Bob Hoskins plays the amusing Mr. Micawber (a character based on Dickens's own father) and paired with Imelda Staunton ("Shakespeare in Love," "Much Ado About Nothing"), the two are ingenious. The Micawbers give little Davey some respite from loneliness, and big David the key to unlock and reverse the misfortunes of his friends.

"I read the book when I was a kid, and they always made Mrs. Micawber a neurotic hysteric [in the movies]," says Mr. Hoskins in a recent telephone interview from London. "And I never got that out of it. She struck me as a hero. She sticks by him, and eventually proves he is a good man. Imelda and I agreed that she should bring out the heroism of Mrs. Micawber, and we would do it as a love story. They are actually devoted to each other."

Hoskins says that the problem with doing Dickens is that his characters are larger than life. But they are based on people Dickens knew. The temptation is to play them over the top and make them theatrical - when the trick is to make them real.

Does David Copperfield still speak to us?

"Very much so with this whole 'me' culture we have today," Hoskins says. " 'Never give a sucker an even break' is the idea. Whereas Dickens wrote of and reminds us about the welfare of the people, generosity and altruism. 

"Micawber tried to live with corruption," says Hoskins, who's never had drama lessons but develops his parts by thinking in the character's voice. "He knew what Heep was doing - but it went too far and [Micawber] couldn't face being dishonest." 

Bob Hoskins turns in another blockbuster as Micawber, David's financial adviser and friend in need and deed. Give Hoskins three for three this TV season - after his electrifying Noriega for Showtime and standout Sancho Panza for TNT's Don Quixote.

Bob Hoskins seems unencumbered by the ghost of W. C. Fields as he dives enthusiastically into the role of David's verbose friend Mr. Micawber, which Fields played in the 1935 film version.

Start distributing the Emmy nominations right now.

One for Bob Hoskins, whose elaborately askew Mr. Micawber is hilarious from first breath to last; another for Imelda Staunton as his gloriously flustered Mrs. 

Bob Hoskins, the best thing in last week's "Don Quixote," is among the many good things here as always optimistic Mr. Micawber, whose family cares for David until they're shipped off to debtors prison. Imelda Staunton matches him as his wife, forever protesting (not that anyone asked) that she'll never abandon him.

Dickens' father's personality was given to Mr. Micawber, played with great glee by Bob Hoskins . That wraps up a three-week stretch in which Hoskins was Sancho Panza on TNT's "Don Quixote" and Manuel Noriega in Showtime's "Noriega: God's Favorite." 

"Mr. Micawber has always been one of my favorite people, ever since I was a kid," Hoskins says. "I suppose Sancho, being shaped like me, is a fellow I can't avoid." 

Until now, the bench mark production has been the 1935 movie that featured W.C. Fields as the kind, boisterous, surprisingly wily Mr. Micawber.

This time around, burly Bob Hoskins has the part, and seldom has an actor displayed so much amazing versatility in so short a time. Hoskins' rousing performance as Micawber (his wheezy delivery might be borrowed from Fields) completes a trifecta that in the past two weeks has brought him to television films as Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega and as Sancho Panza, literature's scruffiest sidekick, in the TNT production of "Don Quixote." 

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