Instead of trying, Davies and the producers have Arthur Clenham, the hero, try to find why Little Dorrit's father is in a debtors' prison by sending him to their version of the Circumlocution Office. They house it in a rotunda, with a circular pattern of tiles on the floor. Clenham goes down a spiral staircase to meet Mr Tite Barnacle junior, who is surrounded by a circle of official papers. Clenham stops beneath a circular skylight in the domed ceiling - by which time, I think, most viewers will have got the point - and asks for files on the Dorrit case.

"Oh no," [replies the outraged civil servant.] "Oh no, that's not the way to do it. Upon my soul, you mustn't just barge in here saying you want to know, y'know."

"But I do want to know and I shall persevere until I do know."

"Upon my soul, you stick to it in the devil of a manner. Look, I can give you some forms for you to fill in, if you like. They will go round the various departments, probably come back here from time to time to be endorsed or counter-signed, but nothing will come of it in the end. I promise you that. You'd do much better to give up. That's what most men do."

"But surely this is no way to get things done?"

"You might think so, sir, but that is how we do things at the Circumlocution Office."

Davies invented all but the first line of dialogue, but captured the spirit of the original polemic on camera perfectly.