When Tiny Tim met Little Nell: it’s the great Dickens TV mash-up

Tony Jordan, former chief scriptwriter on EastEnders, explains why he’s happy to risk the wrath of Dickens purists in the BBC’s 20-part Christmas showpiece

Is it Little Nell, or Tiny Tim on his crutch, or perhaps Bill Sikes with Bull’s-Eye the dog? Maybe it is Bleak House’s tenacious Inspector Bucket, or Mrs Gamp from Martin Chuzzlewit, with her furled umbrella? None would be exactly an unexpected caller in the run-up to Christmas. Charles Dickens’s highly recognisable characters have been endlessly repackaged for television audiences; but this year, for the first time, they will actually be meeting each other.

In BBC1’s key festive offering, Dickensian, Fagin, played by Anton Lesser, and Scrooge, played by Ned Dennehy, are to go head to head on the cobbled streets of a vast set, built inside an old factory in Greenford, west London.

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