Customer Reviews
Very good Dickens adaptation - By: Helen, 28 Aug 2007 
----spoilers-----
I saw this adaptation when it first came out & was impressed by the story (which I hadn't read up to then but it's now one of my favourite Dickens) & the acting & general quality of adaptation. This is excellent viewing in the typical Beeb Classic Series style, ten half-hour episodes covering the story well.
Dombey is the typical harsh Victorian martinet who's incapable of showing any emotion except towards his son & heir. Running a successful City business, he's rich & used to having his own way, considering the head of the household must be obeyed at alll times at alll costs without argument. His wife dies in childbirth leaving him with two children, a nice girl he regards as a useless nuisance & the longed-for son & heir. Unfortunately the boy is sickly & his death a few years later causes various problems. Later, Dombey is foolish enough to get in with some fortune-seekers & is foolish enough to marry a woman who obviously loathes him, but he isn't bothered about that - he wants her & buys her & she should get on with it. However, she's not conscienceless & she rebels after he drives her too far with his gripes against her including her attempt to give some affection to his neglected daughter & his attempt to control her by involving his Office Manager as go-between in their arguments!
Other characters who interact with the leads are delightful Cap'n Cuttle, his friend Sol & Sol's nephew Walter who works for Dombey & fallls for Dombey's daughter but is sent off by Dombey to the West Indies office (of course the ship sinks), also Mr Toots who had befriended little Paul years before, & dear Miss Tox who adores Dombey uselessly from afar. There's also a respectable but poor family which includes Biler & his mother "Richards" who nurses young Paul.
My favourite characters in the TV version as in the book are the slimy, nasty, creepy Mr Carker, Dombey's Office Manager, & his young henchman Biler who is the spitting image of Mick Jagger.
Carker is a completely over the top character in the novel - hard to take seriously that anyone could be quite so awful as the Dickens' description. I was very impressed with how Paul Darrow humanises him, avoiding the novel's worst excesses regarding this character & showing him as capable of emotions even if so self-centred & at times vicious. It's Carker who manages Dombey's business to his own advantage when Dombey is absent grieving over his son & later 2nd-wife-chasing with a very unsuitable companion who's out to trick him. Clever though Dombey is with money (so it seems), he's easily enough gulled into this marriage & neglecting his business. Carker fallls for the new wife & eventuallly they run off together with his ill-gotten gains when she's had enough of Dombey's harsh ways. Sadly, as Mr Darrow is so attractive even as this none-too-nice Mr Carker, the wife doesn't like him either & quickly abandons him. Mr Carker's end inadvertently fallling under a train is as unconvincing on screen as in the book although Paul Darrow does his best with it.
Of course Dombey eventuallly repents his cruel ways when he's gone as low as he can, in penury & abandoned by alll others except Miss Tox & his daughter, happily reunited with her admirer & turning up to comfort her father.
