Great Expectations review: BBC One’s new adaptation of the Dickens classic
There is much to enjoy in this series, but it feels a bit ‘needless’

There have been at least 18 prominent adaptations of Great Expectations since the invention of the moving image, said Nick Hilton in The Independent. “That’s Pip upon Pip, Magwitch upon Magwitch, Miss Havisham upon Miss Havisham.” Now, “for no discernible reason”, the BBC is treating its viewers to a new one, this time scripted by the Peaky Blinders supremo Steven Knight. The results, alas, are only so-so.
The drama follows the adventures of Pip (Tom Sweet as a boy, Fionn Whitehead later), the orphan from the Kent marshes who is thrust into the orbit of Miss Havisham (Olivia Colman). Aspects of Knight’s telling of Dickens’s classic are “familiar” (there are the usual images of stopped clocks and wedding dresses); but he has innovated by, for instance, having his characters make liberal use of the F-word. I didn’t dislike this version; there is much to enjoy in it. But it feels a bit “needless”.
Great Expectations? More like “Woke Desecrations”, said Christopher Stevens in the Daily Mail. This dire series butchers Dickens’s book, doing away with his poetic language and ruining key characters (innocent Pip, for instance, is here presented as an insolent adolescent). And while Colman is “the saving” of the series, her Miss Havisham is imagined as “a drug-addled opium smoker”, which is plainly “imbecilic”.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
I found the adaptation perfectly fine, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. We don’t need another Great Expectations, of course. But as we wait for a better one, this one will pass the time well enough.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Epstein files: Maxwell courts a pardon
Feature A new prison transcript shows Ghislaine Maxwell praising Trump as 'a gentleman' while denying his involvement in the Epstein scandal
-
Pentagon readies military deployment in Chicago
Feature The Pentagon is preparing to deploy thousands of Illinois National Guard members to Chicago after Trump threatened to send troops into other major cities
-
Trump: Taking over the private sector?
Feature Donald Trump has secured a 10% stake in Intel using funds from the Biden-era CHIPS Act
-
Woof! Britain's love affair with dogs
The Explainer The UK's canine population is booming. What does that mean for man's best friend?
-
Millet: Life on the Land – an 'absorbing' exhibition
The Week Recommends Free exhibition at the National Gallery showcases the French artist's moving paintings of rural life
-
Thomasina Miers picks her favourite books
The Week Recommends The food writer shares works by Arundhati Roy, Claire Keegan and Charles Dickens
-
6 laid-back homes for surfers
Feature Featuring a home near a world-renowned surf spot in Hawaii and a house built to withstand the elements in South Carolina
-
Twelfth Night or What You Will: a 'riotous' late-summer jamboree
The Week Recommends Robin Belfield's 'carnivalesque' new staging at Shakespeare's Globe is 'joyfully tongue-in-cheek'
-
Hostage: Netflix's 'fun, fast and brash potboiler'
The Week Recommends Suranne Jones is 'relentlessly defiant' as prime minister Abigail Dalton
-
Music reviews: Chance the Rapper, Cass McCombs, and Molly Tuttle
Feature "Star Line," "Interior Live Oak," and "So Long Little Miss Sunshine"
-
Film reviews: Eden and Honey Don't!
Feature Seekers of a new utopia spiral into savagery and a queer private eye prowls a high-desert town