It is not the obvious place to look for innovation or fresh thinking, but this week, BBC daytime has served up an autumn surprise with Nick Nickleby, a modernised drama series loosely based on the Charles Dickens novel.

It has been a relief to stumble upon it, in the acres of repetitive daytime hunts for collectables, gameshows and repeats. And in its modest way, it could also point the way for imaginative treatments of the classics, as Sherlock has done, on albeit on a far grander scale.

The series was clearly made on a very tight budget, but the cash constraint has forced this adaptation into a pared-down style that, at best, emphasises the grotesqueness of the most unpleasant characters and at worst, means you keep seeing the same bit of scenery, used in different ways. Certainly, the show would have benefited from a couple more actors or extras.

Part of the interest, for me at least, lies in spotting the similarities and clear differences introduced by the creator/writer, Joy Wilkinson. So the horrible Dothebys Hall boarding school where discarded children are starved and beaten becomes an abusive care home, Dotheolds, with a lockdown cooler. It's a credible substitute.

Thanks to vile Uncle Ralph, who is trying to tempt a Russian investor to back his care home, Nick Nickleby (Andrew Simpson) takes up a post at Dotheolds. The Russian investor, meanwhile, unmasked as a sinister sexual predator, stands in for lecherous nobleman Sir Mulberry Hawk. He is (naturally) called Vladimir Hawkovsky.

The poor and simple Dotheby schoolboy, Smike, is transformed into an abused, institutionalised resident of the home, Mrs Smike (Linda Bassett, who plays Grandma in Grandma's House). She indeed runs away, is punished by the ghastly manager Wackford Squeers (who, true to form, has only one eye), and is defended by Nick, who goes around hitting Squeers and several other villains.

The plot curtseys to the original at various points – so Nick and Smike's adventure with a theatrical impresario translates into hitching a lift in a campervan with a Mrs Crummles, whose daughter Mariah, about to be forced on to a very cheap X Factor lookalike is, she hopes ,"the infant phenomenon".

BBC daytime controller Liam Keelan is proud of the series and its strong casting combined with good-versus-evil morality means that Nick Nickleby ought to have a wider appeal than some of the other original single dramas that daytime offers up periodically. But so far, the audience for the drama has been a bit below the average for this slot: between 700,00 to 800,000 viewers. It seems that daily fare of Homes under the Hammer, Cash in the Attic, Doctors, Escape to the Country (whose slot Nick Nickleby occupies), and Dickinson's Real Deal (opposite the drama on ITV and winning hands down) perhaps all point to a truth. Daytime viewers seem to really like routine.

IPlayer means that those who wish to catch up with the drama can easily do so, but personally, while it's good to see daytime audiences being well-served, I'd also like Nick Nickleby receive more exposure: perhaps with a repeat in a Sunday teatime slot.