Charles Dickens' complex tale of young love, murder and the quest for a mystery-man's identity unfolds in a sumptuous new six-part adaptation by celebrated screenwriter Andrew Davies. MASTERPIECE THEATRE's "Bleak House," starring Gillian Anderson ("The X-Files"), Charles Dance ("The Jewel in the Crown") and other masters of Dickensian disguise, airs on PBS Sundays, April 22 - May 13, 2007, 9:00 p.m. ET. An epic feast of characters and storylines, "Bleak House" features some of the most famous plot twists in literary history, including a case of human spontaneous combustion and an infamous inheritance dispute that is tied up for generations in the dysfunctional English courts, while lawyers consume the assets of the estate. At its heart, "Bleak House" is the story of the icily beautiful Lady Dedlock (Anderson), who nurses a dark secret, and the merciless lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn (Dance), who seeks to uncover it. The cast of supporting characters contains some of Dickens' most famous creations: Smallwood, the evil moneylender; Krook, the cool police inspector at the center of fiction's first-ever whodunit; and Little Jo, the young crossing sweeper, whose tragic death almost brought Victorian England to a standstill. For Davies - generally regarded as the master of literary adaptations, including Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice - taking on Dickens was a mixed blessing: "Dickens gives you such strong lines of dialogue and there are all these wonderful, grotesque characters you can really run with," says Davies. "But plot-wise it's a nightmare."
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