The pleasure of returning to Dickens

It's a pleasure to start (re)reading Dickens's Little Dorrit, one of his late, great novels often paired w/ Bleak House, especially after putting down the pretentious and unreadable Flights. Dickens had to sell books (and readings) to make his living, so he knew he had to grip readers right away and to focus on character, plot, and setting and let others judge whether he was writing great literature or merely (!) great entertainment. It's many many (italicized!) years since I read LD (and was at the time impressed with how great this novel, little known or discussed back in the 1970s) with the wimpy title would turn out to be; since then I've seen the BBC series, which introduced LD to a new generation of readers - and I enjoyed being reminded of the strengths of this novel. Of course any miniseries will have to dispense of much of the material in the novel, and in coming back to LD I was surprised at the first two chapters, both of which take place in a prison yard in Marseilles - I'd completely forgotten that. Even now, I'm not quite sure how the first 2 chapters will fit into the overall plot - though I'm confident that Dickens had something in mind: the first focuses on two prisoners, one somewhat wealthy and commanding and the other penniless; we don't know exactly why they're in prison or what will become of them. The 2nd chapter focuses on a group of about 30 characters held in the prison for a quarantine. M