A vengeful uncle, a headmaster from hell, upper-class wastrels and twin benefactors. These are just some of the larger-than-life Dickens’ characters portrayed to perfection in this lavish new production from Britain’s Channel Four. Featuring Charles Dance (The Jewel in the Crown) as Ralph Nickleby, the wealthy and cold-hearted uncle whom Nicholas (James D’Arcy) and his sister Kate (Sophia Myles) turn to when their father’s death leaves them destitute. Nicholas eagerly takes on a teaching job at a boy’s boarding school, but flees after rebelling against the unspeakable horrors there. Meanwhile, his sister’s beauty attracts menacing attention from a group of rich, boorish swells. With powerful enemies marshaled against him, Nicholas struggles to find his way in the world and rescue his family.
Viewers who stumble upon ”Nickleby” may be excused if they think they’ve tuned in ”Masterpiece Theater’s” ”Oliver Twist” or ”David Copperfield.” ”Nickleby,” though, is not on PBS, but on Bravo. Fans of ”Masterpiece Theater” needn’t fear, however; they will feel perfectly comfortable with this incarnationThe novel is often called a tragicomedy, largely on the basis of Dickens’s colorful descriptions of his outlandish characters, but the comedy doesn’t get a chance to emerge much in this rendition because the dark passages are very dark. – NYT
Nicholas Nickleby takes place in England in the counties of Devonshire, Yorkshire, Surrey, and Hampshire and in the cities of Portsmouth and London. Nicholas Nickleby is set in the mid-1820s, 15 years earlier than its publication. Dickens antedated many of his stories. But here the date is historically significant. Yorkshire at the period of the novel’s action was a kind of British Siberia. From the 18th century, abusive parents had been dumping their unwanted offspring at cheap boarding schools there. It was all about to change, just at the period Dickens was writing Nicholas Nickleby. Railways, from the late 1830s to the 1860s would network the country. The age of the stagecoach was over, the age of the railway coach began. Nicholas Nickleby is, historically, on the cusp of this revolution. Yorkshire, thanks to steam, would soon be a few hours, not days away. It was no longer remote. – John Sutherland
Starring James D’Arcy, Sophia Myles, Diana Kent, Charles Dance.
Note: Because Dickens usually set his works in the Victorian era, that is how Nicholas Nickleby is also perceived, despite the novel being set in the mid-1820s in the Georgian era.