A tale of too many takes But surely we’ve had enough now

Television needs to stop rolling out Charles Dickens adaptations – and this is coming from someone whose lockdown project was writing an Oliver Twist prequel about Nancy (binned after three chapters). There’s no argument here against these being some of the greatest novels by one of the most important writers who ever lived. But after at least 28 adaptations across TV, film and stage, the BBC is launching yet another take on Great Expectations.

The latest version of orphan Pip’s (Fionn Whitehead) dreams of becoming a proper gentleman - to begin on BBC One tomorrow – is the second dark Dickens adaptation from the Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight. It follows his 2019 take on A Christmas Carol – which at a quick count was the 128th adaptation of that book.

Knight says he chose Great Expectations because it is “a story of class mobility and class intransigence” that remains “very timely”. This is a fair point – these are Dickensian times indeed.

But even with a refreshingly diverse cast, a potty-mouth script, heady opium scenes and Knight’s personal touch, this adaptation feels staler than Miss Havisham’s wedding cake. Surely there are new stories or overlooked novels that could do something different with that prime-time slot.

Part of the joy of hit literary-based period dramas from recent years has been in the unexpected: Gentleman Jack, based on Anne Lister’s diaries, paved the way for a lesbian pilgrimage; Sara Collins’s debut novel, The Confessions of Frannie Langton, was an intriguing black female-led gothic romance; and Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love treated us to BBC One’s most erotic minute with Andrew Scott’s introduction as Lord Merlin.

Yet commissioners seem unable to resist more Dickens. Perhaps one reason is the eccentric allure of Miss Havisham. Charlotte Rampling said she immediately accepted the role in 1999 and Gillian Anderson laced up the rotting wedding dress in 2011. Following in their dusty footsteps just over a decade later Olivia Colman is putting in the most Olivia Colman-as-Miss Havisham performance imaginable.

Dickens adaptations seem a sure

fire way to get hot acting talent on screen. Anna Friel swapped Brookside for Our Mutual Friend in 1998; Daniel Radcliffe played David Copperfield in 1999; Bleak House boasted Anna Maxwell Martin and Carey Mulligan in 2005; Tom Hardy revelled in playing Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist in 2007; and Claire Foy broke out as Little Dorrit in 2008.

Impressive casts aside, Dickens novels are also perhaps so beloved by commissioners because he was great at writing for TV before it even existed. He originally wrote many of his stories in serial form and was an avid theatregoer.

Most of the productions mentioned are fantastic, so surely there is less reason to make more. Perhaps TV could take a lesson from another of the world’s most famous writers. There hasn’t been another straight TV adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice by a big broadcaster since the BBC’s 1995 production (its second one) starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth – and rightly so. It is a perfect adaptation not to be messed with. There have, however, been enjoyable spin-offs, with Death Comes to Pemberley (set six years after Austen’s novel ends) and Lost in Austen (about a modern woman who enters the plot of the novel through a portal). Two contemporary takes have also recently been announced: the queer series Trip and Netflix’s The Netherfield Girls. This, perhaps, is the way to do it.