Los Angeles Times

'Great Expectations' review: A dismal remodel of a Charles Dickens tale

Olivia Colman, left, as Miss Havisham and Tom Sweet as Young Pip in FX’ s "Great Expectations."

FX, in partnership with the BBC, has made a dreary, dismal and not very Dickensian miniseries out of Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations." And while that seems to be in some measure the point, it is, all the same, dreary and dismal and does not count so much as an adaptation as a remodeling.

Steven Knight, who created the dark period crime drama "Peaky Blinders," has taken the novel down to the studs and erected something quite different in its place. The outlines are vaguely recognizable, but the rooms are all different: The windows have been changed into doors and the doors into windows, and the walls have

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