Dickensblog

Thoughts on Hulu's 'Great Expectations,' episodes 5 and 6

This post will contain major spoilers, so I'll put the review under the cut.

Thoughts on Hulu's 'Great Expectations,' episodes 3 and 4

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!"

Thoughts on Hulu's 'Great Expectations,' episodes 1 and 2

Watching Steven Knight's Great Expectations, after having watched his A Christmas Carol a few years ago, has driven me relentlessly to one conclusion: Knight just doesn't like Dickens. At all. If Knight had been born hating Dickens and hated him more every day of his life, he couldn't have done him more dirty than he has.

Once again we have the characters twisted and distorted out of all recognition. Once again we have a woman put in a degrading sexual position by an older man (a relative, in this case). Once again we have Dickens's quicksilver words discarded for clunky, leaden attempts at dialogue, and his odd, fascinating quirks smoothed over, to be replaced with various vices and kinks. Even the music, by Keefus Ciancia, is grim and joyless. 

Hulu's 'Great Expectations': Reviews and articles

The first episode of the new BBC/FX Great Expectations is now available on Hulu. The Independent opines that, paradoxically, "the desire to sex up Victoriana" is "all very predictable." The Hollywood Reporter states, "What could have been a daring spin on a classic is transformed instead into a dreary slog," and CNN says, "The story ... grinds along sluggishly." According to The Evening Standard, "It’s not so much a dramatisation of Great Expectation[s], as a hollowing out of it in order to accommodate a very different story and almost unrecognisable characters." (Relatedly, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst has an interesting piece at LitHub, with the marvelous title "The Wizardry of Boz," taking a look at how the various adaptations of Dickens have shaped our view of his work.)

But the piece that most got my attention was writer/producer Steven Knight's interview with TV Insider, in which Knight said, "[Dickens] can never go all the way into those dark places. So that’s what I tried to do." You can read my Twitter rant on that quote here. The gist of it is that I'm sick and tired of people claiming to have added qualities to Dickens that are already there, and that Dickens could out-dark Knight with one hand tied behind his back. Just because he wasn't explicit or gruesome doesn't mean he was too timid to explore or create haunting pictures of the grim side of life.

Anyway, I'll probably be watching Episode 1 (there will be six total) tonight or tomorrow, and will share my thoughts here. I have to admit, after some of what I've been reading (and after the same team's Christmas Carol adaptation), my expectations are not great.

Full-length 'Great Expectations' trailer debuts

Thanks to Cody Quanbeck in the Dickensblog Facebook group for giving me the tip! The series looks grim and rather violent -- not entirely unexpected from the team that gave us that very dour A Christmas Carol a few years back. But we'll have to wait until we see the whole thing to know for sure ...

Release date and poster for BBC/FX 'Great Expectations'

I can't help but be reminded of the line "That's why her hair is so big. It's full of secrets."

The six-part series premieres on Hulu on Sunday, March 26.

(Image copyright BBC Studios/FX Productions)

Olivia Colman in new 'Great Expectations' teaser trailer

"Teaser" is the right word -- it's only 20 seconds long! But it does give us our first glimpse of Olivia Colman as Miss Havisham, along with Tom Sweet as young Pip. (H/T RadioTimes, brought to my attention by Lee Jackson on Twitter)

Keeping Christmas all the year

'Tis the season, as you know, when the world is rereading and rewatching A Christmas Carol. But the other day, inspired by a Twitter conversation about how Great Expectations is also a Christmas book (or at least part of it is), I went looking for Christmas references in other Dickens books as well. Interestingly, I found at least one reference in every single one of the novels! The majority of them were just passing references, but a few of them were significant. Besides Scrooge's Christmas ordeal, and the other Christmas books, we have ...

• The Christmas chapters in The Pickwick Papers, which include a goblin story that gives us a foretaste of the Carol
• David and Agnes getting engaged at Christmastime in David Copperfield
• Pip bringing Magwitch food, and later seeing him get arrested, on Christmas Day, in Great Expectations
• Edwin vanishing (and most likely murdered) on Christmas Eve in The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Occasionally, even a book that doesn't have a Christmas scene in it have film adaptations where Christmas scenes have been added! One well-known example is the 1935 A Tale of Two Cities, which places an important interaction between Sydney and Lucie on Christmas Eve. No doubt this was a nod to the Christmasy atmosphere that Dickens was known for. 

As Boze Herrington recently wrote of Dickens at All the (Dickensian) Year Round, "Christmas awoke something nameless and secret in him," something that makes it show up again and again in his stories as a pivotal time in people's lives. Watching for such incidences as we read him is one enjoyable way to "keep [Christmas] all the year," as Scrooge promises to do. And so, a merry Christmas to you all, not just today but always!

TCM alert

Great Expectations (1946) airs on the channel at 12 p.m. today, as part of a day-long focus on literary adaptations.

'Great Expectations' off-Broadway

British actor and comedian Eddie Izzard, who has been performing in a solo version of Great Expectations at various venues in the U.K., will bring the show to New York's Greenwich House Theater this winter. Previews begin December 9, the official opening is December 15, and the show will close January 22. More information is available here, and tickets are available here.