Even if the adaptation didn't work, anybody who does try to adapt the work of Charles Dickens deserves a brownie point for trying. Dickens is not easy to adapt, and the bigger and richer the book the more complicated it gets to adapt it.
Both this adaptation and the one from 1976 do justice to Dickens' final novel, and are truly excellent on their own. Talking about preferences though, that is a very hard one as both are so good, for now from this viewer they're about equal in quality with this one getting the slight edge.
This could have been a fine production but suffesr from two egegrious errors that were common at the time, still are to quite an extent.1.
Giving this a 10 for the miniseries itself - I truly enjoyed it. The acting was superb BBC quality all the way.
I haven't read the novel, this being my first exposure to the story. I chose to watch this version because it is 6 hours long and from experience I understand that to be a minimum length of time in which to explore a long move of depth.
This adaptation of Our Mutual Friend is on a par with the BBC 's Bleak House, which was very impressive indeed. As with all of Dickens novels, a ninety minute movie can do them little justice.
The very first element that has to be said about this novel, or this work is that it is too intricate and characters are too complicated and intertwined in their motivations and even identities that we find it difficult to follow. The plot is slightly too thick for me.
The 1998 version of 'Our Mutual Friend' is one of my favourite TV book adaptations, but I am pleased that this 1976 production is finally available again. It is well worth discussing in detail as a stand-alone production in its own right, but I will leave that to other reviewers.
Our Mutual Friend is my favourite on-screen adaptation to date, and there are obviously some weighty contenders.I appreciate that some people think there are too many characters, but most Dickens books are full of many and varied, wonderful characters and I think that Sandy Welch mastered the quantity in adaptation, without cutting out important characters and then sewing the plot closed around them (I still mourn the loss of Orlick from Lean's 'Great Expectations').
