Great Expectations. BBC1. 9pm.

[tiredemma]

Cant wait!

Trailer looks fab.

I almost wish I had a Kindle nickname, just for those!!

I was really pleased to see an adaptation where Miss H is finally cast as a young-ish woman. I thought GA was almost perfect. Her age is never mentioned in GE - she's considered old but in Dicken's day, a woman of 40-50 was getting on a bit. If she was 20-ish when jilted (most women in the early/mid 1800s were married by then), adopted Estella shortly afterwards and dies at the time Pip reaches his majority, then she would be in her 40's at that point.

Can't find GE for free on amazon atm

Agree - Miss H was a yougn woman when jilted and could have adopted Estella in her early 20's when Estella was already 3 or 4. so she need only be early 30's when Pip first met her, probably a similar age to his sister.

I had to pay 86p !!! for my GE on Kindle!

Pollyblue you are absolutely right ... When we feel Anderson looks too 'young' in large part it is because we have been influenced by other film adaptations and by changing practices in marriage age etc. Havisham age 40 would have been really feasible.

(I am a university lecturer and lecture sometimes on adaptation criticism, and it is striking how an audience's expectations of characterisation change radically with different eras).

Personally I thought Anderson was fantastic. I agree with the comments on Pip's casting ... Though I always want to throw a cushion at Pip whether in book or film form, and this was no exception. :) Cushions galore! Pip is such a twit.

Hi Solo (waves)!!
Elf John mills was a great actor but miscast in the Lean film due to his age he was too old as the older Pip let alone the young !!! I agree about Joe though; there was HUMOUR in it!!!

The book was confusing about the fortune (I'm trying to remember) I thought that Jaggers was in charge of it; Suchet was not right for the part not a large enough or physically energetic man IMO.

Who mentioned that G Paltrow was not much cop I TOTALLY AGREE she gets the plum roles but has 2 expressions ;smiling duckface and surprised duckface!!

Hi pp

I quite liked JS as Jaggers.

I would have liked Pip to have asserted himself more - perhaps gone in H's house and pulled the dusty curtains down. But I expect Estella had seen to all that before the last scene. The stairs looked very clean.

I liked how they greeted each other at the end with entwined fingers and resting forehead on forehead. Probably more appropriate than a full on kiss on the mouth.

Think a lot of thought had gone into this adaptation. It was very good!

Balloon Slayer - I can't help but make a note about the oo arr coider accents from the Kent Marshes. In the 19th Century Kent was very rural and the local country accents had not been influenced by the influx from London at that stage. Even as a girl in 1960s I remember the locals, the farm workers, etc., who had never travelled further say, than Canterbury, being very similar. It was those who had moved from the East End and South London who introduced the flat estuarian drawl. It wasn't there to start with.

That's really interesting marriedinwhite, thank you. I think I had assumed that "estuary English" has always been around.

Yes solo I usually like Suchet he's a good actor but a bit of a luvvie not with the "manly'' physicality of the type I had imagined from reading the book IYKWIM.

married Ref accents I was going to say that!

I loved the huge skies and landscape of the location in Kent (I wished we had one of them huge screens for a bit then with the blood and mud I was glad we didn't !!)

It has done me a favour as I am now re-reading the book and am struck at how funny it is; this adaptation - good as it was - was about as funny as cystitis.

I liked the way Miss Havisham aged and got madder and more disheveled.
Anyone else notice estellas bruises when she was married?

pp I usually don't like Suchet (Poirot to be exact), so it was the opposite for me!

I wonder if she really did wear that same dress every day. Perhaps she took it off to go to bed? Was quite white to start with and then becoming darker shades of beige - particularly round the hem.

I wish someone could have taken her in hand or run a bath for her - and said 'come on love - time for a bath - lets take this dress off'.

solo Oh I like Poirot it's so camp!

Animation Her dress would 've been BLACK and stained with allsorts (it actually doesn't bear thinking about if she was actually as mad that) They didn't have running water in them days and p'raps the maids were too frightened of her she was the boss after all!! Or it is a good sign that she was created by a man!

Can you imagine the smell OMG!!!!

Miss H didn't appear very scary in this adaptation. I'd have thought Estelle at least might have said something - she seemed quite assertive. Like - for God's sakes mum that dress is filthy and you need to wash...

I was expecting Pip to flinch a bit as he had a tendency to speak to H in very close proximity, but din't appear to do so.

balloonslayer I have a pet theory about lack of humour; unless there's loads of blood ,violence and sex ( esp.if it's going out after 9pm) most modern scriptwriters\producers etc. think their dramas are not going to attract young "happening" audiences.

A ridiculous idea considering the popularity of stuff like Downton Abbey etc. and the numbers of the older audience!! Also what's wrong with a bit of comedy? Dickens wrote it FFS!

That's probably right ppeatfruit although I was thinking about this yesterday after watching the Armando Ianucci programme, that IMO 90% of Dickens' comedy is in the narrative, which does not come across well in TV adaptations.

(I think PG Wodehouse is the same, it's Bertie's narrative voice which is brilliant, the plots and dialogue come a poor second, which is why even Fry and Laurie couldn't do them justice.)

So I think that adaptations of Dickens for TV tend to try to wring comedy out of the books by turning his quirky characters into over-the-top grotesques. Which is why I avoided Dickens like the plague for years, I thought all that over-acting and stick-on warts stuff was as naff as could be. But the books have so much else. At least this adaptation didn't have many awful grotesque characters.

My favourite bit of GE is when Mr Wopsle becomes an actor and is appearing in a play. Dickens doesn't say what the play is but when Pip goes to see it, it's clear it's the world's worst production of Hamlet. I loved it. Yet it would be so lame if they did it on TV, it works because of the way it is described. I am so looking forward to reading it again when I get to that bit of the book.

IKWYM balloons Maybe it's too complicated or expensive and time consuming also needs extremely good writers and actors to do comedy properly. Poor old Corrie used to do it well now they're just as sensation seeking as E.E. a real shame IMO.

Thinking about comedy IMO Dinnerladies written by Victoria Wood is one of the very best and funniest sitcoms ever have you seen it?

Coming late to this as I recorded it and am only just finishing it - and I'm finding it too intense to watch a whole hour in one go! It also took me a while to start on it after watching that Sue Perkins documentary about how Dickens was such a b***d....

Estella not beautiful enough? What are you people smoking? She is amazingly beautiful.

Pip too girly? Yes. And yes, he'd probably have lost a few teeth and have rickety legs etc. And he was in training to be a blacksmith, maybe he'd look beefy rather than winsome.

Gillian Anderson at 43 is surely a good age - unless Miss Haversham got engaged at say 39.

Nice how Magwitch becomes sympathetic in the end (I say end, but I still have 10 min to go as I couldn't take any more suspense last night!)

I haven't read the book so can't comment on similarity to the book.