. I love them both, and they're both good series. In the end I had to choose by tossing a coin, and
Every so often you come across a series that's hard to follow unless you've read the book. This version of
OMF is one of those series. I've read the book, so I understood everything that happened in it. A friend who hasn't read the book watched it with me, and she didn't understand half of it. She kept turning to me and asking me to explain what was happening.
So fair warning: if you want to watch this series, you should at the very least look up a synopsis of the book. And probably write out a list of major characters and incidents, too. You might not enjoy it as much as it deserves if you don't. And it deserves to be enjoyed, because it's a good series. Not as faithful to the book as it could be (where's Fledgeby? And Georgiana? Why do Twemlow and Mr. Riah have only a few minutes' screentime?), but still good.
(Though there's one scene that I really wish wasn't in it. But more about that later.)
First, some information on the series.
OMF (easier to shorten it to that instead of writing out the full title) is based on Dickens' last completed novel, which is also one of his darkest and most complicated. It has so many different characters and plots that it's hard to tell who the main character is, but it all starts when a body is discovered in the Thames.
I'll be honest, I didn't recognise that many of the actors. I've heard of a lot of them before, but never seen any of their other films. So here's a list of the ones I
did recognise:
Keeley Hawes (Cynthia in
Wives and Daughters) as Lizzie Hexam
Paul McGann (the Eighth Doctor in
Doctor Who) as Eugene Wrayburn
David Bradley (Argus Filch in
Harry Potter) as Riderhood
Timothy Spall (Peter Pettigrew in
Harry Potter, and one of the Cheerybles in
Nicholas Nickleby 2002) as Mr. Venus
Pam Ferris (Mrs. General in
Little Dorrit) as Mrs. Boffin
Rachel Power (Mary Garth in
Middlemarch 1994) as Pleasant Riderhood
Kenneth Cranham (Rev. Millward in
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 1996) as Silas Wegg
And now, on to the plot.
The story begins, as already mentioned, when Lizzie Hexam and her father pull a body out of the Thames. They're watched by Rogue Riderhood, another boatman, who couldn't be more obviously a villain if he twirled a mustache while kicking a puppy.
Lizzie
Shortly afterward, Mr. and Mrs. Lammle have just gotten married.
The *ahem* "happy" couple 😏
At the reception Mortimer Lightwood recounts the story of John Harmon, a man who has just inherited a vast sum of money on condition he marries a woman he has never met. Mortimer has hardly finished the story when he learns that the body the Hexams found is believed to be John Harmon's.
Mortimer, accompanied by his friend Eugene Wrayburn, goes to identify the body. This is where Eugene and Lizzie first meet... if it can be called a first meeting, when they don't speak to each other and Lizzie is too shy to look at Eugene.
On the way to the police station they meet a mysterious man, calling himself Julius Handford, who insists he must see the body.
Eugene (left) and Mortimer
Julius Handford
Mortimer confirms that the body is John Harmon's. The circumstances of Mr. Harmon's death remain a mystery, and the fortune goes to Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, servants of Mr. Harmon Sr.
Mr. Boffin
Bella Wilfer, the woman John Harmon had never met but was supposed to marry, is not happy about having to wear mourning or about being poor. Bella does not make a good first impression; she openly admits that she loves money and wants it desperately. Which makes her later character development all the more admirable, but that's beside the point for now.
Bella
Bella's parents have let lodgings to Mr. John Rokesmith, who appears at breakfast and reveals he is... Julius Handford, under another name!
John Rokesmith
His behaviour is as suspicious at the Wilfers' as it was at the police station. So suspicious, in fact, that Bella wonders if he's a murderer.
Mr. Boffin can't read, so he pays Silas Wegg to come and read for him and Mrs. Boffin. This is a decision that will cause the Boffins a lot of trouble later. Shortly after this, Mr. Boffin meets John Rokesmith, who asks to become his secretary. The Boffins decide to buy a new house, and ask Bella to come and stay with them.
The Lammles have discovered that neither of them is rich, though each thought the other was. They start scheming to get money. And who has just gained a lot of money? That's right, the Boffins.
Now, back to Lizzie. Her father doesn't approve of learning (am I the only one who had flashbacks to Job Gregson in Cranford here?), so she sends her brother Charley away to school. This is a decision that will cause Lizzie a lot of trouble later. Really, out of all the schools in London, why did Charley have to go to the one taught by Bradley Headstone? Oh right, because otherwise Lizzie (and Eugene) wouldn't have endured the things they have to endure.
Charley and Lizzie
The Boffins have moved into their new home, and Bella has gone to stay with them. John Rokesmith is now Mr. Boffin's secretary. He begins to show an interest in Bella, an interest that she doesn't return for a long time.
Mortimer and Eugene have an unwanted visitor: Riderhood.
Riderhood
He accuses Lizzie's father of murdering John Harmon. Mortimer and Eugene probably don't believe him, but they decide to investigate. So they fetch a policeman, and the four of them go down to the river to question Gaffer Hexam. Unfortunately they're too late. He's just died in an accident. Riderhood takes this as a personal insult.
Episode 2 starts some time later. Lizzie is now staying with Jenny Wren, and Charley is going to school. His schoolmaster, Bradley Headstone, insists he meets Lizzie. This is the beginning of a lot of unhappiness for poor Lizzie.
Charley and Mr. Headstone
The Boffins are becoming more interested in society, going to and giving parties. John Rokesmith is falling more and more in love with Bella, who still doesn't care for him. He isn't blind to her faults -- he calls her capricious and mercenary, which is unfortunately true until her character development begins. And he knows she's unlikely to care for him.
She might care more for you, John, if you'd stop watching her and sneaking up behind her!
She still thinks he's very suspicious. And now we learn one of the major plot twists: she's right. John does have a secret, but he isn't a criminal, he's the victim of a crime.
In fact, he's John Harmon.
He was almost drowned, but he survived. The body that was mistakenly identified as his is actually the man who tried to kill him.
John Harmon, after nearly being murdered
This leaves John in the awkward position of being thought dead when he's still alive. Rather than explain the situation to Mr. and Mrs. Boffin -- who would have to give him their inheritance -- and Bella -- who would have to marry him against her wishes -- he decided to become John Rokesmith.
Meanwhile, Charley and Mr. Headstone have gone to visit Lizzie. They meet Jenny Wren, who for some reason is much less likeable here than in the book. Among the differences between her and the book version, she's older, her friendship with Mr. Riah is never mentioned (except for a few scenes much later), and it's never explained that her "bad child" is actually her drunken father. She seems nastier in her behaviour towards everyone who isn't Lizzie, but then she was very sarcastic in the book too.
Jenny
Mr. and Mrs. Boffin have decided to do some good with their money, so they're going to adopt an orphan. The orphan they've chosen is a little boy named Johnny, the great-grandson of a washerwoman called Betty Higden (am I the only person who misheard this as Bessy Higgins? I wondered if the writers had decided to make some strange crossover with
North and South at first).
John and Mrs. Boffin go to see Betty
Betty agrees to let them adopt Johnny, and tells them of her dread of the poorhouse. (Perfectly understandable, if you know what Victorian poorhouses were like.)
Mrs. Boffin and Betty
Little Johnny
Eugene is also going to visit Lizzie, and he engages in some underhanded tactics to make her agree to learn to read and write.
Emotional manipulation is never okay, Eugene, no matter what your intentions are!
Lizzie and Kenny agree to be taught by Mr. Riah. (This is one of the few mentions of Mr. Riah in the whole series, and he's one of my favourite characters in the book! Why did the direction/screenwriter/producer/whoever it was decide to basically forget his existence?)
Little Johnny dies before the Boffins can adopt him 😢 So instead they decide to help Mr. Sloppy, the young man who helps Betty with her washing. But they run into some difficulties, because Sloppy doesn't want to leave Betty with no one to help her. So Betty solves the problem by running away(!). Before she leaves John gives her a letter from the Boffins, to let people know they're her friends if anything happens to her.
The Boffins and Sloppy
Meanwhile, a taxidermist named Mr. Venus has just been rejected by Riderhood's daughter Pleasant. While he's depressed about this, Venus meets Silas Wegg, who has an idea to make money. The two of them will search the dust mounds around the Boffins' old house, and if they find anything valuable they'll share the money. Venus reluctantly agrees to it.
Mr. Venus and Silas Wegg
Mortimer notices Eugene is up to something, and asks what it is. He gets his answer when Charley and Mr. Headstone arrive. They had also planned to teach Lizzie, and aren't happy that she's already agreed to Eugene's plan.
Eugene is very rude to both of them, and to Bradley Headstone in particular. (This is
not one of Eugene's finest moments. In fact, he's frankly a bit of a jerk for most of the series.)
Meanwhile, the Boffins and Bella are still going into society and attending parties. At one of these parties Bella meets Mrs. Lammle, who pretends to be her friend.
Bella and Mrs. Lammle
John and Bella have a rather unpleasant conversation when the Boffins return home. It involves John proposing to Bella and her refusing him, and neither of them comes out of it looking particularly well. Bella looks worst, though, because she accuses John of only wanting money. (If only she knew the irony of accusing him of wanting money when he keeps his true identity secret so he won't get money...)
Are Bella's hairstyle and dress here slightly similar to Empress Elisabeth's Sternenkleid, or have I just been watching too much Elisabeth?
Mr. Headstone and Charley meet Lizzie some time after their unpleasant confrontation with Eugene. Mr. Headstone proposes to Lizzie, a proposal that makes Mr. Darcy's first attempt look romantic in comparison, and she refuses him. He thinks this is because she loves Eugene, and threatens to kill Eugene because of it. (That's a better reason for her not to want to marry you, Headstone!)
In fairness, though, Eugene wouldn't make a good husband at this point either. He isn't violent, unlike Headstone, but he's a bit like (a more heroic) James Harthouse in
Hard Times. He's lazy and careless, doesn't even know yet what his intentions are toward Lizzie, and never listens to her wishes.
The disastrous proposal
Charley is furious to hear that Lizzie refused his friend, so he tells her he never wants to see her again. How ungrateful, when she's done so much for him!
Eugene meets Lizzie after this. She insists she doesn't want to talk to him, so he waits outside her home for apparently quite a long time. Unknown to him, she's sneaked out the back door and run away.
So, what do I think of it?
At first I was annoyed at the differences between it and the book. (I was really looking forward to seeing Fledgeby get his comeuppance, but I didn't because they didn't include him 😠) But once I convinced myself to stop complaining about the changes, I began to really enjoy it.
It isn't the best Dickens adaptation, for several reasons, but one of the things I really didn't like was how unlikeable some of the characters are. It's strange, because Bella and Eugene are more or less exactly the same as their book counterparts, but somehow their unpleasant character traits were more bearable in the book. Maybe it's because in the series, we get to see their behaviour as it would be in a real person, instead of just reading about it?
As mentioned earlier, though, the series would be hard to understand for people who haven't read the book, so that's another criticism of it. Series like Bleak House or North and South are easy to understand even for people who haven't read the book, so it should have been possible to make OMF less... book-reliant? Is that the right word?
Rating: 7/10.
Review of the next two episodes
here.
