“The sun is dead and the city mourns,” sighs the narrator at the start of this all-star adaptation of Bleak House. Executive produced by Sam Mendes, it opens with a coach and horses pulling up in London’s Piccadilly, where the air is shrouded in smog and the streets slathered in mud. There a lawyer from Kenge and Carboys solicitors is waiting to meet Esther Summerson (Ambika Mod) and accompany her to an appointment at the Court of Chancery. Meanwhile, Lady Dedlock (Thandiwe Newton) sits dolefully in her London townhouse with her maid Hortense, who tries to persuade her to share her troubles.
Dickens’s novel tells the story of the Jarndyce family, a disputed fortune and a legal case that has “become so complicated no man alive knows what it means”. Connected to the lawsuit is Lady Dedlock, who endures mind-numbing updates from her lawyer, Mr Tulkinghorn, until one day she glimpses handwriting on a legal document that causes her to faint. Also connected to the case is Esther, whose godmother has recently died and whose new legal guardian has hired her as a companion for his ward, Ada, and sent them to stay at Bleak House, the Hertfordshire home owned by the Jarndyces.
This is the third in a trilogy of Dickens adaptations, which began with Oliver Twist and continued with last year’s David Copperfield. As in those, the plot here is necessarily streamlined and the sound design is richly textured and cinematic (this is a production best heard on headphones). It also features a stellar cast which, along with Newton and Mod, features Adeel Akhtar, Mark Gatiss, Mackenzie Crook and Miriam Margolyes as the eccentric Miss Flite.
• Available via Audible Originals, 7hr 41min
Further listening
My Family and Other Enemies
Mary Novakovich, Bradt, 7hr 7min
A blend of memoir and travelogue, this vivid portrait of Lika in central Croatia tells of a family and Croatian region steeped in culture and tumultuous history. Read by the author.
The Museum of Lost and Fragile Things
Suzanne Joinson, WF Howes, 7hr 30min
Deirdra Whelan narrates Joinson’s memoir about growing up in 1980s Crewe in a family dedicated to the Divine Light Mission cult.
