Some people mistake Vanity Fair as one of these chocolate box Victorian classic romances. It is in fact a long, satirical dark edged story with no heroine and an unreliable narrator.
It is ripe for a modernist remake. The only problem is, I kept thinking that we just had a television adaptation recently. In fact the BBC serialised the novel both in the 1980s and 1990s. There was a film version in 2004 with Reese Witherspoon.
Olivia Cooke is spiky from the get go as the amoral social climber Becky Sharpe. In the first episode she has no desire to be a lowly nanny. She hooks up with friend Amelia, Becky stays in Amelai's family's house and desires her brother who is visiting from India. She plans to woo him because he is wealthy. Certainly not for his looks or brains as he is deficient in both those departments.
However others see through Becky's intentions and want to get rid of this upstart.
Michael Palin plays the author Thackeray. I presume he is the jovial but unreliable narrator.
ITV had high hopes that Vanity Fair would bring in the Downton Abbey audience was enjoy a period drama. It was pulverised by the BBC's Bodyguard in the ratings.
It is not bad, it did look a bit cheap in places with the green screen. It was also sluggish in its pacing. That is because it is an eight part series and I did feel the opening episode slowed down somewhat.