This BBC One series was shown originally in Britain from December 2015 through February 2016. In the UK, it was split into 20 episodes, but when later broadcast in the United States, it was reconfigured into 10 episodes.
The elaborate London-set, Victorian-era drama is a creative mash-up of characters and subplots drawn from the novels of Charles Dickens, though its through line concerns the apparent murder of Jacob Marley, Ebenezer Scrooge’s then late and nefarious business partner in “A Christmas Carol.” Investigating that homicide is the Columbo-like Inspector Bucket (played by Stephen Rea), from “Bleak House.” Other characters are drawn from “Great Expectations” (for instance, the lovely Tuppence Middleton plays Miss Amelia Havisham to Tom Weston-Jones’ Meriwether Compeyson), “Oliver Twist” (with Anton Lesser portraying “receiver of stolen goods” Fagin and Richard Ridings filling the henpecked role of Mr. Bumble), and “The Old Curiosity Shop” (with Imogen Faires here playing young Nell Trent).
Sadly, the BBC cancelled “Dickensian” after only one series.
