Great Expectations

Original version

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Drama: Classic & Period

Orphan Pip's life changes forever when he meets wealthy Miss Havisham and her daughter.

A twist of fate shows Pip a dark world of possibilities, but is he willing to pay the price? Steven Knight's chilling take on the Dickens classic, starring Olivia Colman.

Series 1

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Formerly part of a wider BBC One South East region that included London and part of the South region. Separated from BBC One London 2001-09-03 following reorganisation of the South East region.

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Olivia Colman

Fionn Whitehead

Ashley Thomas

Shalom Brune-Franklin

Johnny Harris

Trystan Gravelle

Owen McDonnell

Laurie Ogden

Matthew Needham

John Mackay

Brady Hood

Mark Kinsella

Minim UK Productions

Great Expectations: Series 1: Episode 4

Episode 4

BBC One - Great Expectations, Series 1, Episode 4

As Pip learns to navigate London life alongside Jaggers, Estella battles with her future.

As London life begins to take its toll on Pip, his work for the brutish Mr Drummle, under instruction from Jaggers, brings Estella shockingly back into his life.

Haunted by dreams of escape, Estella wakes to find that she cannot change the world around her. Instead, Miss Havisham is there, forcing her to prepare for the day’s trip to London. Estella must try on her wedding dress and go to meet her fiancé, Mr Drummle. The only advice or care Miss Havisham shows is to tell Estella to wash especially well. Mr Drummle deals in spices, so he must have a particular keen sense of smell. 

Pip meanwhile is acclimatising to his life as a river rat. Now working for Mr Drummle, rented out by Mr Jaggers, in service of the deal he and Drummle have struck up, Pip uses his innocent face and his vast knowledge of Thames traffic to find unsuspecting targets who may need Drummle’s insurance. 

More often than not, this new line of work finds Pip in the Phoenix Pub, where his distaste for his life in London has led to an overreliance on rum. He is keen to wash away the innocence of the blacksmith boy he once was, but he finds himself in over his head when he drunkenly insults Monsieur Dorget, a French corsair and pirate, and the latest target for Jaggers’s scheme. Dangerous at the best of times, he doesn’t take kindly to a drunken boy’s slur, and Pip is only saved from harm by the timely arrival of Jaggers and his loaded pistol.  

Overwhelmed and chastened for showing off, Pip barely has time to recover before Jaggers has another plan with him in mind. Pip thinks he is headed to entertain a client of Mr Drummle’s – an American cotton trader – but Jaggers is aware that for Pip to truly be able to help him with his plan, he must hate Drummle first. And so, while he takes care of the American, Jaggers makes Pip act as chaperone between Drummle and his bride-to-be, Estella. Furious, but in no position to refuse, Pip must row back to the Royal Exchange to face his love – and her future husband.

Great Expectations: Series 1

BBC One

Once poor, orphaned Pip meets wealthy Miss Havisham and her daughter Estella, his life changes forever. Thrown into the dangerous city of London, he must battle to control his fate.

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