Charles Dickens’ unfinished work The Mystery of Edwin Drood has been given a new ending in a major BBC adaptation. The two-part drama was filmed in Rochester and What’s On offers a clue to the mystery.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood has always cast a spell over its readers – especially those who live in Kent. Charles Dickens died halfway through writing the dark tale, leaving its young and vulnerable heroine Rosa Bud pitted against one of the most chilling anti-heroes, John Jasper.

Jasper exudes sexual menace and has an addiction to murder and opium, but alongside this story runs a classic Dickens small-town social comedy.

The setting of Cloisterham is easily recognisable as Rochester, complete with the cathedral, narrow High Street and girls’ school that Dickens would have known in the final years of his life living at Gad’s Hill Place.

Dickens did tell a few close friends about his plans for the ending of the novel but the details are tantalisingly vague.

It is hard not to guess that Rochester Cathedral might offer one big clue to the solution of the mystery.

The BBC filmed the new adaptation on location in the town and Radio 4 even sent crime writer Frances Fyfield to the Guildhall Museum on the trail of sinister choirmaster John Jasper.

Dickens was never able to take us through to the end, but the story is fascinatingly open to every one of us to visit Rochester and speculate.

What BBC2 made of it all, we will just have to wait and see.

Murder and love

Commissioned by the BBC, writer Gwyneth Hughes will offer a unique take on the Dickens tale.

The psychological thriller follows a provincial choirmaster’s obsession with 17-year-old Rosa Bud (Tamzin Merchant) and the lengths he will go to attain her.

John Jasper (Matthew Rhys) is a troubled man. He has spent his life in the stifling and claustrophobic cathedral town of Cloisterham in a state of frustrated ambition. He has become addicted to opium in an attempt to still his ennui and expand his horizons.

As his soul reaches for the sublime in his music, his darker self conceives a murderous hatred for his nephew Edwin Drood (Freddie Fox) who, he believes, stands between him and the lovely Rosa.

Watch The Mystery of Edwin Drood on BBC2 at 9pm on Tuesday, January 10, and Wednesday, January 11.