On the Thames in Hammersmith there’s a splendid terrace built in the 1750s. From the opposite bank you can imagine Pip rowing by on one of his bucolic outings up river a couple of centuries back.
At the climax of the third episode of Great Expectations (BBC One), a darker fantasy about the historical continuity of London’s waterway occurred to Steven Knight. Pip (Fionn Whitehead) put out in a boat along a lovely leafy section of the river. Suddenly, with the stroke of a paddle, its banks thronged with a different sort of city: Pip’s contaminating leap up the social ladder was a journey into urban alienation.
I have been enjoying this latest adaptation more for what it is than isn’t. Glimpses of the erotic, for example, feel like a valid corrective to Dickensian squeamishness. “Dickens and sex,” wrote John Carey in The Violent Effigy, “is an unpromising subject.” Not here it ain’t.
Dickens and evil, though, that’s a different story. From misers to bullies, hypocrites to scoundrels, he knew how to do villainy. Discombobulatingly, Mr Jaggers (Ashley Thomas) now joins that gallery. “I am known to be evil,” he advised Pip. “Celebrated for it.” No he’s not, I thought. He’s known to be an honest lawyer, and for obsessively cleansing his hands. Here Jaggers has been repurposed as a schemer, blackmailer and fraudster who plans to train Pip up as a rat, snake and vulture. “And then with blood dripping from your beak I will teach you how to be a gentlemen.” Poor old Jaggers, reduced to a sneaky Peaky import and forced to utter naff cod-archaisms like “affiancement” and, er, “touchment”.
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