A particular speech of Mr. Jaggers's from episode 3 neatly sums up this whole enterprise, and Steven Knight's whole approach to Dickens. When Pip asks why Jaggers has been made his guardian, Jaggers answers, "Because I am known to be evil. Celebrated for it. And your benefactor knows that in an evil place like London, attachment to virtue would be fatal."
In almost any other production, that might be conveying something like bitter sarcasm or world-weary lament or at least deliberate exaggeration. In this one, where there is no subtext, subtlety, or wit, and everything is to be taken at face value, there's no other way to hear it but as straightforward truth. It's so laughably on the nose that it put me in mind of an old joke from "Mystery Science Theater 3000," where an obviously villainous character arrived on the scene and one of the guys quipped, "Hi, I'm Bob Evil!"
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