What I'm Watching: "Dickensian"

I'm absolutely loving ‎Dickensian on BBC One — a cracking adaptation that plucks characters from various Charles Dickens novels and deposits them side by side into a 30-minute soap narrative in the British soap tradition of EastEnders (no surprise then that creator Tony Jordan worked on the Albert Square-set show).

The characters may be, er, Dickensian, and the plot serialized in the fashion of Dickens himself, but the storytelling rhythms fuse both Dickens and EastEnders to full effect: loads of subplots, an omnibus' worth of characters both high and low, and an innate sense of setting. This might not be Albert Square, but the street that these gentlemen, ladies, urchins, and vagabonds inhabit feels lived-in and vibrant, a world of gated gas-lit mansions, fleabag public houses, gritty warehouses, all existing under the constant threat of the workhouse or the debtor's prison.

If you've ever wondered how Honoria Barbary, Amelia Havisham, Inspector Bucket, Fagin, and the Cratchits would get on, then Dickensian is the show for you. No word on whether the 20-episode first season will eventually make the trip across the Atlantic, but I can only hope that some U.S. outlet (Netflix? Acorn?) will pick this up soon — it's such a fun, engaging show featuring characters that you already know intimately but who still manage to surprise you.