Bleak Expectations- click to enlarge!!

Bleak Expectations march09

pen and watercolour

Click on the picture above to see the whole thing HUGE (4000 pixels wide) in a new window. Yes, all 53 major characters from Mark Evans' BBC Radio 4 Dickensian sitcom Bleak Expectations are included. I stupidly decided to draw this before learning there will be a third series and therefore at least six more characters played by Geoffrey Whitehead to add to the illustration. I have numbered all the characters and will explain them in a second. You can buy both series on CD now and I strongly suggest you do. It is perfection. Amazon

  1. General Sternbeater (actually a good guy)
  2. Restauranteur Sternbeater (Secret Opium Den proprietor)
  3. Moneylender Sternbeater
  4. Right Honorable Sternbeater (Politician)
  5. Emmett Sternbeater (Railway builder)
  6. Dr Francis N. Sternbeater (mad scientist)
  7. Judge Hardthrasher (with his sheep)
  8. Governess Hardthrasher (definitely a woman)
  9. Beadle Hardthrasher
  10. Admiral Hardthrasher (almost entirely made of wood)
  11. Dr Hardthrasher (Mental Asylum owner)
  12. Mr Hardthrasher (Headmaster of St Bastard's School for Boys)
  13. Harry and Pippa Biscuit's 23 sons, named after the English virtues: Capability
  14. Sobriety
  15. Bravery
  16. Nobility
  17. Punctuality
  18. Good Spelling
  19. Charm
  20. Civility
  21. Manners
  22. Feistiness
  23. Likes Tea
  24. Hates French
  25. Loves Latin
  26. Prays Hard
  27. Doesn't Spit in the Street
  28. Complains Not
  29. Tasty
  30. Yummy
  31. Delicious
  32. Happy
  33. Sleepy
  34. Grumpy
  35. Exploit the Colonies (the youngest)
  36. Mr Gently Benevolent (The evilest man in the World)
  37. Ripely Fecund (and her dreams of Ottery love)
  38. Our hero Pip Bin and his marvelous invention
  39. Crap inventor Harry Biscuit
  40. His wife Pippa Bin (and her anvil, she is seen her shoeing a goose)
  41. Mr Skinflint Parsimonious (ironically the most generous of men- deceased)
  42. Flora Diesearly (Pip's first wife)
  43. Poppy Bin (with hot soup from either Jesus or Satan in a Jesus costume)
  44. Aunt Lily
  45. Her Identical twin sister, Agnes Bin, the children's mad mother
  46. Her briefly-lost-to-opium husband Thomas Bin
  47. Mr Wyckham-Post-Forburton-etc... (A lawyer with a 20 minute long name, charges by the hour)
  48. Bakewell Avertwitch (an escaped convict)
  49. Rev. Fecund
  50. Sir Philip Bin (our storyteller and hero's older self)
  51. Servewell (a butler)
  52. Lily (Sir Philip's daughter)
  53. Sourquill (A journalist and later a son-in-law)
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