Our Mutual Friend (1998) Review

I think I was thirteen when I first read Our Mutual Friend, and I fell head-over-heels in love with it. When I first heard there was a mini-series of it, I had no interest in seeing it. They thought they could make a good movie of my beloved OMF? Ha! Pretentious little blighters. So for some time, I ignored the 1998 mini-series.

But then I eventually stumbled into the period drama world, and I discovered that people were saying that mini-series of OMF was pretty good, after all. I eventually overcame my prejudice against it and decided I would rather like to watch it. So, about three months ago (I’m writing a review much more promptly than I usually do), I finally did.

(WARNING: I don’t spoil everything in this review, but there are definitely some spoilers.)

Let’s start with Lizzie.

I must admit that Keeley Hawes does not look anything like how I picture Lizzie. The book describes her as having dark hair and rich coloring and complexion, and for once I actually pictured the character the way that the author describes her. In addition, although I think Keeley portrayed Lizzie’s sweetness and goodness very well, I don’t think she had quite as much – gravity? presence? gravitas? as I felt book-Lizzie did.

I am not sure how I feel about Eugene. I must confess to you all that Eugene as a character has not grown on me with time – I know he has a character arc and everything…but he’s still not on any “favorite character” lists of mine, I can tell you that. That being said and my own personal quibbles with Eugene aside, I’m not sure Paul McGann gets across exactly the right personality for Eugene. He was quiet – very quiet, both personality-wise and literally. (He and Mortimer were both almost inaudible at times, in fact.) And honestly, I don’t think book-Eugene is particularly quiet. He doesn’t talk much while in Society (as represented by our dear Veneerings’ dinner parties), but I think that was more because he couldn’t be bothered than because he was a quiet person. He also wasn’t…flamboyant enough? Charming enough? In this adaptation, I honestly saw no reason why Lizzie would fall for Eugene at all – he was just some depressed muttering man who randomly decided to pay for her education. (His absolutely abominable facial hair didn’t help either. Where’s Jeeves when you need him?)

I’ve always had a particular fondness for Mortimer. He was one of my favorite characters when I first read the book. (I even named a laptop after him…a laptop which had a tragic water-related demise, but that is irrelevant.) Mortimer has all the charm of Eugene, but is less annoying and has better morals and more common sense; what’s not to like? I’ll admit that my first feeling on seeing Mortimer here was a sense of disappointment – he wasn’t like my mental image of Mortimer, he was too quiet, &c., &c. But I grew to like Dominic Mafham’s Mortimer quite quickly. He is a quieter Mortimer than I’ve always pictured, but other than that, once I got used to him I came to realize that he’s actually surprisingly similar to my mental image of Mortimer. (I do think it’s weird that he’s about twice the size of Eugene, though. Random, but it made quite an impression on me.)

(Also, who agrees with me that Mortimer should have found some nice girl too? With everyone else pairing off like characters in a musical comedy, as Bertie Wooster would put it, it seems a little unfair that Mortimer is pretty much the only one left out.)

Now on to Our Mutual Friend himself, John of Many Names.

Like Mortimer, Stephen Mackintosh was distinctly different from my mental image of John, but actually surprisingly similar in some ways. He had a little bit less gravitas than I pictured John to have (and if you close your eyes and just listen to his voice, he sounds a bit like Mr. Guppy in Bleak House), but he was good. He almost seemed a little…dweeby, I suppose. But in an endearing way. There’s nothing wrong with being a dweeb, if you ask me. I have some issues with his storyline, but that is not the fault of the actor and I’ll go into more detail on that later when I talk about the plot itself.

(Also, this is a little irrelevant, but I had cast Stephen Mackintosh in my Sense and Sensibility dream cast before I had actually watched him in anything, solely based on my impressions of his vibe from pictures of him…and I got to feel immensely pleased with myself, since as I watched him here I realized that my earlier feeling had been 100% correct and he would be perfect for the part I cast him as.)

Interestingly enough, I felt like Bella had the opposite problem as John: she had more gravitas than I pictured her with. Bella is supposed to be a whiny, petulant teenager when we first meet her, and Anna Friel…isn’t. Yes, she makes Bella annoying-ish (which is good; Bella is supposed to be annoying), but she felt much too mature right from the beginning, I thought.

The Boffins were very good. They (again) did not look at all like I pictured them, but I think they did a good job of getting across the right Boffinly mixture of warm-heartedness and goodness and not-super-sophisticated-but-still-classy-about-the-things-that-matter.

Colonel Brandon playing Bradley Headstone was interesting to see. (I had been afraid that I would find it really weird to see our good Colonel being a psycho, but I found that it was easy to separate David Morrissey as Colonel Brandon and David Morrissey as Bradley in my mind and enjoy both performances without either spoiling each other.) He (again!) wasn’t how I’d always pictured Bradley, but he was good. I think he did a great job of portraying Bradley as the man of violent passions who desperately wants to be respectable and pull himself up in society.

I must admit that, especially as the story progressed, I felt that I would have liked to see a little bit more subtlety from his characterization…I mean, it is a character where it works to just pull out all the stops and play him as totally deranged as the story goes on, and I certainly think David’s performance was good. But I think it could have been even better and deeper and more interesting. (I’ve always been rather sympathetic towards Bradley, I must admit. Not that I’m saying he wasn’t a psycho or that I’m condoning attempted murder. Bradley was a total creep, and I’m not saying he wasn’t. But I felt for him, too. Eugene was a total jerk to him, before Bradley had done anything to remotely deserve it. The poor man wanted so badly to be just an ordinary person, and just so much…wasn’t one. And then Eugene had to go and literally drive him mad.)

Speaking of villainous characters, I wasn’t totally impressed with Rogue Riderhood, or Gaffer Hexam, either. While both are supposed to be villain characters – particularly Rogue Riderhood – they are also supposed to be a kind of comic relief, and I don’t think that aspect came through very well. The bit after Rogue Riderhood is saved from drowning, for instance, is one of my favorite comic bits in the book (the expression “nothing to boast on” has become common usage in our house), though of course you do feel sorry for poor Pleasant. In this version, that part wasn’t comic at all.

The Lammles were fairly well-drawn. We did lose the complexities of Mrs. Lammle’s character, which made me sad, but there’s only so much you can keep when trying to adapt a Dickens book to screen. And since we couldn’t get that, it was sort of kind of fun to see the Lammles having their own weird little rapport as they were united in crime together. (Fun fact: I may have known beforehand that Anthony Calf (Colonel Fitzwilliam in the ’95 P&P and Pip in the ’89 Great Expectations) was Alfred Lammle, but if so I had completely forgotten, and I legitimately did not recognize him through the whole series. I only realized when I looked up the cast list later, and it gave me quite a jolt, I can tell you.)

Oh, and speaking of villains, we lost Fledgeby and the whole Georgiana Podsnap subplot. I like Georgiana and I was rather sorry we lost that bit, but oh well. (We also lost my very least favorite character in the entire story by cutting out this bit, namely Fascination Fledgeby himself.)

Silas Wegg suffered a bit from un-comic-ifying syndrome, but to a lesser degree. He was pretty good. And I was so happy Mr. Venus was included! He’s one of my favorite minor characters, and I was afraid that he’d be cut. I should stop complaining that characters aren’t the way I pictured them….but…he wasn’t. To be fair, I always pictured Mr. Venus as looking a bit like the bartender in the Trouble with Tribbles episode in Star Trek, and I’ll allow that that is very strange and random.

Looks aside, I liked the characterization of him. He was good. He was amusing. I was pleased.

Most of the minor characters were well-done, in fact. The only one I have a major complaint with is Jenny Wren. Besides the fact that she looked older than Lizzie, when she was supposed to be a literal child, she didn’t at all capture the strange combination of sharp, wise, childish whimsical-ness that book-Jenny Wren had. I’m sure she’d be a very hard character to portray on screen, but I do think they could have at least tried harder than they did.

I do have one other character-related complaint, though. I’ve always had an enormous soft spot for Mr. Twemlow, you see. He’s one of my favorite Dickens characters. I long desired to put his name on a vanity plate of a car. (I’m currently planning on having “what ho” as my vanity plate instead, but that’s beside the point.) I like Mr. Twemlow. I stan Mr. Twemlow.

For a long while I thought Mr. Twemlow was not going to be in this mini-series at all, and I was sadly resigned to it – looking at it from a technical standpoint, I do have to admit that he isn’t a super major character. But then he is introduced, about 70% through the series…except that they call him Mr. Tremlow. TREMLOW. WHY. WHAT IS WRONG WITH A PERFECTLY GOOD NAME LIKE TWEMLOW. Not to mention that the actor – though he did a fine job – looked nothing like the dry, weazen little man with hollowed-out cheeks which made it look like he had tried to retire into himself years ago and only got so far that is described in the book. Ergg.

(In case you couldn’t tell, this moved me deeply.)

That’s probably enough about characters…I can’t really talk about every single minor character, since we’d be here all day if I did (oh yes, I enjoyed seeing Mrs. Jennings as Abby, though! Didn’t expect that). On to script and plot, then.

I thought the script was very good, on the whole. The first episode may have been confusing to someone who didn’t know the plot, but since I did know the plot very well, I couldn’t really judge. One thing I found especially confusing was the revealing of John’s backstory…I haven’t read the book in awhile and was a little foggy on some of the logistics of the whole swindling/stolen identity thing, and watching this did not clear up those details for me at all.

I thought the way they handled the reveal of John’s true identity to Bella was an interesting departure from the book. In the book, that whole bit is unabashedly joyful and happy. In this version, there is more of a feeling that Bella is unhappy and uncomfortable with the fact that she was deceived for so long. Honestly…while I liked the joyous feel of the book, I didn’t really mind this change, because I myself have become much more uncomfortable with that plot line as time has gone on. Especially with the fact that she fell in love with John and MARRIED him, thinking that he was someone he wasn’t and thinking that he was in circumstances which were in fact completely fabricated. It doesn’t feel like Bella is being treated fairly – indeed, it doesn’t even feel like she’s being treated as an adult – to hide something like that from her, something which she has every right to know. It seems insulting to her…degrading, almost. I don’t mind that the mini-series acknowledges that somewhat.

Another change I noticed is that the issues with Eugene’s character seem to be softened somewhat. Take, for instance, the first confrontation between Eugene and Bradley. In the book, Bradley becomes enraged because of Eugene’s cruel and contemptuous treatment of him. In the mini-series, Bradley starts off by being enraged, and Eugene’s sarcastic comments are more in self-defense than anything. This, again, throws a less subtle light on Bradley’s character, which I didn’t like. It also makes Eugene seem somewhat less unlikable, which I’m not sure I approve of…Eugene is supposed to honestly be something of a jerk at this point in the proceedings. His arc has not yet arc-ed.

I also don’t think it’s made clear enough why Lizzie is running away from Eugene. Again, this is probably at least partly done because the truth – namely, that she’s running away because Eugene is pursuing her with no plans of marrying her and without caring how he’s affecting her good name and reputation – doesn’t make Eugene sound too good, and one generally wants one’s romantic leads to be at least palatable to one’s audience.

Oh, and one other thing is that I have always thought the ending of Wegg’s story was weirdly over-the-top in the book, and it was every bit as much so in the mini-series. I mean, I understand your being put out at the fellow, John, but threatening to twist his head off? Really? Ah well. We have only Dickens to blame for that one.

Well, I suppose that’s the meat of my thoughts…the settings were great, the costumes were great; they obviously had the budget to make this production high quality, which I appreciate. It was well-made, and I thought that on the whole it was a very good, close adaptation of the original book. I enjoyed watching it, and I’ll probably watch it again.

Have you seen the 1998 Our Mutual Friend? What did you think of it? What are your favorite Dickens adaptations?