There’s going to be a new Dickens TV series coming out and Tom Hardy is set to be the executive producer. Whether he’ll star in any of them or not isn’t yet known but given that he’s been a collaborator with writer Stephen Knight, who will also be working on this project, anything is possible. Over the next few years several of Dickens’ novels will be adapted to TV and will be featured on the BBC. The first among the many will be A Christmas Carol, a story that is well known to most everyone that celebrates Christmas and even a few of those that don’t.
A Christmas Carol is about the only real acceptable story to begin with given that the season is almost upon us, and it will kick off the Christmas season just fine by telling again the tale of Ebeneezer Scrooge and his miserly ways. The first Dickens novel is set to be run over three hour-long installments, which means that the tale will likely contain a good deal more depth and description than many other renditions have managed. What is yet to seen is what will be fitted into the story to justify the running time, or if the time taken up by commercials will make each episode more like forty-five minutes long, give or take a minute or two.
This endeavor could take a while to complete since Dickens wrote at least 22 novels, which means if they decide to split others up into episodic chunks then the show could last for a good long while and possibly draw in even more viewers. What’s needed however is a decent hook that will allow them to keep interest and find ways to keep the audience anticipating what might come next. Simply scheduling each Dickens novel isn’t enough, they need to match each one with the current season as well as they can and then apply it at the right time. Of course I’m a writer, not a program director or even a producer, so my opinion is coming from what makes the most sense to me and not necessarily a proven formula that those who are running the show might have.
As a viewer however it is enough to state that a lot of people like to be surprised but many of them also like to know just a little something about what’s coming, a teaser in other words that allows their minds to work upon what they’ve seen and heard. This allows them to make up theories, ideas, and expectations of what could happen in the next show, and why it will turn out this way or that way. People want to have an idea coming into a show of what could happen, not necessarily what WILL happen.
This venture could be kind of interesting for Hardy and Knight since it seems like it could last a long while if things go as they should and the novels are handled with care but are still allowed to blossom when they come to light.
