I was utterly disappointed by the latest BBC's adaptation of Dickens' Great Expectations.
I had high hopes when I watched the first episode, thought they had made great casting choice. The boy who played young Pip was excellent, Ray Winston was a good choice for Magwitch, and I quite liked Gillian Anderson's interpretation of Miss H.
Then the grown up Pip and Estella arrived promptly at the second episode:
Pip looked like a time traveller, being teleported back to 1800s from a 21st century public school with his fancy dress and finely plucked eyebrows. When he first showed up, he was already well suited to the upper class without any training required, his well powdered face had no trace of a day's hard work at the forge, and what's more, I noticed that he had highlights in his hair. Highlights in 1800s, BBC, you got to be joking!
Estella was so plain looking and dead-eyed, her manly shoulders and twitchy lips conveyed no beauty and cold-heartedness of a Dickens' Estella, she truly turned my heart stone cold.
I came to the sad conclusion that both actors could not act, they made the whole adaptation a pointless exercise.
On the story front, the last two episodes were so rushed, the director and scriptwriter were determined to make this into a 1800s Eastenders, with many great characters deleted and plots altered. Although Shaun Dooley's portray of Joe embodied much love and warmth, without his funny accent/phrases and Biddy, he was incomplete. And what happened to Mr Jaggers' OCD, where is his soap smell? And, and they bigged up Orlick's part, and made him to have a punch up with Pip at the end, after he got knocked down by Pip and he was just left lying on the floor, viewers were given no clue whether he was dead.
I know sometimes one have to make sacrifices when doing an adaptation, but to make so many alterations to a beloved story is sacrilegious. The only saving grace is the marshland, it is truly stunning to see it in colour.
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