A neurotic Miss Havisham vs... another neurotic Miss Havisham

I have finally watched two of the episodes of the most recent Great Expectations TV adaptation (Yes, I know, GE again... but it is the Dickens Bicentenary after all), and I must reluctantly confess that I do not hate it. I had no time at all for Sarah Phelps's Oliver Twist adaptation, as I've mentioned in this blog before, but this is quite different. Maybe it helps that, according to a newspaper article Phelps wrote, Great Expectations is her favourite Dickens novel. She seems to understand Pip in a way she didn't understand Oliver, and so she has not changed the character overmuch. The other characters are relatively unscathed too. Joe is good and honest - if a bit more rugged and less simple than one is used to - Jaggers is splendidly stony (you'll never see David Suchet behaving less like Poirot), Orlick is properly scary and no working-class hero as in the Beeb's previous adaptation, though his case is made. Herbert Pocket behaves brattishly as a child, which is a bit of a shame, but when he appears again as a grown-up he is just as charming as he should be. Estella is treated much too kindly, but then she almost always is.

The only character radically different from the book is Miss Havisham - and here, Phelps is helped by the fact that the previous adaptation with Charlotte Rampling wasn't true to the Miss Havisham character either. Also, I have to admit that traditional Miss Havishams have a hard time making the character as chilling and as poignant as she should be. Miss Havisham is tricky. She is so very histrionic - but at the same time, she has been through every woman's nightmare, so you can't dismiss her behaviour as being completely incomprehensible. I can understand the temptation to try to make something different out of her than the usual bird's-nest-wigged hag. Where Rampling was nervy and slightly diva-ish, Gillian Anderson goes one better. Her Miss Havisham has the manner and voice of a child-bride whose development has been arrested: if Dora Spenlow had been jilted on her wedding day (and had been more ill-natured) she might have ended up like this. It's a pity all the same, this trend for neurotic Miss Havishams. Dickens's jilted bride had a wryness which is lost if you play her as self-indulgent and round the twist: in some ways, in spite of never getting over Compeyson's betrayal, she is still a tough old bird.

The best TV adaptation of Great Expectations, in my view, is still the one from 1989 with Jean Simmons as Miss Havisham, John Rhys-Davies as a sweet Joe and (somewhat improbably) Anthony Hopkins as Magwitch. But then, that adaptation had oceans of time at its disposal and could include such things as Wemmick's private "castle" and his Aged P. Phelps has much less time and has been forced to prune the story ruthlessly: Biddy has been sacrificed, as has (to Phelps's own regret) the Aged P. I don't care much for Biddy - I'm sure she doesn't guilt-trip Pip consciously, but her mopeyness is one of the reasons he feels so ill at ease with his old family once he has become a gentleman, and thus avoids them when he can. Still, Biddy is essential to Joe's happy ending, and I wonder how the third episode will work out without her. Orlick, surely, is less central to the plot and could have more easily been disposed of. For all that, so far, this adaptation is an improvement on the last one. Now a great deal hinges on how the relationship between Pip and Magwitch is depicted in episode three.