BARNABY RUDGE is the story of ordinary people whose lives are changed by the almost-forgotten eighteenth century Gordon Riots and how two sets if young lovers were affected. Actual historical persons are few, but Dickens was never short of characters.
BARNABY RUDGE is one of my favorite Dickens novels (along with THE PICKWICK PAPERS and OUR MUTUAL FRIEND). I read it first in college and 4 times in the intervening 40 years. I love Dickens but once every ten years is enough for any of his novels.
This live television version has all the usual problems inherent in the form. Each episode has to fit inside its parameters and no matter how it's rehearsed, once in live performance speeds vary. So occasionally the actors are talking unnaturally fast, as with bad Shakespeare. And since it's live there can be only one take. Fortunately this show had no major disasters; but if all the backdrop had collapsed the actors would have to keep going.
An excellent cast includes now-famous faces: Arthur Brough, Raymond Huntley, Joan Hickson ("Miss Marple"), Barbara Hicks as a rather too-nice Miggs and others. But John Wood's Barnaby is more pixillated than mad, which is probably Dickens' fault; and a young Timothy Bateson, who would over later decades be a veritable warhorse on TV, radio and in the movies, misses something in his Sim Tappertit. One of my favorite Dickens characters, along with FRIEND's Silas Wegg and DAVID COPPERFIEND's Uriah Heep, Sim is a firebrand revolutionary, but too short, ridiculous and full of himself to be of much genuine use. Bateson, probably at the behest of the others, plays Sim all for laughs, missing the character's dangerous edge.
Lots of the faults of the script are from Dickens. Not, as some reviewers have said before me, that his book was poorly structured. Dickens wrote for serial and each of his novels is a separate world of colorful characters vomited out on readers. At that time in the history of the novel and due to the manner of his writing, it's absurd to talk about "structure" in the way we use the term in modern novels. Alistair Cooke once famously wrote that anyone who loves GREAT EXPECTATIONS and A TALE OF TWO CITIES (his two tightest novels as we think of the form today) probably won't like Dickens. That's doubtlessly the problem with other reviewers who prefer novels as they are today rather than accepting Dickens as he was. Those two novels, like FRIEND, came late in his career when novels were changing and Dickens was struggling to change with them.
But the bulk, and I think best, of Dickens' works are, from the way he wrote for serial, huge, sprawling masses of distinctive characters and coincidences. An added problem was, like CITIES, RUDGE is an historical novel; but from our perspective, it's like seeing two mountains that might be miles apart but look the same height to us, since from a twenty-first century perspective all Dickens' novels appear distantly historical. We miss the notion that this story takes place before Dickens was born. Our loss.
But the great thing about Dickens is, he always, even from the start, knew his story-lines and stuck to them like clothes lines on which he pinned tons of colorful and perhaps extraneous material. Since his storylines are clear in retrospect and his characters so vibrant and detailed it's no wonder his novels were adaptable in the silent-film days and still are turned out nearly every year. The difficulty with Dickens adaptation is what to leave out, especially as the various branches of his wider stories twine round each other. Watch the RSC's 9-hour "Nicholas Nickelby" to guess where you'd use the pruning shears.
That a live-tv version of RUDGE was written at all is a marvel. I'd like to see the same script used for a newer version, but even the BBC doesn't do such long versions of the great books in the post-MTV days when attention-spans are short (MTV started in Aug. 1981 and I graduated college in June 1983 so I was already predisposed to long attention spans and had read RUDGE the first time when the plaintive "I want my MTV" was initially heard).
Actually, I find the Dickens books I prefer were those whose stories I didn't know before diving in and so carried with me no preconceptions. That was the way of Dickens' original audience. Perhaps, then, RUDGE would benefit by a new adaptation, since even people claiming to love Dickens are ignorant of it.
This BARNABY RUDGE has a nicely-weeded teleplay straight from Dickens and an illustrious cast; but with overblown live-tv performances and a constant hiss, as with old records, it's awfully annoying. It's too bad, since RUDGE is the Rodney Dangerfield of Dickens' novels, not getting any respect. It should. It's a great story with vibrant characters. This version is full of fine actors, some (like Neil McCarthy) who seem born to play their roles. It's a respectable adaptation but it plays too fast and, like me, looks its age. But to date it's the best we have. In light of the violent an arson-filled riots in America in the months leading up to the 2020 election, and the seizure of cities by rioters, it might be a good time to blow the dust off RUDGE and film it afresh while it's timely.
BARNABY RUDGE is one of my favorite Dickens novels (along with THE PICKWICK PAPERS and OUR MUTUAL FRIEND). I read it first in college and 4 times in the intervening 40 years. I love Dickens but once every ten years is enough for any of his novels.
This live television version has all the usual problems inherent in the form. Each episode has to fit inside its parameters and no matter how it's rehearsed, once in live performance speeds vary. So occasionally the actors are talking unnaturally fast, as with bad Shakespeare. And since it's live there can be only one take. Fortunately this show had no major disasters; but if all the backdrop had collapsed the actors would have to keep going.
An excellent cast includes now-famous faces: Arthur Brough, Raymond Huntley, Joan Hickson ("Miss Marple"), Barbara Hicks as a rather too-nice Miggs and others. But John Wood's Barnaby is more pixillated than mad, which is probably Dickens' fault; and a young Timothy Bateson, who would over later decades be a veritable warhorse on TV, radio and in the movies, misses something in his Sim Tappertit. One of my favorite Dickens characters, along with FRIEND's Silas Wegg and DAVID COPPERFIEND's Uriah Heep, Sim is a firebrand revolutionary, but too short, ridiculous and full of himself to be of much genuine use. Bateson, probably at the behest of the others, plays Sim all for laughs, missing the character's dangerous edge.
Lots of the faults of the script are from Dickens. Not, as some reviewers have said before me, that his book was poorly structured. Dickens wrote for serial and each of his novels is a separate world of colorful characters vomited out on readers. At that time in the history of the novel and due to the manner of his writing, it's absurd to talk about "structure" in the way we use the term in modern novels. Alistair Cooke once famously wrote that anyone who loves GREAT EXPECTATIONS and A TALE OF TWO CITIES (his two tightest novels as we think of the form today) probably won't like Dickens. That's doubtlessly the problem with other reviewers who prefer novels as they are today rather than accepting Dickens as he was. Those two novels, like FRIEND, came late in his career when novels were changing and Dickens was struggling to change with them.
But the bulk, and I think best, of Dickens' works are, from the way he wrote for serial, huge, sprawling masses of distinctive characters and coincidences. An added problem was, like CITIES, RUDGE is an historical novel; but from our perspective, it's like seeing two mountains that might be miles apart but look the same height to us, since from a twenty-first century perspective all Dickens' novels appear distantly historical. We miss the notion that this story takes place before Dickens was born. Our loss.
But the great thing about Dickens is, he always, even from the start, knew his story-lines and stuck to them like clothes lines on which he pinned tons of colorful and perhaps extraneous material. Since his storylines are clear in retrospect and his characters so vibrant and detailed it's no wonder his novels were adaptable in the silent-film days and still are turned out nearly every year. The difficulty with Dickens adaptation is what to leave out, especially as the various branches of his wider stories twine round each other. Watch the RSC's 9-hour "Nicholas Nickelby" to guess where you'd use the pruning shears.
That a live-tv version of RUDGE was written at all is a marvel. I'd like to see the same script used for a newer version, but even the BBC doesn't do such long versions of the great books in the post-MTV days when attention-spans are short (MTV started in Aug. 1981 and I graduated college in June 1983 so I was already predisposed to long attention spans and had read RUDGE the first time when the plaintive "I want my MTV" was initially heard).
Actually, I find the Dickens books I prefer were those whose stories I didn't know before diving in and so carried with me no preconceptions. That was the way of Dickens' original audience. Perhaps, then, RUDGE would benefit by a new adaptation, since even people claiming to love Dickens are ignorant of it.
This BARNABY RUDGE has a nicely-weeded teleplay straight from Dickens and an illustrious cast; but with overblown live-tv performances and a constant hiss, as with old records, it's awfully annoying. It's too bad, since RUDGE is the Rodney Dangerfield of Dickens' novels, not getting any respect. It should. It's a great story with vibrant characters. This version is full of fine actors, some (like Neil McCarthy) who seem born to play their roles. It's a respectable adaptation but it plays too fast and, like me, looks its age. But to date it's the best we have. In light of the violent an arson-filled riots in America in the months leading up to the 2020 election, and the seizure of cities by rioters, it might be a good time to blow the dust off RUDGE and film it afresh while it's timely.