Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #815 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-08-20
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Box set, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 350 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Dickens was the master of Victorian social satire, ruthlessly exposing the cruelty and absurdity that supported the strictly hierarchical class-structure of the day. This superb production of Our Mutual Friend does full justice to his darkest, most complex novel, fleshing out the satirical bones of the plot with performances that eschew caricature in favour of psychological depth. Anna Friel's Bella is wonderfully complex, her innate goodness struggling with her love of money and desire for advancement. Paul McGann, as the lawyer Wrayburn, is also superb, wrestling with the implications of his feelings for Lizzie. And of course, this being Dickens and the BBC, there's a terrific supporting cast, including Timothy Spall as the melancholy articulator of skeletons, Mr Venus. As the fortunes of the characters rise and fall, the river Thames flows eternally on, the symbolic backbone of this remarkable story. At six hours, this version of Our Mutual Friend is a long production, but not a moment too long. A mystery, a love story, a critique of the pursuit of wealth and status, this is perhaps the best adaptation of Dickens ever to be committed to film. --Simon Leake, Amazon.com

Special Features
16:9 Wide Screen
DVD 9
English
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital Stereo English
Dolby Digital Stereo
Documentary
The Making Of
Music Edit

Synopsis
In this television adaptation of Charles Dickens' last completed novel, John Harmon (Mackintosh) is a young man who must marry a stranger in order to inherit a sizable sum of money. Rather than take his offered fate, Harmon decides to fake his own demise in order to discover the identity of his unknown betrothed.

Customer Reviews

Great story, wonderful setting, marvellous acting!!!
Lizzi and her father earn their money with recovering corpses from the Thames. One night they find a drowned young man. It is Mr Harmon who just came back from the colonies to collect his vast inheritance. Old Mr Harmon's lawyer Lightwood and his friend Wrayburn appear on the scene, to have a look at the corpse. And Wrayburn casts an eye on Lizzie ... Lizzie's father is soon suspected of having murdered the young man, but before he can be put in jail he drowns in the river himself and Lizzie is all alone now, or is she? ...
As the the heir is dead now, the money goes to poor and simple Mr Boffin, the manager of old Mr Harmon's business. He is a very kind man, therefore he wants to support young Mr Harmon's fiancee Bella and persuades her to join him and his wife and enjoy their new good fortune with them. Bella - who didn't know her fiance in the first place and wanted to marry him because of his money - does this, of course, as it opens new and promising opportunities for her. But then she falls in love with the wrong man, who even has the cheek to propose to her: John Rokesmith is Mr Boffin's secretary and poor as a church mouse. Mr Boffin is outraged by Rokesmith's proposal to Bella and throws him out. Now Bella has to face a difficult decision ...
While the Boffins and Bella have some fun with the inherited money it appears that melancholic and bored Mr Wrayburn, who couldn't be bothered with life before, has fallen in love with Lizzie. But Lizzie has disappeared after her father's death and doesn't want to be found by him. And Wrayburn is not the only one who wants to find her...

I loved the series! The setting was really great, from the dirty cramped houses of the poor to the large houses of the rich, everything appeared really authentic. And the characters were marvellous and absolutely original as if they stepped out of Dicken's pages directly into the film. Where do they get these faces??? I especially liked Peter Vaughan as Mr Boffin and Kenneth Granham as Mr Wegg, the sceeming crook. And then of course Paul McGann as Mr Wrayburn. He plays these world-weary characters very well.

Cinematographically Perfect
I just want to put in a word for the crew that filmed, lit and designed this. It is ravishing and the attention to detail is astonishing. At almost any point you can freeze-frame the action and the result is like something you'd see in the National Gallery. Technically this is by far the best thing the BBC has done for years.
It's also much blacker than Dickens usually is, despite being basically, a happy tale. The blackness, especially in the first half, comes from painstakingly researched historical detail and the effort they've put into the locations: gone are the flimsy sets of 1970's BBC Costume Drama...

Mutual satisfaction
Simply the best Dickens adaption [big or small screen], that includes the recent 'Bleak House'. It's fairly obvious that somebody has read the book and extracted all the important plot strands and meaning and put them into a fantastic 3 hours of telly. Seeing Rogue Riderhood on the screen is an absolute joy. There are some big name actors/actresses in this but it doesn't detract. If you like your drama to be intelligent with meaning then you will enjoy this.