The attractive aspect of this flat-footed documentary resides in seeing numerous places where the peripatetic novelist lived as a deprived young man, owned as a successful author and incorporated into his work. Our guide is Derek Jacobi (who appeared as Arthur Clennam in Christine Edzard's 1988 Little Dorrit), awkwardly arriving at the locations, delivering a fruity commentary, reading passages from the novels book in hand and conducting stilted interviews with experts, professional guides and ingenuous current occupants of Dickens's former residences. This is a bland, old-fashioned documentary with a bland, old-fashioned view of Dickens. A shorter version is to be shown on Sky TV.