The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff is a four-part BBC comedy series, premiering on BBC Two

BBC Two

BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...

 on 19 December 2011. It is a parody of the works of Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

, drawing its title from Bleak House

Bleak House

Bleak House is the ninth novel by Charles Dickens, published in twenty monthly installments between March 1852 and September 1853. It is held to be one of Dickens's finest novels, containing one of the most vast, complex and engaging arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his entire canon...

and The Old Curiosity Shop

The Old Curiosity Shop

The Old Curiosity Shop is a novel by Charles Dickens. The plot follows the life of Nell Trent and her grandfather, both residents of The Old Curiosity Shop in London....

. It is a television adaptation of Bleak Expectations

Bleak Expectations

Bleak Expectations is a Radio 4 comedy series, whose first series premiered in August 2007. It is a pastiche of the works of Charles Dickens – such as Bleak House and Great Expectations, from which it derives its name – and costume dramas set in the same period, and parodies several of their plot...

, a radio parody of Dickens which ran from 2007 to 2011 and with which it shares the writer Mark Evans

Mark Evans (comedian/writer)

Mark Evans is a Welsh comedian, actor, and writer.He has written for many U.K. radio and television programmes, including That Mitchell and Webb Look , The Late Edition , That Mitchell and Webb Sound , Popetown , and Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway...

 and the producer Gareth Edwards

Gareth Edwards (producer)

Gareth Edwards is a radio and television producer and writer. He is the great-grandson of Hollywood pioneer Albert E. Smith, founder of Vitagraph Studios.TV and Radio Career...

. It stars Robert Webb

Robert Webb

Robert Webb may refer to:*Robert Webb , English actor, comedian and writer*Robert Webb , University of Virginia professor*Robert Webb, the creator of polyhedra software Stella*Robert D. Webb, film maker*Robert Wallace Webb, geoscientist...

, David Mitchell

David Mitchell (actor)

David James Stuart Mitchell is a British actor, comedian and writer. He is half of the comedy duo Mitchell and Webb, alongside Robert Webb, whom he met at Cambridge University. There they were both part of the Cambridge Footlights, of which Mitchell became President. Together the duo star in the...

, Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry

Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...

, Joshua McGuire

Joshua McGuire

Joshua McGuire is a British actor, most notable for television roles including Eastenders: E20 and recurring roles in The Hour and The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff.-External links:*http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3992182/...

, Katherine Parkinson

Katherine Parkinson

Laura Katherine Parkinson is an English actress and comedian who is known for playing the part of Jen Barber in the Channel 4 comedy series The IT Crowd...

 and Susy Kane

Susy Kane

Susy Kane is an English actress, comedy writer and musician.-Personal life:She is the daughter of opera singer Alison Warner and actor and writer John Kane, and the younger sister of comedy writer and actor Simon Kane...

.

External links

• http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/home/article-24015428-great-expectations-for-robert-webb-in-charles-dickens-spoof.do