And Now, Here's Charles Dickens

By G.C.

Trollope and his Pallisers were merely the vanguard of a Victorian invasion of the small U.S. screen. This week the Public Broadcasting Service begins a four-part series based on Charles Dickens' Hard Times. Another Dickens novel. Our Mutual Friend, will be presented on PBS next fall, and before the year is out the network plans a serialized biography of the author.

The Dickens era is well begun with this production of Hard Times, which is as spare as The Pallisers is lush. Whether PBS intended it or not, the two series are ideal companions. Trollope wrote of power struggles in Parliament and of intrigue under the topiary at the country house of the Duke of Omnium. In Hard Times Dickens explained what life was like for those who could only peer through the gates--and how much misery it cost to maintain those ducal shrubs in such well-shaved elegance.

Dickens' story takes place in Coketown, where workers spend 14 hours a day in the factories and the rest of the time in their grim hovels. The owners clothe their greed in the high-toned words of utilitarianism, the philosophy of the time: what works is good, and good is what works.

Genuine Scrap. Josiah Bounderby (Timothy West) is the apostle of the creed, the poor boy who made good, a man of red-faced bluster and aggressive self-pity. "I'm a bit of dirty riffraff," he brags, "a genuine scrap of rag, tag and bobtail." His young wife Louisa Gradgrind (Jacqueline Tong, who played Daisy in Upstairs, Downstairs] is as much a victim of the times as her husband's workers. Her father (Patrick Allen), who runs what is thought to be a progressive school, has taught her to ignore all feeling and rely only on facts. "How satisfying is the possession of fact," he says, "which does away with any mystery surrounding our daily life!"

But Bounderby and the Gradgrinds know all facts and possess no feelings. Ignorance of their own hearts darkens their lives as the smoke outside darkens their windows. "You learnt a good deal, Louisa," says Mrs. Gradgrind (Ursula Howells), "-ologies of every kind, -ologies, -ologies, from morning till night, -ologies of every description. But there is something your father missed out, or forgot." It takes Mr. Sleary (Harry Markham), the disreputable owner of a circus, and Sissy (Michelle Dibnah), the daughter of a clown, to explain the lessons of dreams and imagination. Hard Times is the story of Louisa's slow tutelage -- against the backdrop of Victorian greed and despair.

The series has the brilliant intensity of a daguerreotype. Dickens' lost and searching souls stare from their picture straight and unblinking, as if to say, "This is how we were." The acting is so good that it is difficult to imagine any actor being anyone else or doing any thing differently. The one fault, alas, is Dickens' own: Hard Times was written out of rage and righteous hatred, and even this TV version, otherwise so admirable, sometimes has the unhappy sound of antique propaganda.

G.C.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.