The book is arguably best known as a movie, Tony Richardson’s rollicking 1963 Oscar-winning film, which took the story at a clip and highlighted its farcical elements with stylistic borrowings from Mack Sennett. This adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic novel, which stars Olivia Colman, Fionn Whitehead and Shalom Brune-Franklin, is a very dark and different take.
Television ‘Great Expectations’ review: A dismal remodel of a Charles Dickens tale “Tom Jones,” beginning a four-episode run Sunday on PBS, comes from Henry Fielding’s 1749 comic romp “ The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.” Written at the very dawn of the English-language novel, it charts the misadventures of the eponymous Tom (Solly McLeod), left as a baby in the bed of the symbolically named Squire Allworthy (James Fleet) his love for his neighbor Sophia Western (Sophie Wilde) and the missteps, misunderstandings and machinations that keep them apart for, like, a thousand pages. (Though this does, sadly, happen.) Of course, every new generation will see the old books with a new eye. They are so full of vivid incident and dialogue that adaptation becomes more a matter of picking the best bits than filling out the time with new material or fixing what isn’t broken. With their colorful characters, pretzel plots, romantic situations, grand set pieces, climactic revelations and seamless blend of drama and comedy, these books are made to be played. (At least as it’s understood by Americans.) have long been the bread and butter of British broadcasting. Where American television hustles to turn recently published beach reads into prestige series, literary classics - Austen, Dickens, Trollope, Waugh, et al.
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