This is better than the Michael York 'Great Expectations' which is not worth your time. But some addled producer must have gotten it in his head that Dickens deserved the weightiness of Shakespeare. It doesn't. Almost all Dickens is low, rollicking and shambling, with fuzzy edges. His books don't have these overly tasteful aspirations. Here, a very good Dickens novel is given a straight, costume-drama, Masterpiece Theater production. And it attempts some regional verisimilitude that doesn't end up adding much. It seems designed to appeal to female viewers. Dickens characters are recluses, unbalanced eccentrics and weirdos, but here they've all been leveled out. Characters, settings, emotions, none of it ends up being as vivid as the David Lean version which has been more lovingly shaped. Every emotion in this is oh-so-serious with characters brooding over things that can't be spoken. It's like they all worked too hard on figuring out the "inner truth" and "motivation" of their characters. PFFFFT! To what end? It kills the story. They're so uptight they might as well be Swedish.
The story is better and more thoughtful when it's ambiguous and without a villain (See Lean). Miss Havisham is a bit of absurdity who should be treated almost as a caricature, though she certainly delivers some bombshells. It doesn't suit the story for her be played realistically like here. Orlick shows up in this version, but his value was never very important to the Pip narrative, except to include Dicken's usual villain. This Jaggers just cannot compare with Francis Sullivan's haughty power-brokering from '46. But the fatal blow is Ioan Gruffudd. At no point can a viewer decipher what his impenetrable, stone-faced Pip feels about anything. It's impossible to see him as anything other than a prop that is acted upon. The pacing is beyond lugubrious. Not an ounce of humor remains.
The story is better and more thoughtful when it's ambiguous and without a villain (See Lean). Miss Havisham is a bit of absurdity who should be treated almost as a caricature, though she certainly delivers some bombshells. It doesn't suit the story for her be played realistically like here. Orlick shows up in this version, but his value was never very important to the Pip narrative, except to include Dicken's usual villain. This Jaggers just cannot compare with Francis Sullivan's haughty power-brokering from '46. But the fatal blow is Ioan Gruffudd. At no point can a viewer decipher what his impenetrable, stone-faced Pip feels about anything. It's impossible to see him as anything other than a prop that is acted upon. The pacing is beyond lugubrious. Not an ounce of humor remains.