Andrew Davies on Bleak House

King of the adapters Andrew Davies talks about tackling his biggest project to date - BBC1’s forthcoming epic 16-part serial of Bleak House - and admits Dickens’ labyrinthine plotting has almost got the better of him.

There's a full interview by Rob Driscoll in The Stage.

“On the plus side, Dickens gives you such strong lines of dialogue and there are all these wonderful, grotesque characters you can really run with,” says Cardiff-born Davies.

“But plot-wise it’s a nightmare, because it is so convoluted and keeps spinning off into sub-plots. Your main concern is to keep focused on the central plot, that the whole audience can follow. In truth, when you get down to the finest detail, quite a bit of the plot doesn’t work, so you have to straighten things out. But every problem is an opportunity in disguise and I think we’ve cracked it.”