FX, in partnership with the BBC, has made a dreary, dismal and not very Dickensian miniseries out of Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations." And while that seems to be in some measure the point, it is, all the same, dreary and dismal and does not count so much as an adaptation as a remodeling.
Steven Knight, who created the dark period crime drama "Peaky Blinders," has taken the novel down to the studs and erected something quite different in its place. The outlines are vaguely recognizable, but the rooms are all different: The windows have been changed into doors and the doors into windows, and the walls have been painted black — the better not to see anything with.
This version, which premiered Sunday on FX on Hulu, begins with its main character, Pip (Fionn Whitehead), about to hang himself — nothing you'll find in the book — announcing in no uncertain terms that This Is Not Your Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather's "Great Expectations," or really anybody's, because it is not really "Great Expectations."
