Let’s not include the various versions of A Christmas Carol in this tread.
Are there any good films or miniseries of Charles Dickens’ novels?
I started watching a miniseries of Bleak House a few years ago. I didn’t get to finish it, but it was fairly decent. I think it was produced by the BBC sometime in the 2000s.
Aside from that, I’ve got nothing.
I was going to say Bleak House. I’m generally not a huge Dickens fan but I loved that miniseries. Unfortunately I doubt I’ll ever read the book now that I know how it ends. My BBC-geek friends have told me that the recent Little Dorritt is very good as well, but I haven’t seen it yet. (That reminds me - I recorded it off the TV at Christmas and haven’t watched it yet.)
Bleak House worked for me too, the recent one with Gillian Anderson. The only other Dickens that made a lasting impression on me was the 1934 film of Great Expectations.
Bleak House with Gillian Anderson and Ian Richardson, certainly. I’ve also heard good things about the earlier version, with Diana Rigg, but haven’t seen it.
I greatly enjoyed Our Mutual Friend, the 1999 version with Paul McGann, Keeley Hawes, and Steven Mackintosh. Also Martin Chuzzlewit, from 1995, with Paul Scofield, Tom Wilkinson, Keith Allen, Julia Sawalha and the painfully sympathetic Philip Franks. And though it’s been quite a long time, I fondly remember the 1991 version of A Tale of Two Cities with John Mills and my perma-crush James Wilby as Sydney Carton.
Great Expectations from 1946 is very well regarded.
David Copperfield from 1935 is also excellent (with W.C. Fields as a very effective McCawber and Roland Young as a chilling Uriah Heep).
Finally, there’s the stage version of Nicholas Nickelby. It was broadcast in its entirety (eight hours) on PBS, and is available on DVD.
That’s the one! I listed the 1934 version, but 1946 is the one I remember. Jeez, even back then they didn’t wait long to do remakes.
Your friends are right. 
(Although I admit I haven’t read the book so I can’t say how faithful an adaptation it is. But the actress who plays Amy Dorrit is very good, and adorable, and Matthew McFadyen is wonderful as the honorable Arthur.)
Their excuse was that the technology was constantly improving and nobody had a VCR or DVD player so what was old could be new again for another generation. These days? Because this isn’t The Pit I’ll leave it to your personal interpretation because I’m not nearly as impressed with Dolby sound and high-def pictures as the people who want to sell me a remake might think, considering my profession.
(I design home A/V systems and home theaters. My own TV is an elderly 32" with a pincushion problem that I know could be corrected if I replaced a single diode, but I haven’t done it yet. It’s probably worth the trouble but I still haven’t done it. I’m a terrible person to answer A/V questions because I always bring the answers back to what I like and what I tolerate, which are completely different. I usually defer to the more ardent amateurs because they care more.)
I guess when an Oscar-winning film sees its reputation plummet in the 40 years since its release, it falls hard enough to not even warrant a mention in this thread.