"Our Mutual Friend" is one of Dickens' greatest novels, matched in depth of character and plot only by his other late masterpiece, "Bleak House". Farino's OMF adaptation is gripping and highly enjoyable, successfully lifting the darkest, most mysterious and funniest elements of Dickens' text to the screen. He is helped by a highly watchable and consistently charismatic cast, including Paul McGann, Keeley Hawes, (who still manages to look beautiful despite being dressed frumpily and having her hair unnaturally frizzed), the inimitable Anna Friel and a gloweringly serious Stephen Mackintosh. Many other great British thesps round out the cast as one can expect from any self-respecting period drama these days, but what makes this series different is the original material itself - "Our Mutual Friend" tells many stories and each of them is worth the telling. Dickens does not flinch from showing the underside of a society steeped in hypocrisy, where poverty and lack of opportunity create desperate and embittered people, and where too often, wealth and power lead to abuse, ignorance and greed. His genius is the ability to couch such serious messages in the most thrilling and illuminating narratives.