Great Expectations episode 5

Great Expectations 5

With this episode, we see a massive gear change in the show, and I know what could have been a fantastic interpretation.

This is a purely poetic incantation of en episode as demons are aid bear, the past haunting and at times exorcised, and aspirations shown to be the fever dreams of indignities.

This is pips true journey through the underworld, from the opium den to the scam with Drummond.  It’s atmospheric and more on part with the Christmas carol and the darkness of wuthering heights than the more comical antecedents we usually see in Dickens.

Indeed shades of the sargasso sea and the role of trade and people as commerce really play so well in the dark mist of London.

Mrs Haversham finally earns some of her billing, too; we see a real sense of the scheme’s scale in Colemans Mrs Haversham. And the innocent foil of Hubert, delighted with being a possible second choice to Estrella, just makes us fear for him in a show so happy to stick and twist the knife on each occasion.

For me, though, the visit from Joe hit so hard. I am coming home after a night’s networking for gigs to be on the same night bus as my mother coming home after a hotel shift. The concern for Pip as Pip is happily embarrassed and ashamed at once and turns that shame into snobbery reminds me of my London times.

I recall that mixture of concern and impatience with what I was doing. We lived in the same house, yet I was living this life. But even then, like Joe. The door was open to change. And I did. But the way the opium and, more importantly, ‘the notions’ of Pip that he would have a destiny of high standing can’t help but resonate.

In parallel, as Magwitch reaches Estrella in her hour of need, the warmth finally bleeds through the frames in this, like the occasional candle lit for no other reason than to bring the lost …home.

I would have been delighted if this were episode two in a three-parter. To support it as the fifth part. However, it does not tally with the baggage of the earlier episodes.

It has enthused me like Wickham cannon but has not been consistent enough, jagged like jaggers. It is hard to say the series is worth an entire investment. 

This is an episode I would give someone to watch, familiar with the story, but not waste time with the plodding of the earlier shows.

I look forward to next week’s finale with some abandon, and I may blow off the cobwebs that grew over the last month in my memory palace of this show.