, even in fifteen hours of script.

Surely, Bleak House is the victor ludorum of the Dickens oeuvre?