Bleak House Continues.

Refuge in "Bleak House": "Skimming is the new reading. As newspapers scramble to hold onto their dwindling audience, magazines shrink the size of their articles down to caption size (or replace them altogether with 'charticles') and bloggers compete to capture whatever shards remain of our already fragmented attention, one thing is clear: The act of reading -- of hunkering down and focusing on one piece of writing at a time, all the way through -- is quickly becoming a luxury we can't afford, at least not if we're pretending to fight that losing -- and increasingly pointless -- battle known as 'keeping up.'Now more than ever, we need Masterpiece Theatre's 'Bleak House.' "

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Part 4 of the 6-part "Bleak House" aired on PBS on Sunday and it has me enthralled. The pace of the storytelling is breathless, cramming more plot into one hour than you're bound to see in an entire season of LOST (that doesn't mean I love you any less, LOST!). Since it's Dickens, the colorfulness of the characters goes without saying. And the acting is superb, especially from the most prominent characters, played by Gillian Anderson (Lady Dedlock), Anna Maxwell Martin (Esther Summerson) and Charles Dance (the vile Tulkinghorn). If you haven't been watching, don't start now - there are only 2 episodes left (this coming Sunday and the one after that) and you've missed too much already. However, the DVD will be released almost immediately following the final episode, on February 28, so you won't have to wait too long to see it. I know I'll be buying it.