The 20-part series, created and co-written by Tony Jordan, brings characters from many Charles Dickens novels together in one Victorian London neighbourhood, as Inspector Bucket investigates the murder of Ebenezer Scrooge's partner Jacob Marley.

[1][2] The executive producers are Polly Hill and Tony Jordan, and the production company behind the series is Red Planet Pictures.

[4][5] The cast includes the following:[6] Honoria Barbary and Martha Cratchit work in a dress-shop, Mantalini's—a reference to Madame Mantalini, a milliner in Nicholas Nickleby.

The coffee-house on the street is Garraway's, frequented in real life by Dickens and appearing in The Pickwick Papers, Martin Chuzzlewit, Little Dorrit, and The Uncommercial Traveller.

Episode 1: Jaggers mentions his clerk "Mr Heep"—Uriah Heep from David Copperfield; Silas Wegg, the tapman at The Three Cripples (a tavern in Oliver Twist), gives barmaid Daisy a tray of drinks to take back to "Mr Pickwick and his guests" (The Pickwick Papers).

Episode 6: Scrooge snaps at Cratchit that, in renegotiating terms of a loan, he must surely "have consulted with Jacob Marley's ghost"—a foreshadowing of A Christmas Carol.

Episode 12: On leaving the little boy in the care of the Bumbles at the workhouse, Inspector Bucket's parting advice, "Manners are important, and so is standing up for yourself," presages the starving Oliver Twist politely demanding more gruel in the Bumbles' workhouse: "Please, sir, I want some more" (a moment essentially recreated in Episode 19).

The clergyman (only named in the credits) whom Bill has smuggle a match in to Dodger in gaol is the slimy Reverend Chadband (Bleak House), extorted to do so here because he had relations with Nancy.

In reply to Daisy's farewell to him in the tavern, Scrooge mutters, "Humbug," his trademark utterance; Marley's ghost whispers "Ebenezer," as in A Christmas Carol.

[13] Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Michael Hogan was more impressed, giving the opening two episodes a full five stars: "Jordan put a pacy, playful and subtly sudsy new spin on much-loved material.

He observed, "Dickensian will unfold in 20 half-hour instalments, its format reminiscent of the BBC's landmark serialisation of Bleak House a decade ago.

Such soap-style scheduling isn't far removed from how Dickens told his original stories, published in short instalments with cliffhanger endings, the multiple plot threads drawn inexorably together over time".

Hogan concluded, "Jordan is a Dickens super-fan and his love of the great man's works seeped through every line of the sparkling script.

[14] In The Independent on Sunday, Amy Burns found the opening episodes to be a "brilliant BBC re-imagining" and a "clever and compelling Dickens mash-up".

She praised Stephen Rea for playing Inspector Bucket "utterly faultlessly", adding, "His mannerisms and vocal intonation were absolutely spot-on and the script was excellent".

Conceding that "Jordan has also rather cleverly managed to fashion a whodunit plot out of the death of Marley", Dowell decided, "if I am honest I am not sure I will be hanging around to find out more.