“The sun is dead and the city mourns,” sighs the narrator at the start of this all-star adaptation of Bleak House. Executive produced by Sam Mendes, it opens with a coach and horses pulling up in London’s Piccadilly, where the air is shrouded in smog and the streets slathered in mud. There a lawyer from Kenge and Carboys solicitors is waiting to meet Esther Summerson (Ambika Mod) and accompany her to an appointment at the Court of Chancery. Meanwhile, Lady Dedlock (Thandiwe Newton) sits dolefully in her London townhouse with her maid Hortense, who tries to persuade her to share her troubles.
Dickens’s novel tells the story of the Jarndyce family, a disputed fortune and a legal case that has “become so complicated no man alive knows what it means”. Connected to the lawsuit is Lady Dedlock, who endures mind-numbing updates from her lawyer, Mr Tulkinghorn, until one day she glimpses handwriting on a legal document that causes her to faint. Also connected to the case is Esther, whose godmother has recently died and whose new legal guardian has hired her as a companion for his ward, Ada, and sent them to stay at Bleak House, the Hertfordshire home owned by the Jarndyces.
