Great Expectations BBC One 9pm Sunday

[CrossPurposes]

Yet another version begins tonight: https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/articles/2023/great-expectations-steven-knight

Watching recent adaptations of the classics, I often wonder if they’ve actually read the book or simply looked up the plot summary (and nothing else) on Wikipedia.

It just reminded me how much I loathe Dickens - so cartoonish; women almost always bad, stupid, ugly, vapid, mad, spoilt or dead.

This is just the adaptation for its time - fabulous cinematography, technically great, but story kicked about to fit the values and actors of our time. Irritating.

Sorry, misread it. I think the problem is that Dickens presents Mrs Joe as grotesquely funny, while Pip is terrified of her. It’s hard to adapt that without going back to very cartoonish over-the-top acting, costume, makeup etc. Like Pip says Mrs Joe is red all over, as if she washed with a nutmeg-grater rather than soap.

Yup, agreed. Dickens’ women are — odd. I mean in GE, he does invent three non-conformist women in Mrs Joe, Estella and Miss Havisham, so he’s to an extent interested in writing female characters who aren’t the Angel in the House types, but then look at how horribly he punishes all three with plot.

I think that we have to remember that Dickens wrote over the whole of his life, and his female characters were substantially different in his later life.
The women in Our Mutual Friend is much more rounded than, let's say, those in Nicholas Nickelby.

GE is late, though.

But at least there’s no Dora bloody Spenlow in it!

Biddy manages to be this side of twee, though!

But most of Dickens’ characters are over the top, not just the women. My dearly loved late MIL reminded me strongly of Mrs Gamp in some of her mannerisms and expressions. She was born in 1915 into an urban working class family - big dockyard city - and preserved some archaic ways of speech that had much of the cadence of Dickens. This was when I realised that his characters might be more true to life than I had thought. Now I only have to read some threads on MN to understand how monstrous some people are.

borntobequiet
Watching recent adaptations of the classics, I often wonder if they’ve actually read the book or simply looked up the plot summary (and nothing else) on Wikipedia.

I can’t stand how they have just change so much of what dickens wrote, and what’s was with the F word!! I don’t remember Dickens using that.

It was just so wrong in so many ways I just can’t watch it. They casting was wrong, the story was wrong.

Just stop changing the classics!!

I love the idea of Dickens lurking on AIBU taking notes from CF or ‘monstrous MIL’ threads!

I have some sympathy for that though - I heard the screenwriter interviewed and he said that some of the things he added - swear words, Miss Haversham having an opium habit were of their time (Opium was legal and sold in chemists!) the time but Dickens - writing for a mainstream audience maybe would not have felt able to include them in his books.

I am pretty sure some working class Victorians would have cursed like troopers. Dickens would have known that as he was in and out of this world given his early childhood experiences

GE is such a great read because it's a brilliant story, full of terror and humour and greed and class issues. The language is rich and nuanced. I think it's a good story to bring to the screen, but if you change Pip from a small, naïve blacksmith's boy into an adolescent already dissatisfied with his future, then you change the impact of Miss Havisham and Estella, also of the way the story weaves it's way around the changes in the adult Pip.

Don't be so ridiculous. No sun on Christmas day in the UK?
Of course there is sun - indeed, have spent a Christmas day in a Park as it was so warm
If you are going to criticise a programme, at least do it for a proper reason - such as wearing a rolex or equally shocking
Sun....dear god

Why?
go on, say it why don't you @Sausagenbacon

?

His sister was wrong because, as other's have said upthread, she is a different character in the book.
OK?

Yes, @Ginmonkeyagain but the opium habits are dealt with in other Dickens' works. Look at Nemo in Bleak House. He doesn't shy away from all the ills in society. Drugs had no restrictions. If he had wanted to make Miss Havisham an opium addict he could have, although it may have changed her personality from the bitter and vengeful woman she's written as.

That is true.

I suppose the point is it isn't contrary to the type of characters that Dickens wrote.

On a more mundane note I struggled with the fact all the rural Kent characters had London accents!

I haven't read the book for years but I don't recall the sister breaking and burning the cane. I thought she was being softened by the TV production. One good thing about the TV version is that it is propting me to reread the book!

I fell asleep. From time to time, I was woken by Magwitch's rantings, but it didn't last long.

I watched the first 15 mins but even I couldn't be bothered with yet another Great Expectations adaptation.

I thought Joe was quite handsome though.

I say Pip old boy that's a very interesting, and expensively acquired, accent for a poor rough boy like you. Wtf is going on in this production? dreadful.

And Pip didn’t just have a London accent, but a very contemporary multi-cultural-influenced-but-a-bit-posh one. I expect my Dickens characters to sound like Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins at the very least

He was so familiar I looked him up. He was Eves husband in Killing Eve.