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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
4
Mixed:
11
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews
ColliderMar 20, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Great Expectations finds a perfect balance in crafting a faithful adaptation while recognizing the necessity of change. ... Whether this is someone’s first introduction to this piece of bildungsroman or the tenth adaptation they have consumed, they will find joy, sorrow, and beauty in what Steven Knight has constructed.
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Mar 31, 2023The Observer (UK)Sep 10, 2024
Season 1 Review:
There are strong showings, including Johnny Harris as desperate convict Magwitch, who accosts Pip on the grey, gloopy marshes, and nicely conjured atmospheres: silvery mists; candle flames tickling the gloom. However, despite the controversy, episode one is somewhat ponderous.
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iMar 29, 2023
Season 1 Review:
I can see how Knight’s own ostentatious stamp might ruffle the feathers of purists (episode two features a rather unexpected spanking scene). And I question whether it should have been made at all. Even with his surprises, Knight’s Great Expectations can’t escape being a story that we already know inside out. Yet there is an argument that any new Dickens adaptation needs to have a fresh angle. Knight certainly has that. Whether it’s for better or worse is yet to be seen
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The TelegraphMar 20, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Knight’s signature style – swagger and machismo, violence and dirt – is overdone but does make sense for the Magwitch scenes, with Johnny Harris suitably frightening in the role. Young actor Tom Sweet has just the right mix of innocence and inner strength to make a memorable Pip.
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Mar 23, 2023
Season 1 Review:
In expanding the story the way he has, and giving far more room to characters who were perfectly Dickensian in their economy, Mr. Knight has lost much of the subtle psychology—especially regarding Havisham. ... Dickens was pretty adept at providing just as much about a character as was needed to make his point. Mr. Knight gives us more, and the point becomes elusive.
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Mar 22, 2023The TimesMar 27, 2023
Season 1 Review:
I did not love it. To be honest, I struggled to see the point of it, or much that was even very striking in the opening episode. When there have been so many adaptations of a great novel you need something remarkable to justify another, something beyond a stark opening suicide attempt and throwing in the F-word in at 21 minutes (the swearing doesn’t bother me since I’m fairly confident it happened quite a lot in Dickensian times, but it has got some people in a lather).
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The IndependentMar 22, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Needless and lazy. ... Even with the infusion of sex and violence and post-colonial theory, it is hard to feel excited about this new take. With all this lack of imagination or interest in new ideas, it seems like Miss Havisham’s clocks are not the only thing frozen in time.
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Mar 21, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Only Miss Havisham pops off the screen, making this an adaptation lacking in a certain balance. ... Miss Havisham’s mansion — cluttered with detritus, almost impassably full of objects — may come to feel like a fitting device on a show on which a couple of breakthrough performances are surrounded by unmetabolized narrative clutter.
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Mar 28, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Most [of the actors] are unable to rise above the stylistic miasma of the production. ... The series becomes sillier as it becomes more serious, wending its way to a bizarrely cheerful conclusion — given the dour preceding hours — that shares only a fire with its literary antecedent. None of the character development feels earned. The narrative threads are clumsily engineered; their tying up feels pat.
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