Dickens’ works tend to be adapted as serials, which is how he wrote them; the last cinema version of David Copperfield appeared over 50 years ago. The format imposes difficult choices: what to include, compress or omit? how to handle the novel’s first-person narrative and autobiographic perspective?

Blackwell and Iannucci are both Dickens enthusiasts, and – far from setting out to break moulds – there was even an early, experimental version where they tried to use only Dickens’ dialogue.

With playful costumes, seeming improvisations, touches of magic and bouts of slapstick, there is, despite the period setting, no place for stuffiness. “You start walking different when you put on a top hat,” Patel found, before Iannucci told him: “It needs to feel very relaxed and lived in. This is your present, so you’re not a guy in 2019 going back in time to play this role.”

That also holds for the film’s uncredited star, London, a global city in 1850, with diversity and disparities, energy and hardships. “We were determined to make it feel as if it was the present tense of the people living it and it felt resonant for contemporary London,” says Loader.

‘And then there’s the cast, a multi-ethnic treat whose diversity is neither text nor subtext, but a reminder that the alabaster complexions of many a costume drama should not be mistaken for historical accuracy.’ Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times