David's other error of judgement involves, of course, his friendship with James Steerforth. And Oliver Milburn portrays the adult Steerforth as attractive, dazzling and tragic -- just as Dickens intended. Some attention is paid here to the unsettled homelife Steerforth endures with his mother (Cherie Lunghi) and Rosa Dartle. These scenes capture the awkwardness of relationship, and the unwarranted pride that Mrs Steerforth has in her son. Dickens presents a pitiful image of the mother-son realtionship in his novel, one in which Mrs Steerforth clings to an idealised image of young James, wilfully oblivious of his inability to live up to such an image. Unhappily, Steerforth realises this inabilty and attempts to explain his failings to David in quiet moments when they are alone. The television production strives to recreate the intimacy between David and Steerforth, and there are brief moments when the picture of Steerforth the neglected son (as opposed to the seducer of the Fisherman's niece) comes to the fore and we are driven to the brink of feeling sorry for him. David condemns Steerforth in the novel, but his feelings about him remain secretly ambivalent. Thoughts of betrayal are weighed up against  mourning the loss of freindship. We observe, in the adaptation, just the right amount of self-condemnation from Steerforth to allow us to feel similar amounts of pity.

Several cameo performances occur throughout: I was reminded of Delbert Mann's 1970 film version of the novel which included so many , talented, well-known actors that it was a who's who of British theatre. In 1999, however, Ian McKellan is the whispering Mr Creakle, and he relishes the opportunity to play a character who is more akin to an ogre than a school-master. (A kind school-master, that is, like Dr Strong. Evil educationalists seem to abound in nineteenth-century literature!) Paul Whitehouse appears as the Goroo man, Patsy Byrne plays Mrs Gummidge (wallowing in her melancholy), and Dawn French makes a memorably affectionate Mrs Crupp, David's London land-lady. Dickens is so intent upon including such extraordinary characters in his novels that it becomes a logistical nightmare for any script-writer as to who to include within and who to exclude from any adaption of one of his novels. 

David Copperfield is a story that is largely concerned with the significance of memory. Retrospect and contemplation are of vital importance. This adaptation of the novel has, to some extent, sacrificed the narrator's necessity to dwell upon the past to consider both his mistakes and the mistakes made by those within his personal history. Yet, the production explores as best it can within the constraints of four and a half hours one of Dickens's abiding preoccupations: his obvious mastery of the creation of a rich diversity of characters. This new version of David Copperfield, although told at a frustratingly cracking pace, succeeds in introducing to the viewer a number of those characters.