![]() ![]() Great Expectations’ first published ending, before Dickens was prevailed upon to rewrite it, was bleak. Dickens Already Rewrote His Original Ending The finale waved a magic wand over the original story’s pain and complexity, and delivered up a conclusion straight out of wish fulfilment fan-fiction. Underneath this adaptation’s tough guy act, it turns out, beats the heart of an absolute sweetie-pie. The story’s creativity and quirk has been beaten as flat as one of Joe Gargery’s horseshoes, in favour of monotonous dour aggression. Wherever a spark of energy threatens to emerge, as with Olivia Colman‘s Miss Havisham, Rudi Dharmalingam’s legal clerk Wemmick, or Shalom Brune-Franklin’s intriguing Estella, it’s hammered out by the script. It’s humourless, repetitive, almost entirely free of charm and feels much longer than its six-hour runtime. ![]() The truth is that, for all its adult content, this has been perhaps the dullest version of Great Expectations yet. To some, Steven Knight’s six-part was less a retelling than a desecration, all of which fed into the series’ bad boy allure. The inclusion of spanking, swearing, sex work, suicide, self-harm and opium in Charles Dickens’ story led to headlines so appalled that they practically needed their own fainting couch. The pearl-clutching outrage that met the newest Great Expectations TV series did a lot for its reputation as a snarling, macho beast of an adaptation. ![]() ![]() Warning: contains spoilers for the Great Expectations finale. ![]()
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