Bleak House - Film, TV or Theatrical Adaptations

Film, TV or Theatrical Adaptations

In the late Nineteenth Century, actress Jane Coombs toured the west and midwest with a two-hour version of Bleak House. She played both Lady Dedlock and her maid Hortense, who never appear in the same scene.

A 1901 short film, The Death of Poor Joe is the oldest known surviving film featuring a Charles Dickens character.

In the silent film era, Bleak House was filmed in 1920 and 1922. A later version starred Sybil Thorndike as Lady Dedlock. In 1927, a short film made in the UK in the Phonofilm sound-on-film process starred Bransby Williams as Grandfather Smallweed.

The BBC has produced three television adaptations of Bleak House. The first serial Bleak House was broadcast in 1959 in eleven half-hour episodes. The second Bleak House, starring Diana Rigg and Denholm Elliott, aired in 1985 as an eight-part series. 2005 saw the third Bleak House, broadcast in fifteen episodes.