Oliver's New Twist

It's been 167 years since "Oliver Twist" debuted in novella form, but Charles Dickens can still draw a crowd. Despite the splattering rain on a recent Saturday evening, a long queue huddled outside the Gate Cinema in London's Notting Hill, in hopes of getting tickets to Roman Polanski's version of the literary classic. In fact, that charming wraith Oliver has never stopped winning over audiences; since 1909, the beloved story has been filmed 20 times. And audiences keep coming back for more.

This autumn a spate of remade costume dramas are hitting big and small screens around the world. Keira Knightley portrays Elizabeth Bennet in the film version of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" while the BBC, in partnership with PBS's "Masterpiece Theatre" in the United States, has put together a spectacular version of Dickens's "Bleak House" starring Gillian Anderson of "The X-Files." Russian audiences recently screened a new version of Nikolai Gogol's "Deal Souls" while an adaptation of "Doctor Zhivago" is in the works for 2006. And Americans this season will see new period offerings like Thomas Hardy's "Under the Greenwood Tree" and Robert Louis Stevenson's "Kidnapped" also on public television's "Masterpiece Theatre."

Unlike hoop skirts and high collars, the period drama appears in no danger of going out of fashion any time soon. Why do they still capture our imaginations centuries on? Scriptwriter extraordinaire Andrew Davies, who has reworked everything from "Bleak House" to "Wives and Daughters," says they appeal because they combine the very simple with the very sophisticated. "They have the archetypical qualities of great fairy tales--the wonderful stories of disadvantaged girls who magically get their happy endings--combined with cute social observations, interesting, complex characters and clever plots," he says.

Since movies were invented, the costume drama has drawn the chattering classes to watch tempestuous men declare their undying love to swooning women in the rolling landscape. Ancient reruns of "Little Women," "Great Expectations" and "Wuthering Heights" are guaranteed to bring in audiences, and the epic 1967 version of John Galsworthy's "The Forsyte Saga" is still regarded by many as the definitive mini-series.

Now, however, remakes of familiar stories are coming at a fast and furious pace. The new "Pride and Prejudice"--which has taken in $40 million so far--comes only 10 years after the BBC's epic version starring Colin Firth as the brooding Mr. Darcy. Fans of William Thackeray's novel "Vanity Fair" only had to wait six years between the mini-series and last year's movie version starring Reese Witherspoon. Coming up next: new productions of "Sense and Sensibility," "Jane Eyre" and "Brideshead Revisited"--all of which have already been remade in the past two decades.

Part of the reason that these great literary classics kept getting recycled is the hope of appealing to a new generation of viewers. "You cannot assume that some 15- or 20-year-old saw the BBC's "Pride and Prejudice," says Rebecca Eaton, executive producer of "Masterpiece Theatre." "They love Keira Knightley, so this could be the first time they have [encountered] Jane Austen." Also, these films are based on classics that are reread and interpreted differently at various stages in life, fueling the appetite for new takes. "Often when you look at television or movies versions from the 1980s--even if they were trying to be faithful to the 19th century--you just think, 'That is just so 1986'," says Davies.