Search - Moonstone, The on DVD

Samuel K. (Solvanda)
Reviewed on 1/4/2021...

2016 BBC production. Five 45 minute episodes, based on the original book from 1860, the first modern English detective novel. Wilkie Collins, the writer, was a good friend of Charles Dickens, who published his work and schooled him in the art of writing. The novels Collins published in the 1860s are the best and most enduring of his career. The Woman in White, No Name, Armadale, and The Moonstone, written in less than a decade, show Collins not just as a master of his craft, but as an innovater and provocateur. These four works sold in large numbers and secured him an international reputation. Two of these, The Moonstone and Woman in White, have been brought to the screen many times, both in movie and series.

There is a fascinating novel called 'Drood', written by Dan Simmons, which is a fictionalized account of the last five years of Charles Dickens' life told from the viewpoint of Collins. The title comes from Dickens' unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The novel's complex plot mixes fiction with biographical facts from the lives of Dickens, Collins, and other literary and historical figures of the Victorian era. As of June 2019, Guillermo del Toro is still scheduled to direct a film adaptation for Universal Pictures. I would imagine this has been stalled a bit, for obvious reasons.

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