Since the invention of the moving image – an event that happened just a few decades after the death of Charles Dickens – there have been at least 18 prominent adaptations of Great Expectations. That’s Pip upon Pip, Magwitch upon Magwitch, Miss Havisham upon Miss Havisham. Everyone, from Alec Guinness and Joan Hickson to Robert de Niro and Ralph Fiennes, has been sucked into the Dickens industrial complex. And now, for no discernible reason, BBC One viewers are being treated to a new adaptation of the novel, this time scripted by Peaky Blinders supremo Steven Knight.
The show follows the adventures of Pip (Tom Sweet as a lad, Fionn Whitehead as a young man), a bright young orphan (“an orchid growing wild in the filth of a stable”) who is thrust into the orbit of Miss Havisham (Olivia Colman) and her ward Estella (Chloe Lea/Shalom Brune-Franklin). From there, and via an encounter with a mysterious convict, Pip will fall in love, make his fortune, and fight off countless villains. It is the classic bildungsroman; an all-timer of a coming-of-age story. It’s also the defining work of the Dickens oeuvre and, with the exception of the slim novella, A Christmas Carol (already adapted for television by Knight), the most frequently brought to screen.
