The first two hours aired yesterday on PBS, but I'm sure they'll be on again soon. In related news, I may have a wee little crush on Arthur Clennam, at least as portrayed by Matthew Macfadyen.

It's odd watching adaptations when I haven't read the book. I'm sure that somewhere, there are Dickens fans getting as bent out of shape about Little Dorrit as I tend to get about Austen adaptations, but I'm quite enjoying it so far.

And--speaking of Austen adaptations--it's visually quite a contrast to your typical Austen; there's peeling paint and grayness everywhere. Everything is faded, as though no one has bothered with the upkeep, except for the prosperous brick and the white elegance of the Meagles' (sp?) home. (And the anvils--I mean birdcages--everywhere. Bleak House was all about caged birds, too.)

The cast is good, particularly Matthew Macfadyen and Claire Foy as the eponymous Amy Dorrit. Freema seems a bit miscast as Tattycoram, though I don't think the character was particularly well introduced; maybe it's just that I expect my Dickensian orphans to be quietly downtrodden, but she flies off the handle very quickly without our first being made aware of how difficult and frustrating her situation must be. (It goes kind of like this: "Tatty, hold my shawl." "(muttered) I hate you, I hate you all, you treat me like a dog or a toy!" This is doubtless true, but you sort of have to infer it, since it's not at all clear what her status is in that first scene; if she's a paid lady's maid--which she isn't, but we don't learn that till after--then that's a really strong overreaction for a command that wasn't unpleasantly expressed. Later we see a bit more of Tattycoram's life, but she's still a *narrative* afterthought so far, not just an afterthought of the Meagles, and I'm not sure it works.) She's also playing the part as somewhat...disconnected, I guess? Like her gaze is always slightly averted, or...

Well, let's back up. It strikes me, thus far, that the obvious theme of the adaptation is how *stopped* everyone in it seems to be, how arrested in one way or another. There's "little" Dorrit, of course, who is small for her age and often mistaken for a child; and then Tattycoram (aka Harriet), who is always referred to by a pet name and prone to a child's violent outbursts of temper (with a simplistic view of the world to go along with that; she talks of her "badness" and "wickedness," and says things like, "Go away, I'm frightened of you"); and the Meagles' daughter Pet, who is...well, known as Pet. There's Maggy (played by Eve Myles, which is disconcerting mainly because I keep *forgetting* that it's Eve Myles), who 'had a bad fever when she was ten and has never grown any older ever since,' a woman with a child's mind. There's Arthur's childhood sweetheart Flora, whose attempts at a false, flirtatious girlishness sit grotesquely on a woman who's now a widow. And then there's Arthur himself, of course, who has been away from England for fifteen years, and returns home to sleep in a child's bed and have nightmares about his childhood; a man who is fascinated by wind-up toys and music boxes, who puts little animal figurines he picked up in China (I'm assuming) on his dresser even while he's shaving. And Matthew Macfadyen plays that up, I think; there's something slightly naive about him, or more that he's a little out of step--though when it comes to dealing with money, as befits someone who's spent all his life in the family business, he seems to be able to hold his own. He doesn't do things the "right" way (as the scene with the Circumlocution Office points out). So many stopped characters--and yet the mysterious pocketwatch keeps ticking and ticking...

So Freema's portrayal of Tattycoram as disconnected actually fits in thematically. It's the rages that don't work--and like I said, I'm not sure if part of that isn't the way the character is introduced to us. Is she *supposed* to have a problem with her temper? Or do the Meagles blame everything on her temper when it's actually their treatment of her that's the problem? It isn't clear to me which it's supposed to be. Also, Andrew Davies' attempts to interject some vague lesbianism into the Tattycoram storyline are just LOLworthy.

Also, there's a subplot with a French murderer that makes no sense to me. I simply do not get it. Partly because I don't know what anyone is saying half the time. On balance, though, an enjoyable beginning.