Great Expectations BBC One 9pm Sunday

[CrossPurposes]

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

Mmmmm.....

I really cannot begin to express how much I hate what they’ve done to this. Embarrassing.

It is ok in parts but the casting of Estella is just tokenism

Dreadful, not sure I will be watching next week

As if he'd have turned that job down fgs

I love the atmospherics tho

He was not Pip Gargery though, Thought Jaggers work on behalf Magwitch and Miss H was entirely independent of each other, not linked.

I don’t actually think the writer has read the book. I think he’s based his working of this on the previous film and TV adaptations, and added in a few “extra bits“ (🧐) to get the tabloids talking.

I've just had to stop watching. Wtf is going on?!

And I even think he’s completely misunderstood the film/TV versions. Thematically, it’s ruined.

Actually I'm quite into it now, I've adjusted and just enjoying it for what it is, love the theatrics

My favourite book as a young teenager and I've just watched the second half of episode 2. Doubt I'll be catching up and watching from the beginning of episode 1. It seems that every character has been changed for no good reason. Especially Estella who has no charm and is the opposite of alluring. Can't believe how many times they said the word 'expectation', just in case we didn't make the link between this load of dross and the title. Cringing every time I heard Pip Gargery. Someone needs shooting and it's not just the judge. 0/10

I haven't a clue what is going on. It's like the kind of drunk dream I have after reading a book whilst necking gin. So I'm just enjoying the madness of it and trying not to compare to my memories of the book.

I might bother to re read the book again though when I've finished watching.

Wtf fuck have I just watched? There is re-telling a story, there is dramatic licence, and then there's Steven Knight's Great Expectations - so wide of the mark I suspect he's never read the original source material.

What a load of rubbish. Dickens wrote amazing stories, why does the BBC think they need improving upon? Mrs Joe being a dominatrix? Amusing as it was to see Matt Berry's arse, just leave Dickens alone! And Jaggers works for Magwitch not Miss Havisham. Just waiting for a lesbian scene to complete my BBC bingo card. And it's Philip Pirrip not Gargery!

I was expecting them to leave a lot of things out but they’ve replaced them with so much rubbish. Drugs, prostitutes, learning French and dancing and S&M scenes.

It's all going weirdly off the rails, but I'm kinda inquisitive to know what they'll come up with next.

I feel like I’m in some kind of fever dream or smoking a massive Victorian bong full of someone’s dad’s finest opium watching this. Just a bit confused what they will do with it next as PP said. Well if they’re going to remake it, they have really remade it..

It’s so frustrating.
The whole “training Pip to be a gentleman” thing just isn’t what Miss Havisham had him there for. Pip was there so that Estella could learn to entice and reject men. Miss Havisham wants revenge on men, through Estella. Pip only later wishes to become a gentleman because he has fallen in love with Estella.
The writer of this adaptation claims that he is writing things that Dickens might have, if it had been acceptable at the time. But Dickens did write about things like opium, for example, in other novels (e.g. Bleak House) - just not in Great Expectations.
Also, the references to the slave trade are out of place. The events in Great Expectations take place after the British slave trade had ended. And Miss Havisham’s family fortune came from brewing, not slavery. The disused brewery is still there, at the house.
And god knows what the whipping scene was supposed to convey.
No thought has been given to any of this.

I switched off, couldn't bare it anymore. Its been a while since I read Great Expectations but I don't remember Miss Havisham getting a woman in for Pip to sleep with. Estella was miscast, not because of colour but just in general, I didn't feel she was haughty enough just rude. As for Mrs Gargery and her whip...

I always had sympathy for Miss Havisham but she's just a bitch in this version.

There was no reason to mess with it like this. What a load if shite.

No I agree

The slavery thing was unnecessary and out of context

The prostitute business was awful

I will keep watching to see what happens. But I wasn't impressed with the whipping scene or the prostitute for Pip. It's one thing to adjust the characters ages, maybe so that certain actors could be used, but not to introduce plotlines that didn't happen in the book. I was hoping Pip would refuse to do the deed but at least we didn't have to actually see it.

@JemimaTab It was crowbarred in a bit, but I assumed the reason Pip and Joe rejected the order for slave manacles was precisely because slavery was now illegal (in the British Empire at least) - the ship's captain was looking to make money on the side by using the return journey of his convict ship to Australia to illegally pick up slaves in Africa.

So it was less a revulsion at slavery per se that oed Joe and Pip to reject the proposal and more a relcutance to get involved in something that was illegal - although it was not entirely clear and if you were not aware of the history of slavery in the Biritsh Empire it could have easily been seen in broader brush terms.

Also Jaggers does have connections with Miss Havisham doesn't he?

The actor who played Jaggers was good but a but too sinister for Jaggers I felt.

This is so tedious. I cannot imagine what it is like to be a black actor these days and know that a certain group of people will just assume you only got the job because of your skin colour. Alison Pearson in the Telegraph was similarly bemoaning the tragedy of white actresses with cut glass vowels who no longer get a look in. And these are often the same people who say they can't possibly be racist because they just see people as people and don't see colour.

I wasn't wild about either Estella, they were a bit too obviously sneery for me, but that's about the artistic choices of the director, not their skin colour.