PERIOD DRAMA ALERT: BBC spends £8m on ‘Bleak House’; Johnny Vegas to appear

Matthew Kelly, the veteran Stars In Their Eyes presenter, will head up a new BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, funded by licence payers to the tune of £8,000,000…

Other luminaries set to don olde clothes include Gillian Anderson, Johnny Vegas, Pauline Collins and Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths), as well as somebody called Denis Lawson (ex-Holby City, by all accounts).

Set to be as dreary as the book, which hecklerspray ditched after just one page after being curricularly challenged to read it at university, Bleak House will run over an astonishing 16 episodes, and dragged out over a tortuous 9 weeks.

The BBC has been in something of a crisis after the shitfest known as Emmerdale trumped Eastenders in the TV RATINGS WAR, yet Andrew Davies, the man responsible for the Bleak House adaptation told The Mirror: "If Dickens was alive today, he’d be writing for Eastenders."

Mother of God.

So, with the prospect of a reincarnated Dickens looking over his shoulder and checking the job listings on a daily basis, we can only hope that this £8m gamble will pay off for the Beeb. Auntie will hoping for a few more positive column inches.

But not here Bubba, not even scraps. We’ve had our fill of period drama. We hope it bombs.

Read more about the BBC Bleak House adaption on Digital Spy