THE CROWN’s Olivia Colman Set to Star In New Series GREAT EXPECTATIONS
By Movieguide® Contributor
Oscar winner Olivia Colman will star as the broken-hearted Miss Havisham in a new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectations. Coleman portrayed Queen Elizabeth II in the Netflix streaming hit THE CROWN. THE CROWN received multiple Movieguide® Award nominations in 2020 for its strong Christian worldview elements and phenomenal acting performances.
Stephen Knight will write and executive produce the six-episode GREAT EXPECTATIONS series for FX / BBC, which features Fionn Whitehead (DUNKIRK) as Pip, the orphan at the center of the drama. The story set at Satis House, where Miss Havisham languishes in a tattered wedding dress years after being jilted at the altar, explores themes of revenge, forgiveness, and redemption in Dickens’ popular mystery. Deadline shared the news in an article and offers this insider information:
Knight is an avowed Dickens fan who told me a couple years back that part of what sets Peaky Blinders apart from other period drama owes something to the author. At the time, he said, “If one were to hope to aspire to do what Dickens did it would be to take working-class life and make it relative to fiction.”
Movieguide® previously reported on the series:
Dickens’ Great Expectations is a coming-of-age story about an orphan nicknamed Pip. It was published as a novel after Dickens released it in a “series of weekly chapters” in December 1860.
The novel has had many previous adaptations. The best so far was a (1946) movie directed by the great David Lean and starring John Mills, Alec Guinness and other great actors. Others were the 1934 version, a 2012 movie by Mike Newell and a BBC/PBS series in 2011.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS will be the second Dickens adaptation by the two networks with Knight attached.
They first collaborated on the three-part miniseries, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, which aired in December on FX.
A premiere date has not yet been announced.
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