CHRISTOPHER STEVENS: This dreadful Dickens adaptation gets more ridiculous every week 

High expectations

Classification:

magpie murders

Classification:

Pip is selling drugs on the docks. His provider, Miss Havisham, when she and Estella aren’t mindlessly high at Satis House, is hiring prostitutes for her sex education.

If you thought the first part of Great Expectations (BBC1) was terrible, the second episode was much worse. Every aspect of this adaptation is bad beyond belief, but most of all it brutally exposes Steven Knight’s limitations as a storyteller.

The pacing is horrible, with long, boring stretches punctuated by moments of overdrive. Many cast members are incapable of making 19th century dialogue sound natural; the worst culprits are Pip and Estella (Fionn Whitehead and Shalom Brune-Franklin), who talk like cranky schoolchildren forced to read aloud in class.

The CGI backgrounds are two-dimensional, and the interior scenes are so poorly lit that the characters are barely visible. And there’s an unrelenting emphasis on the villainy of the Empire, including the claim that British ships were transporting slaves from Africa to the Americas long after the trade was outlawed.

All of this is just what we expect from BBC period dramas. What tears him apart beyond saving is Knight’s inability to create conflict between characters without resorting to sex, drugs, or violence.

If you thought the first part of Great Expectations (BBC1) was terrible, the second episode was much worse. Pictured: Pip, right, and Estella, left (Fionn Whitehead and Shalom Brune-Franklin)

In his gangster thriller Peaky Blinders, this was disguised by the plots. But Knight seems to be like a rock guitarist who only knows three chords.

Twang! The big shot of the town, Mr. Pumblechook (Matt Berry), showed his bare bottom to be beaten by Mrs. Joe’s riding crop. ‘Summon the beast within me,’ she murmured, before the camera cut, like a softcore porno, to her bare-chested blacksmith husband, wielding his hammer in the forge.

Metalic sound! A judge tried to blow his brains out with a gun, while blackmail lawyer Jaggers (Ashley Thomas) threatened to expose him as gay.

Kerrang! Miss Havisham (Olivia Colman) handed Pip a bag of opium and ordered him to sell it to the sailors, before forcing him to kiss her.

Foul language peppered every scene. When Pip fought Herbert Pocket in the stable, he spat the F word at her, while Mrs. Joe (Hayley Squires) called him an “ungrateful little bastard.”

The left’s hatred of the upper classes was pathetic: Miss Havisham bragged that her fortune was based on “indigo and slaves”, telling Pip that she would never be presentable until she learned how to exploit other people: ‘The ones below are for wearing.’

Most obscenely ridiculous of all was his saying that a gentleman “should be adept at riding, dancing, boxing, and having sex,” before shoving him into bed with the town harlot.

By the end of the hour, I felt like literary editor Susan (Lesley Manville) on Magpie Murders (BBC1) who, at the end of a grueling day, poured herself a pint of gin and tonic and then showered. and she took another jug.

Susan (played by Lesley Manville) and Atticus Pund (played by Tim McMullan) in Magpie Murders (BBC1)

This artistically complex and time-consuming mystery has been available on Britbox for over a year, but the wait has been well worth it. Adapted from his own novel by the brilliant Anthony Horowitz, creator of Foyle’s War, it tells two parallel stories.

One is of a hot-tempered novelist (Conleth Hill) who is surrounded by people with good reason to want him dead. The other is his final novel, filled with those same real-life characters.

Tim McMullan plays the book’s fictional detective, Atticus Pund, while Daniel Mays is an unimaginative police detective who likes easy solutions… forcing Susan to investigate on her own. Be patient as the first episode unfolds and you’ll soon be hooked.