Bleak
House gets the soap opera treatment for ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ ONE
Writer
Andrew Davies, who delighted audiences with his adaptation of Pride
and Prejudice, is turning Charles Dickens' Bleak House into
a new series of soap opera-style episodes for ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ ONE.
Dickens'
original readers enjoyed the novels in short instalments which ended
in cliff-hangers to persuade them to buy the next chapter.
Laura
Mackie, ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Head of Drama Serials, says: "It's a new way of
doing the classic adaptation, reinvigorating our approach to the
serial form, matching it to the serial structure and narrative development
of the original - and the way that it was originally published.
"The
Dickens novel was very much the soap opera of its day, and we hope
to emulate those same cliff-hanger emotions in televisual terms."
Andrew
Davies says: "Dickens seemed particularly suitable because
there are so many characters, there's such a lot of life, such a
number of criss-crossing plots, that it would be interesting to
do it in a new way, with shorter episodes and having a lot of characters
in the background of each other's stories."
Producer
Nigel Stafford-Clark worked with Andrew Davies to develop the concept
of adapting Bleak House in a completely new form.
The
pair has also worked together on the BAFTA award-winning adaptation
of Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now and has recently completed
Trollope's He Knew He Was Right, due for transmission in 2004.
All
the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½'s digital services are now available on ,
the new free-to-view digital terrestrial television service, as well
as on satellite and cable. Freeview
offers the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½'s eight television channels, interactive services
from ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½i, as well as 11 national ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ radio networks.
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