Low expectations: Dickens and the BBC
Thirty years ago, in 1993, Edward W. Said wrote one of his most influential books, Culture & Imperialism. It was published fifteen years after Orientalism, which dramatically changed the way a new generation of literary critics thought about “the general relationship between culture and empire.” Culture & Imperialism broadened Said’s thesis from the Middle East to Africa, India, parts of the Far East, Australia and the Caribbean.
Said writes, “we can no longer ignore empires and the imperial context in our studies.” He focuses, in particular, on Conrad, Aida, Yeats and Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, in which “references to Sir Thomas Bertram’s overseas possessions are threaded through” and there are passing references to the relationship between Rochester and Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre.
One of the books that plays a small but significant part in Said’s book was Dickens’s Great Expectations, particularly the relationship between Pip and Magwitch, who after being sent as a convict to Australia, rewards Pip for his act of kindness with large sums of money which allow him to live the life of a young gentleman in London.
Said’s readings of Mansfield Park and Great Expectations, though brief, have influenced the ways in which a younger generation now think about Austen and Dickens. Indeed, Said’s ideas seem to me to have influenced the latest BBC dramatisation of one of Dickens’s most popular novels. Perhaps this was because Steven Knight, its screenwriter and executive producer, was studying English at UCL just when Orientalism was published and Said’s impact was nearing its height.
Great Expectations has been adapted many times, nine times in films and on TV. The most famous film adaption was directed by David Lean in 1946, starring John Mills as Pip, Alec Guinness as Herbert Pocket and Finlay Currie as Magwitch and Jean Simmons as the young Estella. It won two Academy Awards and was shortlisted for three more, including Best Director and Best Picture.
Since then the parts of Miss Havisham and Magwitch have drawn the big names. Robert De Niro, Anthony Hopkins and Ralph Fiennes have all played Magwitch, and Helena Bonham Carter, Charlotte Rampling and Gillian Anderson (best of all, in my view) have played Miss Havisham. Anderson starred in the most recent BBC adaptation (cut down to three episodes) in 2011.
Now Steven Knight, best known for Peaky Blinders (2013-22), has returned to Dickens (he wrote and was executive producer of A Christmas Carol in 2019) with Olivia Colman as Miss Havisham in a BBC/FX six-part co-production. Reviewers have made obligatory references to Peaky Blinders, but curiously none have mentioned his best series, Taboo (2017, also a BBC/FX co-production) and also a historical drama set in Regency London. A key part of the plot focuses on the evils of slavery and the East India Company, which should have prepared us for the attacks on British colonialism in Knight’s version of Great Expectations.
The BBC has hyped their latest Sunday night costume drama to the stars, but it is hard to know which has been worse, the critical reception or word of mouth. The Guardian called it “standard, solid fare.” The Independent gave it two stars and called it “predictable and lazy,” demonstrating “an odd lack of imagination.” The Telegraph damned the opening scene (made up) and most of the rest: “Some S&M with a naked Mr Pumblechook (a miscast Matt Berry) being whipped by Mrs Gargery; Miss Havisham as an opium addict. There are rumours that Knight has messed with the ending, for which we’ll have to wait and see. They are also saving any heavy-duty Empire-bashing for later episodes.” The best-written review is by Helen Hawkins at theartsdesk.com who calls it “modernised, muddied and muddled.”
“a lurid Victorian gothic, so noir at times that you have trouble trying to follow what’s happening, and to whom, especially at night. A handful of the novel’s peripheral characters haven’t made the move to TV, which is standard practice in an adaptation of a chunky tome. But some significant plot points have gone missing, too.”
Rachel Cooke in the New Statesman is incisive and devastating:
“The BBC’s new Great Expectations is so bad it should be illegal. Steven Knight’s crass, sexed-up version of the novel strips it of all its humour and tenderness. Does he think he’s better than Dickens?”
Melanie McDonagh in the Spectator is just as harsh:
“This is no adaption; it’s the violent hijack of plot, title and characters to turn the externals of Great Expectations into a vehicle for Stephen Knight’s obsessions about empire, colonialism, sex and class.”
RogerEbert.com in the States also gave it one star and then called it “a production so badly written and so tritely directed (and photographed and scored) that viewers will struggle to stay awake”. The author goes on,
“You know who knew how to effectively document the darkness and despair of 1860s London? Charles Dickens. And he didn’t need a dominatrix, orgies, or a literal shoot-out at a burning mansion to do it.”
What is curious is that neither reviewers nor critics on social media are much bothered by the mixed casting (black actors playing Jaggers and Estella and an Asian actor playing Wemmick) or the attacks on 19th century British colonialism. Those battles seem to have been won (or lost, depending in your point of view) at least. For a generation to come, BBC adaptations of 19th century novels will obsess about race and empire, not character and plot. But, far worse, they will be desperate to sex up the classics in a desperate bid to seem relevant to younger viewers, who don’t watch BBC costume dramas anyway.
In the meantime, there’s always David Lean’s brilliant adaptation to enjoy. It is not just superbly directed, but as @SargeCraig667 has already pointed out on Twitter, “David Lean’s version was made within living memory of Dickens being alive (76 years). One of the cast (born 1870) was alive when Dickens was alive.” It feels authentic in a way Steven Knight and today’s BBC executives could never understand.
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