An orphan boy meets an escaped convict, a crazed rich woman, a bewitching girl, and grows up to have great expectations of wealth from a mysterious patron, in Great Expectations, Charles Dickens remarkable tale of rags to riches to self-knowledge.
There isn’t an adaptation around that can compete with David Lean’s definitive version of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, but this BBC-PBS coproduction has its pleasures. Though it gets off to a grim start with a violent skirmish on the moors, the proceedings become less off-putting once naive young Pip (Toast’s Oscar Kennedy) grows into a man of some sophistication (now played by the dashing Douglas Booth). His adventures begin when the openhearted orphan helps out escaped convict Magwitch (Oliver Twist’s Ray Winstone in fiery form), little realizing the machinations he has set into motion. Afterward, his sister, who resents the burden of his presence, sends him to live with the reclusive Miss Havisham (Bleak House’s Gillian Anderson), a ghostly figure clinging to memories of thwarted romance. Miss Havisham means for Pip to entertain her haughty ward, Estella (Izzy Meikle-Small), with whom Pip falls in love, but the grown Estella (Vanessa Kirby) finds him unworthy and his guardian returns him to the forges of his youth. Fortunately, a mysterious benefactor steps in to save the day (David Suchet’s solicitor makes the arrangements), allowing Pip to reconnect with Estella and to befriend Herbert Pocket (Harry Lloyd, an actual Dickens descendant), but dark shadows lurk around every London corner. If Anderson, who opts for a too-high vocal register, looks young for the part and if the final sequence deviates from Dickens’s original text, director Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones) still provides a moving conclusion to a two-part series that becomes more involving as it unfolds. –Kathleen C. Fennessy
Shown on PBS Masterpiece Theatre.
Starring Ray Winstone, Oscar Kennedy, Shaun Dooley, Jack Roth, Claire Rushbrook.
Note: 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.