"Great Expectations" (BBC1, 2011)

[Norfolk Born]

Sorry but I really did think that epi was atrocious. So much left out, in the book, Drummle is a morose, silent, menacing cruelty, in this he was just David Cameron with larfs. An Flashman type bully. And I simply cannot get my head round this drippy, un-nuanced Pip. He is simply dreadful, wooden, not a feature of his face lights up, and he is being seriously acted off the screen by pretty well everybody who strolls on. And the Joe characterisation has come seriously unstuck. He looks capable, he talks capable, no need for a Biddy at all. And DID Clara Pocket know Pip was the benefactor? No, this one really is a turkey.

And where is Jaggers's compulsive washing? Not a mention in the film: in the BOOK, he's at it all the time, has a special room / alcove in his office. And the convicts at Newgate are terrified of him and Wemmick, but that is simply not coming through either.

It is woeful.

I have to agree...for me, the whole thing has become totally uninvolving, in the sense that I neither want, nor care, to know 'what happens next?'. The only bit worth watching was the very last scene, but was it really worth having to wait 55+ minutes for some 90 seconds of genuine drama?
(Possibly interesting footnote: at least four of the cast were in 'Poirot' the other night, which was 100 times better than this seasonal fowl. Give Jaggers his own spin-off episode!).

[Norfolk Born]

How about into two hours? Thanks to PatrickOD for finding this - I started watching when I hadn't got time to see the whole thing, but I could hardly tear myself away from it.

Well, I suppose I'll just have to make do with that one ...................

This is the 1946 David Lean version discussed above, in particular the opening scene. If anything, the version currently on BBC1 is TOO long - the word 'flabby' crossed my mind more than once during last night's episode.

[vinteuil]

they say there is to be a diffenent ending to the book ....... Anyone guess what that will be? I hate scrip writers mucking about, you cannot muck about with Dickens

well, yes but - Dickens himself messed about with the ending to the book: in his original version they go their separate ways - last sentence "I was very glad afterwards to have had the interview; for, in her face and in her voice, and in her touch, she gave me the assurance, that suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham's teaching, and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be."
It was Bulwer Lytton who pleaded with Dickens to change it and give it a "happy" ending - which many subsequent critics have found inartistic and sentimental: the additional chapter, with the last sentence: "I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her."

[vinteuil]

Traddles' Boy! I'd forgotten him!

Exactly! Traddles' Boy. What a little gem! Love him for his insolence! You know, you cannot condense Dickens into 3 hours, this is the problem.

If your Perfumed Pedant may interject: Trabb's Boy.

(Traddles is in David Copperfield ...)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

No, Estella married Orlicks!

Thus ensuring something hot and milky every bedtime?

[Caliban]

Thus ensuring something hot and milky every bedtime?

Ferney!!!!

You nearly made me spill my capuccino...

[Caliban]

Give Jaggers his own spin-off episode!

I can't abide the cod français of Suchet's Poirot, twisted versions of English which usually don't correspond to anything a francophone would say.

It would be much better to have Jaggers in pursuit of mid-Victorian skullduggery. They're coming to the end of Poirot. You ought to pitch your idea to Mr Suchet's "people"...

[Anna]

I intend to watch episode 2 again today to see if I revise my opinion. But, as mentioned upthread, this is an interpretation and we can all read the same book and interpret the characters in our own way and which characters are important to us. For example, Caliban said he'd forgotten about Biddy, to me she's central but they've changed Joe so as Draco says, he has no need of Biddy and perhaps it's only Draco and me who feel the obsessive handwashing in the book is important? The ending is supposedly a cross between the original and the revised. I do think we are all agreed that the first appearance of Herbert Pocket as a spoilt Fauntleroy was completely wrong and misguided.

However, is the series aimed at lover of Dickens? No, it's not, so we may bemoan lack of Aged Parent but the majority of viewers have no idea he's been missed out. It seems it has 6m viewers and it should be a nice little earner for the BBC, I suspect they cast a pretty-boy Pip with an eye on the overseas market.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

If your Perfumed Pedant may interject: Trabb's Boy.

(Traddles is in David Copperfield ...)

Yes! Traddles was the lad at DC's school who drew skeletons in the margins of his exercise books?

[Norfolk Born]

Anna - my main complaint is that, regardless of how faithful it may or may not be to the content and spirit of the original, this adaptation just seems to drift along aimlessly. Very little seems to happen, and there seems to be little or no motivation for what does. Structurally, it's less substantial than one of CD's 'London particulars'.