Justin Chadwick brings pace and emphatic performances to period drama. Bleak House gives us reasons to value that approach, but also to wish for less insistence on every character’s peculiarities.
Fi1m perspective
In Bleak House (2005), characters arrive with their peculiarities firmly announced. Justin Chadwick and fellow director Susanna White keep Andrew Davies’s Dickens adaptation crowded, gothic and brisk. The strange surroundings have their appeal, and there is enough comic confidence to justify much of the exaggerated acting. It is decent ensemble television, though we would recommend it chiefly to viewers who enjoy that theatricality. Too often, the direction seems anxious to make sure we have noticed what is odd about somebody.
Chadwick directed nine of its fifteen episodes, and the series opened the way from episodic television to features. The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) came first, followed by The First Grader (2010) and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013). With Tulip Fever (2017), written by Tom Stoppard, he continued working in period drama. His later television work includes Becoming Elizabeth (2022) and Shardlake (2024). Historical subjects have remained a consistent choice across both film and television.
His earlier work as an actor helps explain the priority he gives performers. In Bleak House, dynamic, multi-camera handheld shooting serves the practical need to follow several stories without losing momentum. That is a useful choice for a crowded adaptation, and Chadwick and White seldom let the pace slacken. Their shared responsibility matters when judging his work, too. We can recognise his interest in performance here without pretending that every successful scene, or every excess, belongs to him alone.
Gillian Anderson and Burn Gorman are our chief reasons to stay with Bleak House, which prevents any simple dismissal of its approach to acting. Yet we grew frustrated when the heightened performances made the serious drama difficult to believe. We wanted the direction to ease off and allow the characters to do something beyond confirming their first impressions. For an evening of gothic comedy, start there; do not expect the characters to understate themselves.
Biography
Justin Chadwick (born 6 December 1968) is an English television and film director. He began his career as an actor before directing episodes of series including EastEnders, The Bill and Spooks.
Chadwick directed nine of the fifteen episodes of the BBC miniseries Bleak House (2005). The production won the BAFTA for Best Drama Serial, and he received nominations for a Primetime Emmy, a BAFTA for Best Direction and a Royal Television Society award.
His feature films include The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), The First Grader (2010), Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013) and Tulip Fever (2017). He has also directed episodes of Tin Star, Becoming Elizabeth and Shardlake.
