I have mixed feelings about screen adaptations of classic novels and plays. On the one hand, they serve as a 'crib sheet' for students (and George Costanza types) who are too lazy to read the original books. Also, they cheat viewers out of the experience of the prose by the original author, in this case Dickens. On the other hand, at least these film and TV adaptations make great literary works accessible to couch-spuds who otherwise would never experience them at all.
SPOILERS THROUGHOUT. This BBC Schools production of Dickens's 'Hard Times' necessarily abridges the text, even though this was by far the shortest of Dickens's novels. As usual for Auntie Beeb, the period detail here is (mostly) perfect, although it would have been more realistically Victorian if some of the actors had bad teeth. and if the factory hands were not so well-fed. Mister Sleary's circus is only briefly seen, yet the shots of the circus fixtures look more like a 20th-century American circus than anything of Dickens's place and time. Considering the theme of this novel, it would have been nice to see a few shots of mills and smokestacks.
I was intrigued by the changes made here. In Dickens's novel, two of the major characters had unfortunate speech patterns that made their dialogue distressing to read on the page: the circus owner Mr Sleary had an erratic lisp, and the falsely-accused millhand Stephen Blackpool spoke with an 'eeh, bah gum' accent reminiscent of George Formby. Fortunately, in this adaptation, the lisp is lost, and Blackpool's 'oop North' dialect is greatly toned down.
In Dickens's original novel, after young Tom Gradgrind embezzles £150 from Bounderby's bank, he hides in Sleary's circus ... where the circus folk conceal him by disguising him in blackface. I found this detail upsetting, partly because of its racism but also because blackface make-up (even without the racial implications) is physically disgusting to look at. For this television adaptation of Dickens's novel, it would have made sense to disguise Tom in the white Auguste make-up that most clowns in Victorian England wore. Instead, he is kitted out with a big red nose and a Weary Willie make-up which are decidedly anachronistic -- he looks like Emmett Kelly -- but definitely preferable to blackface. Another nitpick: in an earlier sequence, the actor who plays Tom Gradgrind is seen writing left-handed ... but surely Tom's Victorian schoolmaster father would have 'cured' him of that tendency!
One other change in this adaptation annoyed me very much, the more so because it was gratuitous. Although Tom's father, the schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind, is often regarded as the villain of 'Hard Times', that perception is incorrect: Josiah Bounderby (well-played here by Alan Bates) is the principal villain; Gradgrind is more like Ebenezer Scrooge in that he sees the error of his ways, repents and reforms. In Dickens's novel, Gradgrind stands for Parliament and is elected, but Dickens pointedly never identifies Gradgrind's political affiliation. In this BBC production, Gradgrind is explicitly identified as a Tory. Further, in the climactic scene, when Gradgrind tries to save his son from gaol by appealing to Bitzer's compassion, Bitzer taunts Gradgrind for his 'conservative philosophy'. That adjective 'conservative' was not there when Dickens wrote this scene! It's clear that some liberal at the BBC has decided to score a few points against the Conservative party with some cheap shots that really don't belong in this otherwise splendid production. As a rates-payer, I deeply resent that my licence fee goes to support propaganda which do not reflect my own political beliefs ... nor those of Dickens, I might add. It's because of that gratuitous politicking that I'll rate this production one point short of a perfect score: 9 out of 10.
SPOILERS THROUGHOUT. This BBC Schools production of Dickens's 'Hard Times' necessarily abridges the text, even though this was by far the shortest of Dickens's novels. As usual for Auntie Beeb, the period detail here is (mostly) perfect, although it would have been more realistically Victorian if some of the actors had bad teeth. and if the factory hands were not so well-fed. Mister Sleary's circus is only briefly seen, yet the shots of the circus fixtures look more like a 20th-century American circus than anything of Dickens's place and time. Considering the theme of this novel, it would have been nice to see a few shots of mills and smokestacks.
I was intrigued by the changes made here. In Dickens's novel, two of the major characters had unfortunate speech patterns that made their dialogue distressing to read on the page: the circus owner Mr Sleary had an erratic lisp, and the falsely-accused millhand Stephen Blackpool spoke with an 'eeh, bah gum' accent reminiscent of George Formby. Fortunately, in this adaptation, the lisp is lost, and Blackpool's 'oop North' dialect is greatly toned down.
In Dickens's original novel, after young Tom Gradgrind embezzles £150 from Bounderby's bank, he hides in Sleary's circus ... where the circus folk conceal him by disguising him in blackface. I found this detail upsetting, partly because of its racism but also because blackface make-up (even without the racial implications) is physically disgusting to look at. For this television adaptation of Dickens's novel, it would have made sense to disguise Tom in the white Auguste make-up that most clowns in Victorian England wore. Instead, he is kitted out with a big red nose and a Weary Willie make-up which are decidedly anachronistic -- he looks like Emmett Kelly -- but definitely preferable to blackface. Another nitpick: in an earlier sequence, the actor who plays Tom Gradgrind is seen writing left-handed ... but surely Tom's Victorian schoolmaster father would have 'cured' him of that tendency!
One other change in this adaptation annoyed me very much, the more so because it was gratuitous. Although Tom's father, the schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind, is often regarded as the villain of 'Hard Times', that perception is incorrect: Josiah Bounderby (well-played here by Alan Bates) is the principal villain; Gradgrind is more like Ebenezer Scrooge in that he sees the error of his ways, repents and reforms. In Dickens's novel, Gradgrind stands for Parliament and is elected, but Dickens pointedly never identifies Gradgrind's political affiliation. In this BBC production, Gradgrind is explicitly identified as a Tory. Further, in the climactic scene, when Gradgrind tries to save his son from gaol by appealing to Bitzer's compassion, Bitzer taunts Gradgrind for his 'conservative philosophy'. That adjective 'conservative' was not there when Dickens wrote this scene! It's clear that some liberal at the BBC has decided to score a few points against the Conservative party with some cheap shots that really don't belong in this otherwise splendid production. As a rates-payer, I deeply resent that my licence fee goes to support propaganda which do not reflect my own political beliefs ... nor those of Dickens, I might add. It's because of that gratuitous politicking that I'll rate this production one point short of a perfect score: 9 out of 10.