This year marks the 200th birthday of British novelist Charles Dickens and even though he’s been dead since 1870 that isn’t stopping the BBC from heartily marking the occasion. And, honestly, that’s OK with me.

The celebrations kicked off after Christmas, just before the dawn of the new year, with a three-part adaptation of one of Dickens’ most celebrated titles Great Expectations.

Now, for those new to the blog, my wife and I love a good mini-series based on a British novel. Dickens’ Little Dorrit, which I reviewed in a roundabout way last year, is simply one of the best mini-series you’ll find. Considering we both love Great Expectations, the novel, we had high hopes. The cast looked promising too with Gillian Anderson, a great actress in her own right, and David Suchet who all fans of British detective dramas will recognize instantly.

Unfortunately, this particular adaptation, has been aptly coined by my wife as “Great Expectations for Dummies.”

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When the Sherlock series first debuted a couple of years ago on the BBC Maria and I almost missed it. Surprising because we’re both huge fans of both Sherlock Holmes and British detective dramas in general. This time around, for the second series of Sherlock, we were on the ball. And waiting.

The first 90-minute installment in the three-episode second series run is called ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’ and like the mysteries from the last season it’s a take off on a familiar Sherlock story with a whole bunch of twists and turns.

Sherlock and Watson find themselves confronted with a number of mysteries from an outdoorsman killed by a backfiring car to a dead man in a trunk to a dominatrix trying to bring down the British monarchy. It’s a bit of an everything goes but, of course, like any good Sherlock story it all works itself out in the end and ties itself together in a neat little package.

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If you do a Google Image Search for Prime Suspect you’ll find that the majority of the pictures are of Helen Mirren, not Maria Bello. That’s because the NBC version of Prime Suspect which premiered last week is a remake of the British version that came before.

Prime Suspect, with Helen Mirren, was a watershed police drama which ran from the early 90′s until 2006. Mirren owned the role of Jane Tennison, a female police detective in what was then a highly exclusive boy’s club. Struggling against the rampant sexism, Mirren’s character faced down her own demons in the form of alcoholism and a swath of destructive relationships.

Helen Mirren’s Prime Suspect was gritty, violent, and honest taking the characters into the seediest underbelly of London and holding nothing back. Even the camera work felt raw, often finding no qualms with getting right into the actors blemished faces.

Prime Suspect also broke another boundary. Seasons—or series, as they’re called overseas—consisted not of individual episodes and individual cases but each season was a case unto itself. Every 200+ minute season followed Tennison on a single case allowing for a significant amount of time to track down her “prime suspect” and for the case to unfold.

So, how does the NBC remark stack up?

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Maria and I are crazy for British period dramas, particularly anything adapted from Charles Dickens.

We recently watched a BBC mini-series called Little Dorrit, adapted from the Dickens serial novel of the same name. It was an incredibly well-done adaptation and if you love 19th century Britain I highly recommend it. This isn’t a television review though.

One feature of Little Dorrit was something that I hadn’t been familiar with before: a debtor’s prison.

Marshalsea debtor’s prison is one of the main focal points for much of the novel and it’s where we find Amy Dorrit, one of the main protagonists. Her father, a disgraced gentleman, has spent the better part of his life imprisoned in Marshalsea for undisclosed debts that he owes. Although we never find out who the father owes money to, we know that he can’t be released until he pays it back. That is, he’s in jail until he can pay off his debts.

Do you already see the fallacy here?

Little Dorrit was originally written as a satire on British society. Also featured in the novel is the famous Circumlocution Office, Dickens’ ingenious name for the local branch of the British government. Of course, both the debtor’s prison and the highly bureaucratized British government are easy targets for satire.

In fact, the debtor’s prison is nearly satirical by its very nature. Imagine, being put in prison until you can pay off your debts but having no way to work or make money—because you’re in prison!

It seems senseless.

So I was surprised when I stumbled across this story which seems to indicate that, at least in principle, the debtor’s prison is still in existence.

Now don’t get me wrong. People who, for financial reasons, are unable to afford to pay fees and fines issued against them shouldn’t be let off scotch-free. The law needs to be upheld, but surely there’s a better way. Off the top of my head I’d say it makes sense to waive the fee in lieu of, say, community service but to keep them in prison with no way to actually repay? I can’t understand.

In this day and age, is there any sense to the notion of locking someone up behind bars because they can’t pay a fine?

Eliza Doolittle is a newcomer and a brief foray into her other music videos suggests that perhaps Pack Up is a one-off hit. Regardless, it’s a hit.

Pack Up, which grafts its chorus from an old WWI British marching song has such an eclectic and fun sound that you cannot not love it immediately upon hearing. You’ll love it, and if you say otherwise you’re a liar. Featuring UK-based gospel singer Lloyd Wade, this song packs one of the most infectious hooks I’ve heard in a long time. You will dance, if you possess the ability to stand and move around. Comparisons can be drawn, easily, to Gnarls Barkley’s jaw-dropping summer hit Crazy. Remember that song? It’s baaaaaaaaaaack. And this time it’s sung by someone who seems to have taken all the good bits of Amy Winehouse and left all the baggage behind. I like.

Last week I was able to write some initial impressions of the new Sufjan Stevens album thanks to NPR, who have the entire thing streaming on their website. Well, they’ve done it again. Belle & Sebastian’s new album, Write About Love, is available to stream online, in its entirety, until it’s released next week. So thanks again to NPR I’m able to give some initial impressions and thoughts on an album I’ve been waiting an eternity to get my hands on.

For a Belle & Sebastian record, Write About Love opens with a punch. For a band that’s never put much musical emphasis on their percussion section—as talented as it may be—this album opens up with a rolling drum line that sounds more like a Sparta track than a tune from the Scottish indie pop superheroes we’ve come to know a love. Of course, once the piano keys in and that familiar guitar twang begins it starts to feel a bit more familiar it’s still immediately clear that this is a Belle & Sebastian record that’ll keep you guessing. And it does.

Over the course of their last couple of records Belle & Sebastian have steadily grown from a pretty sleepy albeit incredibly talented song-writing force-to-be-reckoned-with into an equally talented although far more perky indie pop ensemble. The shift was pretty pronounced with the release of Dear Catastrophe Waitress in 2003 with a sound that was pretty different from their previous records. The group built upon this new-found sound with 2006′s The Life Pursuit. The release of Write About Love, however, is a curveball to anyone who thought that they had the group pegged down.

Through the course of the forty-minute record we’re treated to an enormous spectrum of songs and sounds. Many tracks on this album are heavily and very professionally-produced pop tracks in a vein similar, yet different, to those found on the group’s last two records. Thanks to what must’ve been incredibly high production values, these songs come out sounding absolutely stunning. On many of these tracks it’s clear that the band is trying new things, like the emphasis on the drum line in the opening track. Still, we’re left guessing, because many of these tunes are also throwbacks to older Belle & Sebastian material. Many songs are slower, more toned-down, the likes of which we haven’t heard the band write since their very early albums. And again, there are many aspects of this record that just leave me wondering like the guest appearance of Norah Jones singing alongside Stuart Murdoch and the incredibly different track contributed by guitarist Stevie Jackson.

At any rate, from my initial impressions Write About Love is the album I’ve been waiting so long for, and then some. If a four-year wait between records felt like a long time I think we can all agree that after hearing what can out of it, it was worth the wait.

I stumbled across the new BBC series Sherlock by accident. Frankly, I’m surprised I hadn’t heard about it earlier. Both Maria and I are huge Sherlock Holmes fans, and huge mystery fans in general, but somehow this slipped passed our radar.

For as long as there have been moving pictures, there have been adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Some have been brilliant. Some have been otherwise. Some have depicted Holmes as rather tame and mild-mannered. Others, like Guy Ritchie’s interpretation, have picked up on Holmes’ lesser savoury habits and tendencies. But the BBC’s Sherlock depicts the famous detective, and his affable partner, in an entirely new way.

Sherlock is an adaptation of the classic Holmes franchise set in modern-day London.

Of course, upon first hearing the premise—a modern day adaptation of Sherlock Holmes—you might scoff, I know I did, but after giving it a chance I found that I would be more than rebuffed. This series, in fact, is brilliant.

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