Little Dorrit

*Little Dorrit premieres with a one-hour episode on Sunday, October 26*

Former Spooks star Matthew Macfadyen leads an all-star cast in this stunning adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel.

Little Dorrit might be one of Dickens' lesser-known novels, but it's a timeless rags-to-riches story that follows the fortunes of the Dorrit family.

Young Amy - the little Dorrit of the title - cares for her father, William, a long-term inmate of Marshalsea debtors' prison in London. Times are tough for the Dorrit family, but their luck is about to change with the sudden arrival of the benevolent Arthur Clennam, plagued by his own father's dying words: "Put it right, Arthur."

Arthur suspects this has something to do with the Dorrits' plight and vows to honour his father's wishes. But just when it looks like the Dorrits are on the up, the villainous Rigaud threatens to expose a dark family secret...

Macfadyen is the kindly Clennam, while Amy is brought to life by TV newcomer Claire Foy. Lord Of The Rings star Andy Serkis plays evil Rigaud in the drama, which also stars stage and screen legend Tom Courtenay, Torchwood actress Freema Agyeman, Hotel Babylon's Emma Pierson and Gavin and Stacey's Ruth Jones.

Writer Andrew Davies is no stranger to adapting the classics for TV - he's given us versions of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Middlemarch to name just three. And he was delighted to be able to turn this Dickens tale into a 14-part series, which will be shown in half-hour 'soap-sized' episodes.

"This is a tremendous opportunity to take a novel that not many people have read and introduce it to them," he says. "It is not an inferior Dickens in the slightest - in fact, quite the contrary. It's a great book. It's both a marvellous mystery and a wonderful love story."

For previews and video interviews with the cast of Little Dorrit, log on to whatsontv.co.uk