eapplebaum
I found this series thoroughly engaging and well done. I found it exciting and riveting, especially because the story is based on, or the more accurate versions of Dickens stories and then combines them. I love it! I would LOVE to see a second series where we follow Scrooge through his journey with the Ghost of present, past and future! I MUST know what happens to Arthur! Will Amelia remain in her dining room forever like that? Will she ever forgive Arthur and take him back into her heart? What about Honoria!? Will she find out what Francis has done? Wll she be reunited with her lovely man and their living child? where do the lawyer take the child? And most of all, What will become of Oliver? Will he eventually find his true family? The little actor who plays him is SO SO SO adorable I wish I could adopt that little boy and shower him in love and care!!
markcollier-73440
Didier-20 I think you have elegantly and eloquently written a review of Dickensian which is complete and absolute b#@%ocks.(Well done). The show seems to be a reasonably fair (if not reverse) representation of Dickensian times,and actually ethnic minorities are seemingly portrayed in this show as more accepted by general society than historical documents would suggest.You actually come across as one of those people who just like to be controversial,argumentative or obtuse (or all three) just for the sake of it.Shush now, stop being a complete Berk.
didier-20
A lot is already being covered about the virtues and flaws of this series in the press as it airs. However a major concern is that the writer appears to be falling into an unforgivable trap with regards both it's ambiguously stated gay protagonist, Arthur Havisham as well as it's token ethnic-minority male, Artful Dodger. In both instances the writer, though appearing to be mold-breaking on the one hand ,has in reality, evoked the tired and well worn negative depictions of ethnic minorities and gays living in a straight white world, that belong to an era we should have moved away from. The ambiguously asserted gay character, Arthur H, manages to adopt all the usual negative stereotypes assigned to a gay character for most of the 20th Century and widely castigated and made unpopular during the 70s and 80s. Havisham not only has no real voice as a gay individual, nor any active or satisfactory sexuality, but he's very much the victim, hysteric, corrupter, and corrupted all rolled into one. Usually the gay character with a negative stereotype has been assigned just one of these attributes. Yet Dickensian manages to roll all six into one. Not only is this unforgivable, It's totally anachronistic and homophobic.Likewise for the token ethnic-minority male, assigned to the Artful Dodger. Despite all appearances of being ground breaking, what non- white male viewers can enjoy is the usual negative images of a black man (in this instance boy) already well versed in the antics of crime and actively untrustworthy and a suitable suspect for accusations of homicide. As with LGBT depiction, this racist stereotype dominated for the best part of 100 years of moving image history, along side the more permissible image of the fun loving, cuddly, musical, cheeky but always servile black man. Artful Dodger appears to have been assigned something of all these negative stereotypes too. Here we are again, with the unconscious and unchecked racism of the writer and director who no doubt are both white and male, significantly, at a moment when there is uproar about this year's Oscars exclusion of ethnic minorities in the short lists of winners.It's not a trade off either. Just because a portrayal of ethnically diverse adolescent romance is included, it doesn't mean the writer gets away with the failures described. In fact, the choice continues to affirm what is palatable to the white-male-heterosexual, being his access to the not-too-black pretty girl, alongside the denigration of the gay and non-white male, both who no doubt represent a threat to his power. The series is still airing as i write, but one is now left speculating to what extent Havisham will escape an inevitable dismal ending (a nail- biter we've just gone through with the gay footman, Barrow of Downton Abbey)and the question of the degree of Dodger's immorality though of course where he'll be inescapably always bad. A good writer would have offered a different set of speculations.If white heterosexual writers are going to write in LGBT & ethnic monitory characters, then they should at least be familiar with the mistakes and criticisms made against script writers of their profession in the past and undertake not to repeat them. It all boils down to very bad craftsmanship, not political correctness, a defence so often sited by the offending. It's time to grow up, we can't drag these cliché derogatory stereotypes into the 21st century.
