The Daily Mail is reporting that Ray Winstone and Gillian Anderson are set to star in a reworking of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations for the BBC.
The perennial patrons of perspective that they are, the newspaper wastes no time in identifying the ‘sexually charged’ spin that this new production will have.
With Winstone attached as Magwitch and Anderson the preferred choice to play Miss Havisham, this “radical” retelling will also star one-time Boy George Douglas Booth as Pip.
Written from Pip’s perspective, the novel charts his ascension from orphaned blacksmith to gentleman, a transition he manages with the assistance of criminal benefactor, Abel Magwitch. Before leaving home, where he was raised grudgingly by older sister Mrs. Joe, Pip falls in love with Estelle, the daughter of a wealthy spinster who lives a sheltered life, having boarded up her windows and stopped all the clocks in order to haunt the halls in an old wedding dress.
Writer Sarah Phelps said of the new adaptation:
“We don’t want the audience to feel they are watching a drama about people in bonnets. At its heart it is a love story and a story of sexual revenge. It is also a complex, desperate, violent and visceral tale, which plays out under the shadow of a hangman’s noose.”
The adaptation, which, if I worked for The Daily Mail, I’d have totally dubbed “Great Sexpectations”, will air in three parts over the Christmas period.
