BBC1 to adapt Little Dorrit
Little Dorrit will be the next Dickens classic adapted and broadcast in a soap-style format for BBC1, following on from the huge success of the award-winning Bleak House.
Andrew Davies, who was behind the Bafta-winning production starring Gillian Anderson and Charles Dance, told The Stage that he and drama controller Jane Tranter had agreed the story of Amy Dorrit, a young woman born and raised with her family in a debtors prison, would be ideal to serialise for television.
He said: “We have decided to do Little Dorrit and do it in the same way we did Bleak House. I think it will run for a bit longer - there will be more episodes.”
The new show is expected to be on screen next year and like Bleak House, which cost £8 million, will be broadcast twice-weekly, immediately after EastEnders.
The soap opera approach with cliffhanger endings has proved popular with viewers and critics and is in keeping with the style in which Dickens intended his work to be read. Little Dorrit was published in monthly installments between 1855-7. Sales of the story exceeded all of his earlier work.
Also from The Stage
External links
- Entry for Andrew Davies in IMDB
- Bleak House
- BBC Drama
- Entry for Little Dorrit on Wikipedia
- Entry for Charles Dickens in Wikipedia
The Stage Online is not responsible for the content of external sites.
To contact the Stage news team email newsdesk@thestage.co.uk or call 020 7403 1818, selecting option 2 (editorial) followed by option 1 (newsdesk).
If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".
Follow The Stage on Twitter and Facebook to get the latest entertainment industry news to your desktop or mobile.
Latest news
- Tom Ellis to appear as part of BBC1’s The Preston Passion
- Tom Ellis and Christine Bottomley are among the actors being lined up to appear in three new dramas being made as…
- Doctor Who star Matt Smith made patron of Royal Court Young Writers Festival
- Matt Smith has been appointed as patron of the Royal Court’s Young Writers Festival.
- Christopher Eccleston joins NT Antigone
- Christopher Eccleston has been cast in the National Theatre’s forthcoming production of Antigone.
- Dirty Dancing musical extends UK tour
- Dirty Dancing is to extend its UK tour into the summer of 2013, with producers announcing five more dates.
- King’s Cross Award for New Writing winner announced
- Rob Johnston has won the King’s Cross Award for New Writing 2011.
- ITV to expand characters’ storylines online
- ITV is to expand on the storylines of characters in Emmerdale, by creating content that can only be accessed online.
Content is copyright © 2012 The Stage Media Company Limited unless otherwise stated.
All RSS feeds are published for personal, non-commercial use. (What’s RSS?)