Great Expectations, TV Adaptation (and other matters.)

 Tuesday. 10.50 a.m. I haven't been to Camphill today. As I mentioned in another post on here, the usual theatre workshop is not on, but the group have gone to Stony Stratford. I was going, but the idea of having to walk about all day and possibly nowhere to sit down, I thought I would avoid it and had emailed to say so. With my underlying health issues, perhaps it was a wise choice. It looks as if there will be rain later, so goodness knows how they will manage.

I am doing some baking this morning. I have a recipe for caramel brownies, which came from Sainsbury's. I had it filed for quite a while and had been meaning to give it a go. My kitchen at Dexter House is minuscule, so it's quite a juggling act to make space. The thing is finished and is now baking. It should take around 35 minutes and I am looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

3.15 p.m. The brownies are out of the oven. They are far better than I had expected. Soft and soggy in the centre and slightly crisp on top. There is a layer of caramel inside, sort of marbled on the top. This is from Carnation and came in a tin. I will have to make more.

9.20 p.m. The wind continues to blow, and I can hear it rampaging around outside.

Wednesday. 6.55 a.m. Alfie and I have been out, as usual. He was fast asleep at the point I wanted to go out, and we found it quite pleasant on the weather front.  The wind has dropped, and as I write this, it's sunny. We did a circuit of Oldbrook Green. Some of the daffodils are finished. I don't think some of the flowers are actually daffodils. I think they may be narcissi, but I can't be sure. I will have to do a Google search.

Thursday. 6.30 a.m. A bright but chilly morning. Streaks of red across the sky as I took out Alfie onto the grass along Strudwick Drive at around 6 o'clock.

I'm currently watching the new BBC adaptation of 'Great Expectations.' I know the novel well and have read it several times. I have read a handful of other Dickens novels. I'm not sure what to make of this version. It's been scripted by Stephen Knight, scriptwriter of 'Peaky Blinders.' He has taken quite a few liberties with what is essentially one of the mainstays of British literature. It is quite violent in places, and the strong language means that it is not what I would call 'family-friendly.' In the past, the BBC 'classic serials' were shown on television at Sunday teatime. We get more backstory about Magwitch, who is the convict who meets Pip on the Kent marches at the beginning of the novel and around which most of the plot revolves. He is the (spoiler alert.) secret benefactor who allows Pip to become a 'gentleman.' Olivia Colman is cast as the jilted spinster, Miss Haversham. We discover her at one point smoking opium, which is presumably how her family made their money. 

There is 'colour-blind' casting. For example, Miss Haversham's protégée (for want of a better term to describe her.) Estella, is played by an actress 'of colour' and so is Mr Jaggers. The only problem I have with Mr Jaggers being 'of colour' is that, historically, he wouldn't be in that position, that of a lawyer, at the time 'Great Expectations is set. It begins around 1812, but the main action is set in 1839. The novel is narrated by Pip, looking back to his time as a child, living in the Kent marshes. We don't seem to get that element in this production. Pip, in this version, seems very miserable, but the 'happy-go-lucky' child he is written as in the original novel. He is several years older than in the original, around 13-14 here, but around 8-9 in the novel. He also has more of a relationship with Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, who is married to his sister, who is always referred to as 'Mrs Joe.' I'm not sure whether we ever hear her Christian name mentioned. 

If I have a fault with this adaptation, it is that the pace is really slow. There really is no need for it to drag so. As a viewer, I want things to move along faster. It just seems they have to drag it along at this sort of pace merely to show more mud, dirt, and degradation, just to try and explain the conditions of life in Victorian England. It just slows the whole production down and doesn't serve any other purpose. I think this would put off a lot of viewers. As for the swearing, that really is unnecessary. I realize that people would have used such language at that time, but it really adds nothing to the whole.

Then, why has the BBC decided that we need yet another version of 'Great Expectations'? There was a production done in 2011 and, of course, there is the film adaptation which has John Mills as Pip. Why not find a lesser Dickens novel to adapt, such as 'Hard Times', which surely deserves a new adaptation. If not Dickens, then why not other novels, written by, for example, H.G. Wells, ('Kipps', 'History of Mr Polly' etc etc.) 

As for this current version of 'Great Expectations', I will have to watch the remaining episodes and comment once it is complete. It is certainly not the usual somewhat sentimental rendering of the novel we usually come to expect from a Dickens novel. This shows mid-19th Century England in all its grotesqueness, the underclass, the grime and unpleasantness. In that respect, it's more realistic, because, as I've said, usually that period which Dickens writes, is glossed over. Which it shouldn't be and is what he intended to portray. 

Watching TV Drama

As you may have realized if you read my posts on here regularly, I am somewhat passionate about good drama, literature and storytelling in general. I think it was born out of watching television adaptations of such writers as Charles Dickens in the 1960s. BBC television was always doing these multi-episode adaptations of his novels, which were shown at teatime on a Sunday. I remember being scared witless by the opening scenes of a teatime version of 'Great Expectations' when Pip encounters the escaped convict Magwitch on the Kent marshes. I suppose I would have been the same age as the character Pip, where I was far more scared than he was. But it just goes to show how effective a television, or, come to that, a film version of a novel can be. In those far-gone days, we had a wide range of television drama output, including the 'Wednesday Play' which later became, 'Play For Today', which had plays written by an amazing list of writers such as Alan Plater, Dennis Potter, Mike Leigh, Jeremy Sandford and Colin Welland. These were one-off productions, usually about social problems, probably the best known being 'Kathy Come Home,' about a couple who have to cope with homelessness and which had such an effect that it was responsible for the setting up of the charity 'Shelter.' Other plays which have a life away from the television screen would be 'Abigails Party' by Mike Leigh and starring his then wife, Alison Steadman.  The John Mortimer play 'A Voyage Round My Father,' which I worked on as an A.S.M. at Greenwich Theatre in the early 1970s, started life as a 'Wednesday Play', and with the same director and some of the actors in it.

We seem to have lost a lot in the mad dash to have a multichannel landscape in the digital age in which we live. You can have 24-hour television viewing, with channels specializing in virtually any subject, from DIY, antiques, cookery, natural history, sport and more subjects than you can possibly think of. But what I am attempting to get at is that the content is watered down. In the sixties and seventies we only had three television channels here in Britain, BBC 1, BBC 2 and ITV. Channel 4 came on the air in 1982 and it wasn't until cable came along in possibly the 1990s and then Sky in the 1980s that things began to go somewhat crazy.

It was what drew me towards a possible career in television production. 

Recent Reading . . . and Some Writing . . . Part 2

I mentioned in the last post how I was influenced by radio drama for my selection of reading material. I suppose the same could be said of what I watched on television. The first big drama adaptation I remember was 'The Forsyte Saga" which would have been one of the really big serial adaptations done by the BBC in the early 1960's and I think opened on the new channel BBC 2. We didn't have BBC 2 at the start of it's broadcast in 1964 as you had to buy a special set as it was in 625-lines as all other channels were 405-line and you had to have a duel set that could receive the new channel as well as having a special ariel which we didn't have, so I would have had to wait a few years later for this series to be shown on BBC 1, perhaps around 1967-8. I read all the novels, written by John Galsworthy. I think there must have been around 9 or 10 books and the television adaptation ran for some 26 episodes. I cannot imagine a television adaptation running to that many episodes today. Something like 'Downton Abbey' runs for no more than 8 episodes a series, although the next series, the last, will be the 6th. 

The B.B.C., in all it's infinite wisdom, always showed some sort of adaptation of a 'worthy' classical novel at teatime on a Sunday during the 1960's, and over the years many Dickens adaptations were shown. I don't know why they imagined that Charles Dickens would be suitable for children, but I suppose it was aimed at what you'd call a 'family' audience. Today if they do an adaptation of a classic novel, Dickens, Austen, Eliot or whoever, they schedule it much later and as a result the productions are a good deal more hard-hitting. These productions were also done in much longer runs, say 12-13 episodes, which actually suits a Dickens as the novels were originally published in serial form. Today you'd be lucky if a production is 4 episodes or even less. I remember as a child they did 'Great Expectations' (and there have been numerous versions done over the years since.) and being terrified by the opening sequence where Magwitch, the escaped convict, meets the young and innocent Pip in the churchyard. I think I would have been as terrified in much the same way as Pip. I got to read the novel and from that began to read further Dickens novels. In the early days of Channel 4, around 1982, the year it opened, they showed a television version of the R.S.C. stage adaptation of "Nicholas Nickleby". It was done on stage in two parts and the running time was something like 8-9 hours. A truly memorable version. I read the book before it was shown on television. I am again reading "Nicholas Nickleby" and enjoying it very much. It is so full of some wonderful characters and, although you might say that Dickens does somewhat 'over-egg the pudding' with some of his writing, and it's not particularly fashionable, but it cracks along at a fair old pace and you can't call it boring in any way. It's hard to believe that Dickens was in his 20's when he  wrote it and also that it was published in episodic form, which makes me wonder how much he had planned the storyline in advance and how, once the episodes were published, did he wish he could go back and alter bits of the story? Also, he was writing the next novel, which I believe was "The Old Curiosity Shop," which would have overlapped "Nicholas Nickleby." It must have been very complicated to have two novels being written and published concurrently. No doubt he had started writing "Nicholas Nickleby" as the previous novel, "Oliver Twist" was being written and published. The thought doesn't bear thinking about. He must have been very organised.

I worked on an episode of "Sherlock Holmes", one of the Granada series which was made during the 1980s, when I did a lot of 'walk-on' work. It was "The Man With The Twisted Lip" and shot in King's Lynn. As a result of that I decided to read some of the stories and had a complete volume of the stories (since lost) but I now have an annotated set of volumes which has been edited by Leslie S. Klinger. I have been working my way through the stories gradually (not completed as yet.) The Granada series is being repeated on one of the digital television stations we can get through Sky (I think it is ITV Encore, which shows a lot of back-catalogue shows, including "Downton Abbey.") So I am able to see the stories in really good adaptations, although I must say some of the acting is somewhat 'over-the-top.' I'm not over-keen on the modern version of the Conan Doyle stories, "Sherlock" which stars Benedict Cumberbatch. I'm  afraid I prefer the original stories and don't like them being fiddled about with. I did see the first series and quite enjoyed them but the last series, for me, was a disappointment. I won't be watching the next series which is due out around Christmas.

Cold, wet, overcast and miserable

We're in that sort of interregnum of the Christmas/New Year's holiday period, where everything is downright boring. The weather is playing silly games; one minute it is bright sunshine and then it goes really dull, and the wind gets up. There's not a lot to do. I am writing this to fill in time. I gave Carol a bird-feeding station, which is set up in the garden. It comes with a central section, made of metal, with a point on one end, which you stick in the ground. Fortunately the grass in the back garden is relatively soft. I'm not going to call it a 'lawn' because it's hardly that. It slopes down towards the house and gets very muddy when it rains. Anyway, the bird-feeding station. From the central section you hang metal arms which take two feeding 'plates' one, which is clear plastic, is intended for water, and the other is made of metal, almost like a sieve, for food. The rather attractive top-mounted arrays take special bird-feeding 'cages' filled with fat balls. We set it up too close to the house at first, but have now moved it further back from the house. I think several birds have visited, but we haven't had too many. I will keep you informed as things develop, so keep reading these posts . . .

As for television . . . this years it's been downright pathetic. Apart from 'Doctor Who' and 'Great Expectations' there's been nothing really worth tuning in for. The 'Doctor Who' Christmas special has become part of the Christmas televison furniture for the past few years, at least, since the show was resurrected in 2005. It was a reasonably good episode, not stuffed full of 'special guests' and at least you were kept guessing with 'what would happen next.'  You would honestly think with all the extra channels with 'multi-channel' digital television that there'd be something worth watching. We only have Freeview, but even then we don't watch too much television. I got a year's subscription to BBC History Magazine, which I've been reading for the past few years. The first copy has just arrived. As part of the subscription I got the new Peter Ackroyd book 'The History of England: Foundation', which is the first part of a six-volume history of England, so I'll have that to read in the next month or two.