Review: BBC’s adaptation of Great Expectations

 

 

 

I watched the first episode of this adaption, albeit with an advance widespread and acerbic criticism of the piece, with what can only be described as small expectations.

But I actually liked it.   It wasn’t that bad at all.   It followed the storyline closely enough and was quite entertaining.   Of course, it was not as good as the book, nor David Leans’ traumatic and magnificent 1946 film, which gave us the grave terror of Magwitch of the Marshes.   But it was OK.   Well, OKish.

Then came episode two.

Oh dear! It was appalling.  Horrid.   I had to give up watching it for I could no longer bear to see Dickens being drawn and quartered by the BBC.

It is probably reasonable to place some kind of trigger warning in the books of Dickens.   Something like “ This book may set your imagination aflame and capture your soul”   But it is impossible to imagine the need to announce a trigger warning of the type used to introduce this episode, mainly advice that it contains scenes of mature sexual content.    Thus we get a rearview, low vantage point, porn position shot, of the rustic blacksmith Joe Gargery’s naked bum, bending over the bed while his dominatrix wife beats him for their mutual sexual pleasure, punctuated by heavy orgasmic breathing.

Pure Dickens or as several million viewers are likely to say, “WTF was that!”  Are we to expect, in further episodes, scenes of Dickensian fellatio?

And is really necessary to pepper Dicken’s dialogue with so many fucks and fuckings?

There are comedians, some of them very famous, who firmly believe that if you add the words fuck and fucking to your jokes and say them often enough and loudly enough, it will increase their humour and enhance their personal street cred.

BBC adaptors have now adopted this concept for the adaptation of great novels.   And it does not work!     It is as if “ a host of golden fucking daffodils”  can be seen as an acceptable adaptation of  Wordsworth.   It is not!   It is not! It is not!   I hesitate to push that analogy too far for fear that a BBC talent scout might pick it up as a rather good idea.

What it is, this Dickens adaptation is a corruption of  writing that is exquisite and beautiful, or as the BBC adaptors might express it, to the rhythmic beat of the dominatrix’s whip,  “whack, a fucking corruption, whack, of, whack, fucking writing, whack, that is, whack, fucking exquisite and, whack fucking beautiful, whack.”