'Great Expectations' (2023) mini series

Has this been on BBC already ?

BBC only had this a few years ago with Gillian Anderson as Miss Havisham, it's been done to death and still the best version is the 1946 David Lean film.

r1 It hasn't, the description just says it's coming to BBC this spring. So it'll probably air there around the same time as on Hulu.

How many times can they remake this? And the remakes have been good, but why can they never come up with anything new?

Why did they get late 40s Olivia to play a character that is tragic partly because within the timeline of the story, she's wasting her youth (20s-30s) by being a bitter shut-in?

Why did they get late 40s Olivia to play a character that is tragic partly because within the timeline of the story, she's wasting her youth (20s-30s) by being a bitter shut-in?

Anyone see the 90's Ethan Hawke version? With Goop? Was that a good adaption?

R7 Yes. Excellent.

r2 Yes, I enjoyed Gillian Anderson's ethereal Miss Havisham much more than Colman's more grounded one seen in this trailer. Although that was twelve years ago now, not just a few years. That one was adapted by Sarah Phelps and didn't look nearly as visually interesting as this one.

Always nice to see a new version and new actors. (Sorry Olivia that doesn't include you). On the BBC March 23rd I think.

Vanessa Kirby was Estella in the Gillian Anderson version with her then beau Douglas Booth as Pip.

Oleebia is veering into Imelda S./Judy Dench territory.

r11 I was just about to ask whatever happened to Douglas Booth, he was the hot new thing back then. Had no idea he dated Kirby, how the tables have turned career-wise.

The excellent adaptation with Gillian Anderson benefitted enormously from the presence of the beautiful Douglas Booth as Pip

[quote] why can they never come up with anything new?

This Woke version has a black blacksmith.

The Essex marshlands gave been invaded by Jamaicans.

Abel Magwitch is exiled to Australia and returns as an African-American.

R14 Douglas Booth = Helena Bonham-Carter

Another year, another remake of this.

To be followed by; Jane Eyre, Emma, Vanity Fair etc ad nauseum.

God forbid a director might pick up a lesser known novel by a lesser exhausted writer.

[quote] Love seeing all the horse manure on the streets of London

Are you a coprophiliac, OP?

[quote] Judy Dench

R12 Judi Dench

Looks great.

Ugh. Her again? My Olivia Colman fatigue has had sufficient.

Stealth Erna thread.

R9 That one was adapted by Sarah Phelps

This Phelps woman is the freak who did the last abominable Christies.

They were full of vomit, ugliness, neuroses and crowds of freaks.

Olivia Colman works a lot but isn't what we used to call "a star".

[quote] Already can't wait for season 2!

R20 That must be when Phillip gets his revenge by murdering The Jamaican who introduced him into a world empty affluence.

Yeah but the Gillian Anderson version was the only one where Pip was more beautiful than Estella.

Well I can't say my expectations are too great if Pip gets called "Pip Gargery," especially since the OPENING sentence of the novel establish his given name as "Philip Pirrip."

[quote] Pip was more beautiful than Estella.

Yes, his Pip was very girly.

Having half of the pertinent characters being played by black people takes away the mystery to Charles Dickens' story.

Pip will guess at age 12 who is the "mysterious" benefactor and the "mystery" of the temptress Estella.

R23 I liked her adaptation of "And Then There Were None". It helped that there was more time to tell the story properly. Plus the cast was generally great. I believe beautiful Douglas Booth played the first victim.

"Witness For The Prosecution" was okay, I can barely remember it, but I think it works better for being short and sharp, a 2-parter was probably too long. And adding sex into didn't help, it cheapened the dynamics.

Her "ABC Murders" suffered from awful casting and too many changes, don't think I even finished it. Is that the one were Poirot was meant to be a former Priest?!

"Ordeal By Innocence" and "Pale Horse" I didn't watch but read there were lots of changes. Maybe I'll give them a go but I don't care for screenwriters thinking they are smarter than the author or "improving on" great novels. Some works are undeniably helped by certain changes, however most are not.

[quote] I don't care for screenwriters thinking they are smarter than the author

R30 Phelps obviously considers herself to be a Sassy Fierce Female who says it's her role to improve on the geriatric Agatha Christie.

[quote] 1998 - 1999 - 1946 and guess now in 2023 Estella is now, if she is: BLACK

Klan grannies are in a tithes.

*tither

Tithe = is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax

Tither = is a person who gives or pays tithes, as to a church.

The BBC are obsessed with race.

They have transmogrified 'Howard's End'. Other English people have given us an African-American Anne Boleyn and the ludicrous sable Queen Caroline and the fantasy comic called 'Bridgerton'.

I'm waiting for the BBC to give us their version of Abraham Lincoln with Mary Todd Lincoln as an ex-slave.

I'm producing "A Raisin In The Sun" with a blonde, blue-eyed cast.

I demand that I be given the role of Hyacinth Bucket in a new full-length movie.

R36 your Lincoln comment made me chuckle!

I have no problems with diverse casting but you're right, it's not just black and white. Where are all the other non-white ethnicities?

I would never pay a licence fee to the BBC for their dreck.

The trailer looks awful and the new Pup isn't hot

If Charles Dickens were alive today he'd be down at the Old Bailey and be serving a writ on the BBC.

He's be demanding litigation or satisfaction.

Actually, he'd be at the bank making sure the check cleared.

[quote] the check

I'm sure the BBC and Hollywood don't pay any royalties for stealing Dickens' plot and characters which are now out of copyright.

The BBC and Hollywood certainly don't pay any respect to him.

It's a bit like the recent Waiting for Godot production that was cancelled because it only auditioned males for the roles of....5 male characters. When will this preposterous nonsense end.

r24=Glenn Close

I had to read this in high school and frankly could barely get through it - Pip was such a non-entity I didn’t care about him or his mystery. I’ll freely admit I was a stupid 16 year old and just didn’t get Dickens. For those with better judgement, is this a great novel, or does the story actually work better as the much simplified plot of a film?

Olivia Colman is far too relatable to be a star, you need a certain sense of alienation for that to occur. And honestly, good for her because have you read any interviews with Cate Blanchett lately? That bitch lives in another galaxy these days.

r23 Yes, and? Christie novels are full of exactly that. I never bought into the boring, cleaned up adaptations of her work, I always felt unease when reading her books as a kid -- a milder version of Lovecraftian horror. Which can be best evoked by showing us highly stylised sets with beautiful people, juxtaposed with vomit, ugliness and neuroses.

[quote]Douglas Booth as Pip.

Any relation to John Wilkes?

[quote]Abel Magwitch is exiled to Australia and returns as an African-American.

[quote]Other English people have given us an African-American Anne Boleyn

Doubtful they were African-AMERICAN. Why can't we say BLACK anymore?

[quote] Why . . . BLACK?

Anne Boleyn came from Wiltshire. Abel Magwith came from Kent.

The producers of this new TV show came from Woke La-La Land.

I can't decide whether Fionn Whitehead has cookie-smelling potential or not.

[quote] Pip was such a non-entity

Pip, Oliver Twist and David Copperfield are all passive and surrounded by a world of venality.

[quote] is this a great novel?

It's Dickens' strongest novel. It's his best with a strong psychological pull to drag us through all those chapters.

Looks like a graphic novel version, Miss Havisham: Firestarter.

Agree R52. And some of the best passages about childhood in English literature.

Thanks, OP. This is my cup of tea for sure.

Why did they get late 40s Olivia to play a character that is tragic partly because within the timeline of the story, she's wasting her youth (20s-30s) by being a bitter shut-in?

That ship sailed with Anderson already and she was wonderful in the role. Besides, isn't it even more tragic that she's wasted several decades by being a bitter shut-in, not just the one?

The point is not that an "oppressor" shouldn't play an oppressed person. It's that the reason for their oppression is the identity of those biographical characters, and the same is true of the villains in the piece. Artistically, it makes no sense for a black person to play Goebbels or a slavemaster. I guess you'd rather see this through a political lens than an artistic one.

Great Expectations as a work is not an exploration of racial oppression at the time, though. So it's fine in this particular instance.

[quote].It's a bit like the recent Waiting for Godot production that was cancelled because it only auditioned males for the roles of....5 male characters. When will this preposterous nonsense end.

Actually, 'Waiting for Godot' is one play where gender and race are irrelevant. The characters are 'tramps', a category that obviously includes women and black people. It's about the purposelessness of existence, the absurdity of the human condition, waiting for a supernatural sign that life has some meaning....waiting....waiting..

The BBC seems to have jumped on the Hollywood bandwagon by turning everybody black. You can't even turn on the screen anymore without being inundated with black faces even in places where they don't belong.

It has that washed out CGI background look that everything has these days. No thanks. I’m a Dickens fan, I’ve read the book and it isn’t one of my favorites but right off the bat I could see Miss Havisham was miscast.

R51 If you have to ask...! When in doubt go with YES!

I do love a good period drama, but Peaky Blinders consistently went with style over substance (and was really carried along by an excellent cast) so I'm not hopefully that this production will be better.

The BBC wankers are doing Colour-Bind Casting. Where they demand that the audience be blind.

Colour-Bind Casting is where the actress playing the mother comes from Birmingham, the father from Cornwall and the son from Zambia.

[quote] I'm waiting for the BBC to give us their version of Abraham Lincoln with Mary Todd Lincoln as an ex-slave.

I'm waiting for the BBC Wokesters to give us Viola Davis as Abraham and a nude James Norton as Mary Todd.

R61, I'm watching several shows set in the quaintest British towns and villages which for some inexplicable reason are full of ethnic minorities.

Well, turns out the reason is the BBC went woke with a Diversity Code of Practice which mandates among others:

[quote]Starting April 2021, 20 percent of talent on new BBC shows must be of “a Black, Asian, or minority ethnic background,” in compliance with their new 20 percent diversity mandate. This applies to all new shows on BCC for three years—and hopefully extends further than that. The rule applies to both those in front of the camera and behind, and correlates to the United Kingdom’s actual demographics at large.

R68 how fucking ridiculous

[quote] ridiculous

That painful document is authorised by the BBC manager named Tim Davie.

He gets criticised from all sides. And the BBC is criticised from all sides.

The BBC needs to be abolished.

I see the marxist looney has joined the convo.

R71 To whom do you refer?

Ron DeSantis needs to shut down the BBC.

I remember liking the 1990s movie, one of Alfonso Cuarons first movies. Gwyneth's wardrobe was luxe

I remember liking the 1947 movie. Jean Simmons played a sadistic Estella.

Why couldn't they make this with a fully black cast? That would be a lot less distracting than constantly breaking the 4th wall, in effect, by forcing the viewer to think about the BBC's casting policy rather than being immersed in Dicken's story.

Also, if they make the entire cast black they can then portray all the characters as they were written, instead of changing them to avoid accusations of racism. Estella is supposed to be a stone cold bitch for the ages. That's vital to the story development. But here she cannot possibly be portrayed that way because the racist commentary industrial complex will accuse the BBC of racism if she is portrayed accurately.

Remove it to Jamaica or somewhere in Africa and just make the same story there. Would improve it's prospects of being watchable enormously.

Estella was the stoniest coldest bitch for the ages.

This new version is more aggressive.

Magwitch, the barely-literate criminal counterfeiter announces 'Britain was built on the lies of white privileged men'.

Dickens would likely agree with that.

So you object to someone creating a version that doesn’t meet your expectations, great as they may be.

This new version is upside-down.

If they wanted a mod version, they should've hired Mick Jagger to play Mr jaggers.

All these black Jamaicans are a red herring.

First two episodes -- out of six in total -- are out, anyone watched it? There's nothing particularly exciting so far, but I have to say, the boy actor playing Pip was pretty good and Fionn Whitehead as adult Pip is [italic]really[/italic] good, and cute as hell. Can we get him after we ruin Paul Mescal?

Having said that, it's scenes with Colman where I perked up, just watching her facial expressions. She says she's tired, but I don't believe her -- she's manic and running on pure fury. Interested in seeing where she's going with this even though, for now, I still prefer Anderson's hazy version.

[quote] Interested in seeing where she's going with this even though

Miss Havisham is important in the early chapters of the book but she fades away in the remaining 66% of the story.

I'm familiar with the story, I meant I'm interested in what state she ends up in after smoking all that dope all the time.

Anyone else watching in US? The finale is today. I've been really enjoying it.

[QUOTE] Why did they get late 40s Olivia to play a character that is tragic partly because within the timeline of the story, she's wasting her youth (20s-30s) by being a bitter shut-in?

How many fucking times are you going to post this?

The problem is the choice of material for making a movie or mini-series. The diversity casting is only strange because media companies keep choosing to use stories that have all white characters or are period pieces set in Europe in which certain roles would certainly have been white. If you want to do diverse casting, then choose or create stories that have diverse characters and stop only telling European period stories. If you like the plot of a Dickens novel, use the same plot, but set it in a different part of the world with alternate characters.

After the initial publicity push it disappeared. I've seen no discussions or other attention paid to the show. It's like this show sank without a trace. Probably for the best.

[QUOTE] If you like the plot of a Dickens novel, use the same plot, but set it in a different part of the world with alternate characters.

They should adapt Barbara Kingsolver’s recent DEMON COPPERHEAD which re-imagines David Copperfield in 90s/00s Southwest Virginia with a melungeon David Copperfield. Several non-white characters yet retains the source material.

Is Mr Jaggers a gay?

Finished it just now. Shame it got review-bombed by the usual suspects, it really is a decent adaptation, and gorgeously shot. Ends too abruptly, though, especially when you compare it to the slog in the middle. The Magwitch-Compeyson stuff is by far the least compelling, but that's obviously on Dickens.

I think I'll check out the other adaptations again.

R92 any ass or cock shown?

r91 That occurred to me at one point as well, but then didn't Pip ask him if he was fucking his maid and he went all quiet?

I feel like if Fionn Whitehead could get his front teeth straightened, he could rival Mescal, he's that good.

r93 Sadly not, it's weirdly family friendly for a Steven Knight production.