Ioan Gruffudd, Justine Waddell and Charlotte Rampling star in this adaptation of Charles Dickens’ enduring classic Great Expectations, the story of a young orphan named Pip who lives with his sister and her blacksmith husband, Joe.
One day Pip is sent to play at the residence of Miss Havisham, a frightening, elderly woman who seems locked in the past. She wears ancient bridal attire and never moves from the dusty upper rooms of her home. Miss Havisham’s beautiful but contemptuous ward, Estella, makes Pip feel appallingly inferior, creating in him a desire to better himself—changing his life forever. But despite his efforts to improve himself, the frustrated Pip seems destined to remain Joe’s apprentice. Until one day a lawyer calls to inform Pip that he has “great expectations:” Pip is to be released form his apprenticeship and educated in London as a gentleman! The benefactor who has made this life transformation possible, however, wishes to remain anonymous.
Great Expectations is a BBC AMERICA and WGBH Boston coproduction.
Shown on PBS Masterpiece Theatre.
Starring Ioan Gruffudd, Justine Waddell, Charlotte Rampling.
At the start of Great Expectations, Pip is aged seven, the year approximately 1814. (A reference to Pip at nearly twenty-one, in a street illuminated by gas-lamps which were not introduced until 1827, tells us that Pip’s was born in approximately 1807.) Pip is about 34 years old at the end of the story when he returns to England to see Joe, Biddy and their children, placing the date around 1841. Our narrator is telling his story in 1860. So by Willow and Thatch’s calculations, Great Expectations spans the [Regency, Georgian](http://www.willowandthatch.com/period-films-to-watch/period-dramas-georgian-regency-eras/) and [Victorian](http://www.willowandthatch.com/period-films-to-watch/period-dramas-victorian-era/) eras.