Kit Harington's 4-Part 'A Tale of Two Cities' Is a Charles Dickens Adaptation for the Modern Era | Review

Although global history has no shortage of fiction writers with popularity and influence in spades, Charles Dickens' cultural omnipresence rivals that of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie. Pick any of the Victorian-era author's most famous titles, and there's a not-insignificant chance of a new retelling popping up every few decades. Yet none of them, except maybe A Christmas Carol, are as exceedingly popular as his 1859 door-stopper, A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens' operatic epic about "the best of times" and "the worst of times" is estimated to have sold over 200,000 million copies and counting — making it one of the most stratospherically best-selling books of all time (and a staple across countless high school English classes).