The BBC commissioned writer Andrew Davies to 'refresh' the classic serial format, and producer Nigel Stafford-Clark devised a new format and shooting style that broke with television convention, combining soap-opera pacing with high production values.

The 2005 adaptation deliberately mirrored Dickens' original publishing method, since the novel was first released in 1852-53 as monthly print instalments with cliffhangers, an approach the series' twice-weekly broadcast format was designed to echo.

The series was filmed on location in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, and Kent between February and July 2005, using stately homes such as Cobham Hall (Chesney Wold and Tulkinghorn's office), Ingatestone Hall (Bleak House exterior), Balls Park, Bromham Hall, and Luton Hoo.

Bleak House was one of the first British drama series to be shot and produced in high-definition television, a format that required much more detailed make-up and set design than earlier productions.

The 2005 adaptation created an entirely new character, Clamb, clerk to the lawyer Tulkinghorn, as a screenwriting device to reveal Tulkinghorn's motives and actions without needing a narrator.

To streamline the story, several minor characters and subplots from the novel were cut, including Snagsby's wife, Smallweed's wife and grandson, the clerk Tony Jobling, the bankrupt Jellyby, Sir Leicester's cousins, and the Bagnet family; the mechanics of the letters plot and George's reconciliation with his mother were altered as a result.

In the US, PBS broadcast the eight hours of the serial compressed into six instalments on Masterpiece Theatre in early 2006, and it was rebroadcast in a four-part format in 2007, while Australia's ABC aired it as eight one-hour episodes.

The show's highest-rated episode drew an average of 6.91 million viewers and a 29.5% audience share, though the penultimate episode lost its timeslot to ITV's The Bill, which pulled in 6.3 million viewers.

Bleak House is ranked in the top 15 of Metacritic's Best TV Shows of All Time with an aggregate critics' score of 93/100, which remains the highest score for any British drama on the site.

The series won the Best Drama Serial award at the 2006 British Academy Television Awards, with Anna Maxwell Martin winning Best Actress over fellow nominee Gillian Anderson, and it later won two of its ten Primetime Emmy nominations, for Makeup and Cinematography.