YMMV / Our Mutual Friend

• Harsher in Hindsight: Mr. Boffin mistakenly thinks The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is The Decline and Fall of the Russian Empire. During Dickens' lifetime the Russian empire still existed and was in relatively good shape, but over the next fifty-odd years it really did decline and fall.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Peter Vaughan (Mr. Boffin in 1998) previously played the villainous Mr. Tulkinghorn in the 1985 miniseries of Bleak House.
  • Pam Ferris plays the kindly Mrs Boffin in the 1998 miniseries. She went on to play in two other Dickens adaptations, as the vile Mrs. Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby (2001) and the prim and proper Mrs. General in Little Dorrit (2008).
  • Also from the 1998 miniseries, Timothy Spall (Mr. Venus) and David Bradley (Riderhood) would go on to play in the 2002 film of Nicholas Nickleby, as Charles Cheeryble and Mr. Bray respectively.
  • David Morrissey (Bradley Headstone) and Linda Bassett (Abby Potterson) also play in Sense and Sensibility, as Colonel Brandon and Mrs. Jennings.
• Ho Yay: Eugene and Mortimer. They live together and do (almost) everything together, so this is inevitable.
• Jerkass Woobie: Even after he nearly kills Eugene, it's hard not to sympathise with Bradley Headstone to some extent.
• Moral Event Horizon: Bradley Headstone crosses it when he attempts to murder Eugene.
• The Woobie:
  • Jenny Wren is a disabled Cloudcuckoolander, living in poverty with an alcoholic father who she treats like her child. Her only real friends are Lizzie and Mr. Riah, and then Lizzie has to flee, and thanks to Fledgeby's schemes Jenny mistakenly believes that Mr. Riah is actually cruel and selfish. And then her father dies. Luckily she gets a happy ending.
  • Mr. Riah, who is really a generous, kind-hearted man, is forced to play the part of a Greedy Jew, is constantly mocked and insulted by Fledgeby, and thanks to Fledgeby he ends up driving away Jenny. Finally he has enough of Fledgeby's behaviour, and he gets a happy ending too.

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