BBC’s Great Expectations is ‘drivel’ say critics furious at new Dickens adaptation | TV & Radio | Showbiz & TV

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The BBC’s new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations has been condemned as “drivel” after it was revealed to be packed with foul language.

The six-part series also adds new dialogue to include anti-colonial messaging referencing depravity in the British Empire. 

Writer Steven Knight, who created the brutal Peaky Blinders series, said he wanted to reference the grimier aspects of Victorian life rather than romanticised sensibilities. Knight called it “stripping all of that s*** away”.

Muddy and maggot-infested London streets, violence and even opium are included in the unsanitised reworkings of the 1861 classic.

In one scene lead character Pip, played by Fionn Whitehead, 25, says: “Take your f***ing hands off me.”

While criminal Magwitch, played by Johnny Harris, 49 says the British Empire was “built on the lies of privileged white men” in another added piece of dialogue.

Sir John Hayes, chairman of the Common Sense Group of MPs said: “The trend amongst clueless politically correct zealots is to bastardise the great canon of English literature either by vulgarising it in this way or sanitising it.”

“Classic works deserve to be respected and their authors revered. It is an insult to both the texts and the writers to impose this kind of drivel on them.”

The anticipated adaptation stars Olivia Colman, 49, as Miss Havisham and Line of Duty’s Shalom Brune-Franklin as Pip’s love interest Estella, 28.

Knight hopes his remake of the novel, which tells the story of orphan Pip’s rise from poverty to wealth, will make it more accessible to modern and younger audiences.

Knight hopes his remake of the novel, which tells the story of orphan Pip’s rise from poverty to wealth, will make it more accessible to modern and younger audiences.

Defending his changes, he said: “It’s everyone’s right to react in the way they want to react. But I would say that the book exists, it is still there.

“This is not an attempt to say the book is wrong or this is better.”

Whitehead, who said he never read Dickens as a child, said the new X-rated language was aiming for more realism.

He said of the anti-British empire sentiment: “If there’s anyone walking around believing that the Empire was a great thing they are clearly kidding themselves.”

Great Expectations airs on BBC and iPlayer next Sunday.

 

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