Great Expectations

I knew this was going to be a crass modern pandering to a public sector committee adaptation.

It is poor and to be honest it's the way British drama has been for the past 20 years. They just haven't got any originality or thought in how they will achieve a good drama.

This new, sigh, reworking has all the hallmarks of la-dee-da acting and production. Nothing works. The backstory of the each character is pitiful.

Nothing works like the original. We don't want 2023 values thrust upon an adaptation that's set in the early 19th century. Lord of the rings, or power rings or whatever it's called did the same and it ended up as a pile of rot.

Avoid this drama.

It got worse and worse. It started out ok. There were a few instances of context that are not in Dickens, references to opium and the slave trade, and there was some clunky dialogue where women explained they were not ok with second class citizenship. That was ok. I felt it was unnecessary personally but I can see the temptation to make obvious to a modern audience what is implied or inferred.

By episode three it went off into scenes that are not in the book in any way and dialogue that has nothing to do with the novel. It is also slow paced. So much plodding music and a brooding boy. Makes you wonder why it was made.

It's okay for a movie or show to depart from the book it's based on, but if it does then don't we want it to at least do something interesting with the differences? If this series chooses to show Pip as a moody romantic teenager rather than as a child, then couldn't he at least be given some personality? The screenwriters do keep some bits of Dickens' writing -- which stand out from the rest of the wooden dialog -- but otherwise there's no individuality in the characters: they all speak more or less the same way, even those (such as Joe and Pumblechook) from completely different backgrounds. The show is all atmosphere and scenery at the expense of acting and story.

Despite the casting I think you could produce this story with donkeys if it was told and presented well. I'not one to say what dicken's intended or meant but I've been watching this story since I was a kid and so far I don't see any of that in this series. Great cast. How can you say anything bad about oliva colman. It's not her fault they made her look like a fool. She doesn't look like a woman jilted and aged unwell hanging on to the past. She looks more like the female ghost of xmas but made up for holloween. As I recall the story was mostly about envy, especially the envy for something out of your reach which ultimately creates the drama which makes the story timeless. Most of us can identify but it's rarely in productions these days because so much of the culture is narcissistic. So far I'm not getting any of that but a bunch of characters riffing on each other with their own silly purpose. I can't give the film a 0 because there's so much professional effort they got right but they forgot to tell a story, or whatever they're selling, not interested.

Wonderfully shot but the acting, the story and the relationships between the characters are just.. well.. boring. Everything feels very wooden and dull, there's no drive behind the characters and they all feel as though they have no depth. They all talk without saying or meaning anything. Like they've just read the lines from the page. It all just feels off and not in a good way, almost strangely sanitized and two-dimentional. It's a shame really because the cast is very impressive. I was looking forward to seeing the new Havisham and Estella but I could barely get past the stiff relationship of Pip and his sister and brother-in-law.

I had higher hopes for this as I adored the 2011 version but it's just failed to grab me.