I'm allergic to urchins so have, over the years, exposed myself to very little Dickens in book, television, film or any other form. In this, as in so many other ways, yes, I prove myself an idiot. And now, having broken my Dickensian duck with tonight's adaptation by Gwyneth Hughes of the famously unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood (BBC2), I fear I may have ruined myself for any other. Oh, it was so very, very good.
It was good as a thriller – as you would expect, given Hughes's history as a crime writer – with a lovely, supple, sinewy script moving everything smoothly, relentlessly into murkier and eventually murderous waters. But it was even better – thanks to a collection of uniformly brilliant performances – as a story of human passions and fatal weaknesses. To have the two yoked together is always a luscious treat.
Freddie Fox played the insufferable gilded youth Edwin Drood to such perfection that the eponymous mystery first promised to be why no one had offed the little shit long before now. Tamzin Merchant as his luminously beautiful but otherwise entirely unfortunate betrothed, Rosa Bud, was just as good – young and spirited but vulnerable still, so you felt the less melodramatic dangers she faced, hemmed in by unsuitable suitors on all sides, almost more acutely than Drood's. Sacha Dhawan and Amber Rose Revah, playing twins Neville and Helena Landless, shone as the clear-eyed strangers seeing everything except Neville's coming nightmare. Rory Kinnear as the Reverend Crisparkle did nothing but make goodness interesting, which of course is everything.
But the dark, brooding heart of the story was Matthew Rhys as John Jasper – choirmaster of Cloisterham's cathedral, uncle of Edwin and leader of a life as regular as the rhythm of his metronome, save for the visits to the opium den and the helplessly lust-filled, hopelessly frustrated passion for his nephew's fiancee. Rhys made you feel every throb of his suffering, from the beaten-down ambition in his breast to his bloody great boner for Rosa.
All the pieces are now in play, murder has been done and the rest unfolds tomorrow night. Don't miss. It's so, so good.
As if that were not enough fun for one evening, Arena followed it up with a wonderful documentary, Dickens on Film (BBC4), written by Michael Eaton. This was stuffed to the gills with archive footage of more than a century's worth of the novels' translations to screen and examined whether there is, as director Sergei Eisenstein once contended, an essentially filmic quality to the man's work that makes him such a lure to writers, directors and actors.
The footage was absorbing, not just of the films themselves but of the masters of the various arts behind them. Who, after all, could not listen for ever to John Mills describe being directed by David Lean; or Lean talk about directing Alec Guinness; or the writers of the 60s BBC teatime serial adaptations on the perils of live broadcasts. I could have done with more narration overlaying and underlining what we were seeing – there was so clearly such knowledge and expertise at work in the construction that I wanted to hear as well as see more of it. But this may well be simply the above-average ignorance talking.
Too little information was not a complaint that could be levelled at Websex: What's the Harm? (BBC3), an investigation into how the internet is affecting young people's sexual activity. It was presented by 22-year-old Nathalie Emmanuel, who had a nice line in appalled but diplomatic questioning, and the answer seems to be: plenty. The internet, alas, is just like life, only more so. So although it can be a force for good, more often it facilitates the exploitation of the vulnerable by the strong and of the naive by the knowing. And clinics are busy dealing with sexually transmitted infections as a result.
Quiet girls spoke of having their confidence boosted by the carnal compliments of online strangers, women of having private photos and videos disseminated by their partners without their knowledge or consent. And happy, happy boys – perfectly nice, perfectly normal – talked of dividing the girls they met online and then in the real world into "sociable gash", "normal gash" and "special gash" and learning about sex from looking online. "The worries and doubts in my mind?" beamed one. "Gone! With the nakedness!"
By the end of this clear-eyed and comprehensive trip round this brave new world of incessant messaging, camming and dedicated sites for posting private footage of unwitting victims I had decided on our best course of action. We must all buy shares in penicillin and found nunneries with the proceeds. I reckon a lot of gash will ultimately be grateful.