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Produced by the prolific Dorothea Brooking - then best-known for children's
programmes - and serialised in 13 half-hour episodes, this is a typical example
of television adaptation of Dickens in the late 1950s: modestly budgeted, well
acted, targeted at a family audience, and staying close to the original text.
All of the main characters are here: the young apprentice Pip, who
unexpectedly comes into a fortune through the auspices of a mysterious
benefactor; the jilted bride, Miss Havisham, and the girl, Estella, who she has
raised to wage war on the opposite sex and with whom Pip falls hopelessly in
love; the escaped convict Magwitch, who pounces on young Pip at the beginning
and will have a profound influence on his life thereafter; and Pip's stepfather,
Joe, the village blacksmith, a gentle man from whom Pip will become estranged as
he rises in society. In a generally competent cast, Dinsdale Landen and Michael
Gwynn stand out as an adult Pip and Joe respectively.
The adaptation does have its quirks, however. There is one major narrative
change, with Joe's proposed marriage to his housekeeper Biddy taking place
before Pip goes to London. In the novel this revelation occurs much later and is
the last nail in the coffin of Pip's disillusionment, as he was planning to
marry Biddy himself. Maybe adaptor P.D. Cummins thought Pip had suffered enough
by then.
It gives great prominence to Pip's co-worker at the forge, Orlick (a
character omitted from David Lean's 1946 film) - who is responsible, we later
discover, for the brutal attack on Pip's bullying sister and who critics have
seen as symbolising Pip's dark side. Episode 11, in which Pip is captured and
tortured by Orlick before being rescued, is strong meat, particularly as Orlick
is played to the hilt by Richard Warner, who had previously appeared as the
lovable Mr Perks in Brooking's dramatisation of The Railway Children (BBC,
1957).
Finally, the ending is ambiguous. Pip has been telling his godson a story
which is really an account of his own life. "Can't you make it have a happier
ending?," the boy enquires, at which point Estella suddenly materialises and she
and Pip are at last united. Real, or wish-fulfilment? It is a skilful way of
reflecting Dickens's own doubts about an ending which he had originally intended
as melancholy but was pressured against his better judgment into making
tentatively happy.
Neil Sinyard
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1. 'I'll cut your throat!' (5:48)
