Pip plays Blinder as drama gets bloody
GREAT Expectations meets Peaky Blinders for tonight’s episode of the hit TV series, with swearing, knife fights, a highway robber and even a drunken Pip.
The BBC reworking of the Dickens’ classic was created by Steven Knight, who was also behind the Birmingham gangster drama.
And this evening viewers will see Pip, played by Fionn Whitehead, take to the bottle in the Three Jolly Bargemen having been spurned by Estella (Shalom Brune-franklin).
After collapsing in a drunken stupor, he is then awoken by his new guardian, Jaggers, played by Ashley Thomas -- also known in the 21st century as Bashy, the rapper.
Pip pulls a knife on Jaggers, a menacing figure, shouting at him, “Get your ******* hands off me!” before they leave for London on horseback.
Later, Pip’s stomach is turned when he visits a bloody slaughterhouse where pigs are being butchered with cleavers.
And it has echoes of a violent fight scene in Tommy Shelby’s kitchen in Peaky Blinders.
There’s also a knife fight in a highway robbery in which both men brutally stab each other.
The adaptation has been criticised for constantly straying from the original Charles Dickens’ story – and even featured bondage scenes in last week’s episode.
But writer Knight has defended his work, saying the story has been updated.
He said: “You couldn’t write about certain things in Dickens’ time: sexuality, crime, disobedience against the Crown and state.
“What I tried to do was imagine if Dickens was writing the story now and had the freedom to go to those darker places, what would he do?”
Great Expectations, BBC One, 9pm