This Christmas, I’ve felt like the monstrously obese restaurant patron Mr. Creosote in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983). However it’s not food that I’ve been feasting on, rather too many TV adaptations of literary classics. In one day I consumed three Jane Austin classics on the trot. Now the very mention of marriage makes me nauseous. I didn’t enjoy Emma (1996) as it was too OTT and Americanised. But it could always be worse: Imagine ITV8 buying up the rights and casting Paris Hilton as the devious matchmaker seeking out her wedded BFF. I loved Mansfield Park (1999) not because it’s more complex than Austin’s other books but because the lead character is called Fanny Price and so I spent most of the film imagining tabloid headlines for the various scenes. Becoming Jane (2007) completed my Austin hat trick, explaining why she craved the happy ending in literature that was missing from her own life.
After this Austintatious indulgence I moved on to the latest interpretation of Dickens classic Great Expectations which ran for three consecutive nights from the 27th December. So far there have been over 400 films and TV series based on his work but this one seemed to cause particular offence, largely due to the casting. This time around Gillian Anderson joined Florence Reed (1934), Martita Hunt (1946), Maxine Audley (1967), Margaret Leighton (1974), Joan Hickson (1981), Jean Simmons (1989), Anne Bancroft (1998), Charlotte Rampling (1999) in the role of Miss Havisham. No doubt her recent outing in The Crimson Petal and the White (2011) and her previous incarnation as Dana Scully gave Anderson the spooky edge for the role. But the Beeb missed a trick here because Rebekah Brooks would have been perfect – bitter, betrayed, manipulative and wealthy. But it was the casting of Estella that surprised me. Estella is a ‘breaker of men’s hearts’, something which Izzy Meikle-Small is not. Having said that, when they cast the ‘suitably attractive’ Gwyneth Paltrow as Estelle in Alfonso Cuaron’s 1988 version, she was made too likeable so I guess you just can’t win.
Great Expectations has a long history on the screen, with at least one version produced every decade. The first version was as a silent film in 1917 staring Jack Pickford and directed by Robert G. Vignola. It has since resulted in serials of varying lengths, a West End musical in 1975 staring Sir John Mills, and an animated children’s version in 1983. However, each time something has caused offence to the pedants. Goodness knows what they’ll make of David Nicholls version later this year which comes with a new ending: Helen Bonham Carter – who plays Miss Havisham – turns into a monkey. Honest.
There’s been so many adaptations now that I honestly can’t remember what’s in the book and what’s been invented on screen. But it’s still a win-win situation for literature as the hype has increased book sales. There are currently three different editions of Great Expectations in the top ten of the Accelerators chart, published by Wordsworth, the BBC and Penguin.