RUSSELL TOVEY - No.454

Father's Day gifts 2010.

Here in Oz we have a couple of major DVD shops offering 2 Russell Tovey products as ideal Fathers Day gifts. Fathers Day being the 5th of September. As you can see from the ad below Little Dorrit and Being Human are listed in the top row - in 1st and 4th positions respectively.

Click picture to enlarge.

...and speaking of Little Dorrit...

Review of American PBS showing of Little Dorrit:

I only recently read Little Dorrit, and it is my new favourite Dickens novel. The story of Amy Dorrit, an honest girl born in debtor’s prison, is a wonderful tale full of ups and downs, trials and tribulations, death and romance. As with many Dickens books, it literally has a cast of thousands, and this production follows most of the storylines from the book quite faithfully. I just watched this on the internet, and I thought this version was sensitive to the material and did a good job of keeping the characters engaging and true while obviously having to shorten Dickens’ voluminous descriptions into shorter episodes. The story is a bit of a soap opera with plenty of bad luck and broken hearts lying around. However, it totally works for me. When I read the book, I actually couldn’t put it down and devoured it in a couple of days. This movie was the same way. I couldn’t stop watching it or wait until the next episode. At the end, I was sitting in front of my computer crying. It is just a lovely story, well-scripted, beautifully acted, and engaging throughout. So I highly recommend this version if you like Dickens at all or if you like any of the actors because the cast (Russell Tovey, Matthew Macfadyen and Claire Foy especially) do a lovely job.

UPDATE: I received my DVD from Amazon and am thrilled to have purchased it. I had seen it on the internet and on Masterpiece (I’m in the US) and the episodes on the DVD are a bit different from what was shown on PBS. The DVD set consists of 4 discs in a widescreen format with 14 episodes coming in at a whopping 452 minutes and includes an interesting “making of” feature with info about Dickens himself as well as the film’s production. I’m pretty sure I saw a scene or two here that was missing on PBS, plus I got the widescreen format that I didn’t get on my TV. A word of caution: the episodes end in cliff-hangers that make it almost impossible to go to bed without watching “just one more episode.” My husband and I both love it and have already recommended it to several people we know. This is a great movie that will make a superb addition to your home DVD library.

Review by D. Loomis