Charles Dickens is one of the UK’s greatest storytellers, yet not easy to read. Okay, well I struggle. Don’t get me wrong: I love the stories, but because Dickens wrote them initially for serialisation, there seems so much padding that I struggle to get to the end of any of them – even though much of that padding is the sort of social commentary that I hardly disapprove with.
The only ones where I’ve managed to get to the last page (so far) have been Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol.
David Copperfield was Dickens’s eighth novel – serialised between 1849 and 1850 and published as a book in the latter. It is on my shelf in a classic Penguin edition. I have made more than one effort – but have never made it all the way through (Nicholas Nickleby and Great Expectations are others; Pickwick is glorious in places, but again, seems too episodic).
My knowledge of David Copperfield is therefore a mixture of managing about half the novel – and TV adaptations.
Against that background, it’s quite possible that Armando Iannucci’s latest big screen version, The Personal History of David Copperfield, does the greatest service to Dickens’s work.
Don’t worry: put The Thick of It and The Death of Stalin out of your mind. This is not Dickens on sweary ’roids, but a tale beautifully told.
There are substantial edits and some changes to the original story, but not as much as to alter it beyond recognition. Personally, the only thing I would have an issue with is that Peter Capaldi’s Micawber is a bit too knowing, rather than a naive innocent abroad.
The film has raised some eyebrows because of the colour blind casting: if you haven’t been to the RSC or National Theatre much in the couple of decades, then you might find it a shock. However, since all entertainment – whether big or little screen, theatre, panto or opera – requires the audience to suspend it’s belief and accept something unreal as real, then I have as much sympathy for anyone whining about this film as about the RSC’s gender-flipped Taming of the Shrew.
Iannucci has retained the episodic nature of the book, but kept it tight. The cinematography is a joy and the ensemble cast is excellent.
We’ll start with Dev Patel, who is wonderful as the eponymous hero: a real sense of naivety, the fear of revelation and the guilt of trying to hide his background – yet far from being a blank slate (often an issue with Dickensian heroes). A complex performance made to look simple – and a very engaging one.
Hugh Laurie is simply fabulous as Mr Dick and Tilda Swinton is a great Betsy Trotwood.
For many years, I have seen Mr Murdstone as equivalent to a paternal great uncle: a Plymouth Brethren preacher who lived in (as I remember it) a dark house where he commended my father for snapping at my child self for daring to scuff the carpet while The Adults Talked Religion. Darren Boyd didn’t seem right to me at first, but is actually every bit as sinister and nasty as he should be.
Lancastrian Benedict Wong does a great turn as Mr Wickfield, while Ben Wishaw is a superbly slimy Uriah Heep. Rosalind Eleazar, in her film debut, makes a wonderful Agnes, Morfydd Clark is a brilliant Dora (and – fleetingly – David's mother), Nikki Amuka-Bird is a suitably sharp and unpleasant Mrs Steeforth, while Aneurin Barnard is good as James Steerforth, winning both sympathy and condemnation from the audience.
Daisy May Cooper makes a delightful Peggotty, with Paul Whitehouse an ebullient Mr Peggotty.
In fact, there is no bad turn here. It is a magnificent ensemble.
So, on the production side, credit to Zac Nicholson for the cinematography – and, of course, to Iannucci, for direction, joint screenplay (with Simon Blackwell) and joint production (with Kevin Loader).
It might not be as dark as you remember Dickens (frankly, I'm thankful for that) – but there is darkness here: for instance, in the presence of so many homeless people on the streets of London, glimpsed increasingly throughout the film.
But go and see for yourself.
• The Personal History of David Copperfield is in cinemas now.
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