Cruel ambition

Olivia Colman plays the embittered Miss Havisham in Steven Knight's dark new take on Great Expectations

- CAREN CLARK, ELAINE REILLY

NEW DRAMA

Great Expectations Sunday, 9pm, BBC1

Following his searing version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in 2019, Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight is now giving an unflinching spin to another of the author’s best-loved novels, Great Expectations.

The six-part BBC1 adaptation follows the shifting fortunes of social-climbing Pip, and begins in 1839 when the orphan, played by Fionn Whitehead, finds himself in dire straits in London.

To uncover what has led him there, the action flashes back seven years to when the younger Pip (played by Tom Sweet) is growing up in Kent with sister Sara and brother-in-law Joe and dreaming of a better life.

‘Pip has aspirations and strives to get out,’ explains