Bleak House filmed in 1920 and 1922. The latter version featured Sybil Thorndike as Lady Dedlock. In 1928, a short film made in the UK in the Phonofilm sound-on-film process starred Bransby Williams as Grandfather Smallweed. In 1998, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a radio adaptation of five hour-long episodes, starring Michael Kitchen as John Jarndyce. The BBC has produced three television adaptations of "Bleak House". The first serial, "Bleak House", was broadcast in 1959 in eleven half-hour episodes. The second "Bleak House", starring Diana Rigg and Denholm Elliott, aired in 1985 as an eight-part series. In 2005, the third "Bleak House" was
Bleak House of coroners' inquests that he had attended when he had been a reporter. In the preface of the book edition of "Bleak House", Dickens wrote: "I shall not abandon the facts until there shall have been a considerable Spontaneous Combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences are usually received." George Gissing and G. K. Chesterton are among those literary critics and writers who consider "Bleak House" to be the best novel that Charles Dickens wrote. As Chesterton put it: ""Bleak House" is not certainly Dickens' best book; but perhaps it is his best novel". Harold Bloom, in his book