I like Dickens, and I also enjoyed the BBC's recent take on Great Expectations, despite its limitations.

You don't have to like it, but if the BBC's Great Expectations gets up your nose, why don't you simply leave it alone?

Do I like Dickens? I dunno, I'm not even sure what a Dicken is.

How Dickens was able to lower himself into these black depths of the soul and still make us laugh is one of literature's great wonders. He took us where no other novelist ever has. You don't have to like him, but you're impoverished if you don't.

My experience of Dickens was primarily of long boring English Lit classes and tedious BBC costume dramas that made me want to cry with boredom. I've met plenty of people who felt the same. I can say with certainty that I will never sit through another Dickens adaptation.

I consider Dickens to be our finest writer after Shakespeare, an example and reproach to every too high-minded stylist and every too low-minded populariser who has come after him.

Maybe the BBC is right not to just reflect the view of a small minority of Dickens enthusiasts like yourself.

if Dickens gets up your nose, as he clearly gets up the BBC's, the question has to be asked why you simply don't leave him alone.

I entirely disagree with your sexualised reading of the book. If you think that it is the "demands of the age" to read Great Expectations as a novel about class, money and power, then you do Dickens a disservice.

I do not see the same sexual subtexts in "Great Expectations" as in a novel such as "Jude the Obscure". Your argument appears to be that because the BBC's adaptation of the novel did not suit your reading of it, it is inherently disrespectful to the author.

Well aside from the fact your comment appears to be espousing the idea of authorial intent, you then ascribe a peculiar and marginal intent to the author. Hardly "evisceration" to focus on the most evident reading of a novel, rather than a marginal one.

Indeed, it is the lowest of academic behaviour and reductive critical back-slapping to accuse people who do not subscribe to your reading a novel as disrespectful of the author.

Fair comment, but great article Howard, thankyou!

I greatly enjoyed the recent adaptation of Great Expectations and felt that much of the acting was superb. in enjoying it, however, I had to remove from my mind entirely my memories of the novel which, in agreeing with Mr Jacobson, was too far removed from the adaptation than should have been the case in order to reflect, more greatly the joy felt on reading the descriptions of some of the characters. I refer specifically here to one of my favourites of Dickens - the Aged P. Perhaps not key to the plotting of the novel, but one of the main elements of my enjoyment of Dickens.

The tenets of Practical Criticism argue that while no reading of a text is ever worthless, some are more readily justified and subscribed to than others. I'm not saying your argument that Great Expectations is a novel about Dickens' love life is totally invalid, but that it is far less overt a subject than those of money, power and status and that it is not at all unreasonable or disrepectful to the author to not focus on them. It is only a matter of offence to the critic.

R042, well said.

.....and I say that as one who thinks Dickens is a second-rate writer anyway, albeit a good second-rate writer....................Dickens, like all authors, still deserves better than this.

Attributing weird subtexcts to authors (or artists) is a daft pastime, which is just there to provide witless academics with work.

What the BBC has done to Dickens is nothing to what it has done to Jane Austen.

Realliberal, I agree with you about Austen. But don't you think Austen is impossible to do justice to on screen? The funniest bits are often in the words between the dialogue, so short of a narrator's voice, adapters are a bit stuck.

Mind you, even given that intrinsic problem, some of the adaptations have been truly appalling.

I found the BBC adaptation of Great Expectations gripping actually. To the extent that the first part was on in the background whilst I was doing something else, and by the end of it I was glued to the screen. I do wonder sometimes, though, about the importance of the "lost in translation" element of taking a book to screen. In the end, are the producers and screenplay writers not trying to make entertaining television rather than a slavish reproduction of the novel? The novel still exists as the novel, with all the context of the time that entails.

Thanks for this article. I have long been irritated by the BBC's determination to adapt Dickens by leaving out most of what makes him great: the exuberance, the eccentricity, the anger. Private Eye lampooned the BBC's Little Dorrit as "Dickens' tale of lesbian love with some boring stuff about debtors' prisons getting in the way" and that seems to me a fair account of it.

But Dickens is not well served by his co-option into "Heritage" and "Christmas-iness". When the powers that be put him onto a banknote - strange apotheosis for such a critic of wealth! - they represented his novels by a scene of a village cricket match - hardly a typical Dickens moment. But I suppose that a slum, a workhouse, a prison or a courtroom - though more typical - would have been less cosy.

I sat through three hours of Great Expectations waiting to see Ray Winstone/Abel Magwitch hit someone with a snooker ball in a sock or ask someone where their tool was before coshing them with a makeshift weapon.

I say the BBC didn't take enough creative liberties with Dickens' novel.

I agree, I thought it was a terrible version, desperately shallow in an attempt to appeal to the eye over the brain. Casting a young actress as Miss Haversham was ridiculous; one of the themes of the book is the terrible effect pride can have on a person. Making Miss Haversham young erases the major example that it's not enough to grow older to become wiser, it must be worked on in the soul through life. So the story hints that young people can be prideful and misled, but older people have wise counsel and actions, so should be trusted. Not at all what Dickens wrote, but a nice patronising paternalistic BBC pat on the head to the nice people who enjoy the fashion and make-up more than the boring long books.

I'm glad you didn't 'simply leave it alone' since this dumb version needs to be flagged-up, otherwise people actually think that is the sum of Great Expectations, a very important work that has been traduced. Following the PR blitz, you can't read criticism of it anywhere, just dumb, paid praise, and if this article helps only one young person who wasn't convinced by it but has been browbeaten by the BBC PR machine that blasts out noise to distract critical thought, it has been worth it.

By all means enjoy limited drama, but don't say it shouldn't be commented on critically - else how are we to produce future works of depth and complexity, if the past examples of it are traduced? We should hold to account the dreadfully shallow presentation of literature by the BBC, the Mariella Frostrup-isation of it that tries to reduce everything to a shallow idea of salon-style consensus, and values community over thought, style over substance, and sees simplicity and childishness as depth.

Thanks, Mr J.

This is a great article, apart from the first paragraph, which nearly stopped me reading on. If you look down on popular taste from too high a height (as HJ acknowledges when explaining Dickens' greatness later), you don't make yourself feel better: you just get vertigo. If you splutter too much, you don't express outrage: you choke.

We should surely have more faith in the enduring power of these works (Austen as well as Dickens) to survive a botched TV adaptation.

As for Ianucci, yes he proved himself a perceptive critic in his series. Shame there seem to be no academic critics with the same popular touch any more.

I agree with Jacobson about the recent adaptation of Great Expectations - there were some good performances (e.g. Ray Winstone), but the adaptation itself was execrable. On the other hand, I disagree with SeanBarker (and Private Eye) about the Little Dorrit adaptation - I thought that was first-class, and Tom Courtenay deserved a BAFTA.

One might argue that the 14-episode format of Little Dorrit made it easier to do justice to the novel than the three-hour miniseries format allotted to Great Expectations - but then again, David Lean managed to do a good job in just two hours.

And I'm sorry, Ortho, but anyone who thinks that Dickens was a second-rate writer needs their head examined. I could happily emulate Mr Todd in A Handful of Dust and retire to the jungle to read Dickens over and over again.

I don't want to be too implistic in my agreement with Jacobson but the BBC really should be on notice for its dumbing down.

I hadn't seen that reading of the book, and was very interested by it. Unfortunately, I think the BBC removed any reading of it other than, aren't they attractive and interesting, and eviscerated the depth of the novel, so that there was no emotional complexity or possibility of alternate readings by the viewer. Just a costume period drama, to appeal to those that want to be sold new fashion ideas, a new Mr Darcy to over-emote about. Anyone who wanted any more, is a snob, apparently, and shouldn't point out the emperors new clothes. Reductive critical back-slapping is what the people involved in this programme have been well-paid for, and that has been spread around the critics to neuter them. Don't think, join in the fun! Ignore the depths, that's too hard for us to do, so don't think about it! We'll give you the obvious reading of it, and anything else isn't fact, so ignore it. Trust us, we are in charge and we know. Just the people Dickens wrote against, which is why he is so valuable.

How can you say that an article that opens it up through criticism is reductive?! You've been sold too simple an idea of literature - it's not easy, and is a complex part of life that benefits from discussion, not just what book looks good under your arm in the park, or what novel should be adapted for Keira Knightly to look good in and lend fashion tips. It's hard stuff, and rewards thinking.

On a serious level - where was the humour? On a banal level - how come Pip was more attractive than Estella? That was just weird

Perkins, to whom a quizzical superiority to literature seems as native as enthusiasm is to Iannucci, complained of "a woeful lack of real women in [Dickens] books

How real is the TV version then? Yet again another costume drama which consists of good looking rich people with porcelain skin,slim with perfect dentistry (even back then) walking around in brand new clothes, whilst poor people are shown as people with flushed reddy skin, scruffy old dirty clothing, and very poor dentistry but overweight.
Was it really like this back then?

With regards to the Sue Perkins programme I would have a bigger problem with her attack on his attitude to women if I thought it wasn't true. But clearly her observation about how Dickens took a dismissive view of women, particuarly the frumpy matriarchs, can be found in any book. The day after seeing `Mrs Dickens Family Christmas' I randomly read a scene in Our Mutual Friend, written around the time that Dickens was shutting out Catherine from their family life. It involved the Wilfer family and depicted how Mr Wilfer is bullied by Mrs Wilfer and how much more Bella Wilfer loves her simple adoring father compared to her negative, shrewish mother. This is just one of many examples that back up Perkins' assertions about his unhappy marriage.
I agree with Jacobson about Perkins. She's an insufferable know-it-all with her "winks...,self-congratulation" and "superiority to literature." But I also think that when you're right, you're right. And Perkins was.

I'm no expert on any of the great novelists just some one who has enjoyed reading and re-reading them over the years - and just perhaps - it's natural that adaptations differ when new generations are the target audience. H.J & I are about the same age and it is hard to bear when pure commercialism takes over from the joy of the original, and when you are old enough to remember those born in the late Victorian era and the way they expressed themselves and the usage of London dialect that was still very recognisable in the early 1950's, plus how regional accents - such as South London to North or Surrey to Kent have changed it must be difficult for those who have not experienced it to relate to just how the words in Dickens actually revive memories and expressions of people we've known. I can't read Pickwick without hearing a grocer who would have made a marvellous Sam Weller on radio - so perhaps we of a certain age have to be more understanding of the tastes of the modern ear and mind and let our heroes evolve into what - in the long-term will keep them alive to those who wish to place their own ownership upon the author.

I like Charles but he can suppress sex to such an extent he scares the dickens out of me.

I don't like Dickens, and find those things the critic admires - his eccentricity, his verbosity, his flights of fancy - to be hugely offputting. I don't deny he's a good author, he's just not my cup of tea mostly because his humour isn't as sophisticated as, say, Austen and I do like some wit in my reading material.

But I have ploughed my way through Great Expectations and cannot say I found any eroticism in it at all. If I had done, I might have taken more of an interest.

And I do think that it's fair criticism to say that there aren't any real women in the books, just idealised femininity or comic dregs of society.

And why should we sympathise with Charles over Mrs Dickens when he was being a beast to her? Who had the power? Who made those decisions?

My experience of Dickens was primarily of long boring English Lit classes and tedious BBC costume dramas that made me want to cry with boredom. I've met plenty of people who felt the same.

Hang on, Irritant, let me fix this for you:

My experience of Dickens was primarily of long boring English Lit classes and tedious BBC costume dramas that made me want to cry with boredom. I've met plenty of other cretinous philistines who felt the same.

There.

On a serious level - where was the humour? On a banal level - how come Pip was more attractive than Estella? That was just weird

Crikey, yes. I actually quite enjoyed it but it was terribly earnest, and Pip's overweening prettiness was quite offputting. Estella's the one who's meant to be bewitchingly beautiful.

God I detest Jane Austen. Pretty chocolate box adaptations serve her far too well. There ius NOTHING of interest in her boring books. You may dislike the adaptations of Dickens but at least they're packed with characters and incidents. Unklike bloody Austen. And the books are still available for you.

Having seen Howard Jacobson on Late Review a number of times I recall that he didn't seem to ever like anything very much.

If the Dickens `Gets up the nose' of the Beeb can Howard tell us why they produce lavish, expensive adaptations on an almost yearly basis?

These programmes will always throw up a multiplicity of meanings (or readings!), springing from the imaginations of the programme makers. Of course they should retain as much of Dickens imagination as possible but it is the nature of adaptation that reimagination will take place.

Howard Jacobson's own view of the book is scholarly but characteristically prurient. How would his fellow critics and the viewing public respond to an adaptation making meat of the themes of eroticism and sexual violence he, quite rightly, sees in the novel?

The worst of the Dickens themed programming was the execrable, witless `The Bleak Old Shop of stuff', followed swiftly by the ubiquitous and maddening Sue Perkins.

Dickens will never be more ill served by his re-imaginers than poor old Jane Austen who really has been eviserated and turned into fluffy chick-lit.

HJ sounds like a snobbish fuddy duddy in this

Perhaps Jacobson and some of the other 'tortured' literati types who have got so worked up about this three part adaptation should remember that television is a very different medium. It can be a crass, mind numbingly dull medium but not on this occasion. Our 10 year old daughter was entranced by the story and tomorrow morning intends to go and buy the book. Job done, I'd say.

Sorry Howard, you're using a single error to stain the BBC's reputation in handling Dickens

The BBC adaptation of 'Our Mutual Friend' with Steven MacKintosh, Keeley Hawes and Peter Vaughan was the best Dickens adaptation since David Lean's GE. David Morrisey took the character of Bradley Headstone and made it bloody terrifying. Pity it was 14 years ago.

Andrew Davies' 'Little Dorrit' with Courtney and MacFadyen wasn't half bad either, a couple of years ago - far better than the epically tedious and over-praised Christine Edzard two part film from 1988 which lasted 6 hours...

and Sue Perkins - well, you know what you're going to get from her and she'd clearly researched this and had some pretty damning comments that are hard to disagree with. You may not like her style, but even Claire Tomalin agrees with a lot of her comments... Dickens is a fabulous writer but a complete monster to live with - doesn't lessen the quality of his writing, but I don't think Perkins said so at any point.

I think some people expect too much of television and those who work in it. Not only is it impossible to please everyone when dramatising a full length novel, it's probably not desirable to do so either. If I want Great Expectations as Dickens imagined it then I read the book. If I want alternative takes on the story then there are many radio, TV and film adaptations to choose from and each of these will bring new readers to the Dickens canon and if reproducing it verbatin were the preferred option then I'm sure very few working in the media would want to waste time treading the same path again.

I know what you mean about Sue Perkins though, but I think this is the BBC's infamous 'balance' rearing an unnecessary head. They probably felt they had to have someone trash him lest they be thought elitist.

A Dickens adaptation done to Mr Jacobson’s standards is impossible, given the limitations of television, so targeting the BBC specifically seems a bit mean, surely on his criteria no one does it right? Especially as it only seems to be permissible to broadcast adaptations that agree with his reading of any particular novel. Sceptic101 is right, the book is always available, and if a particular adaptation adds nothing to it, I think that Dickens is robust enough that it cannot take anything from it either.

The adaptation was guilty of a number of things that it was accused of, that brothel scene was execrable. I thoroughly enjoyed it all the same (the adaptation in general, not the brothel scene).

Incidentally Charles Dickens was a terrible husband, and a season of programmes about him that ignore this fact, would be whitewashing of the worst kind. It is a shame that it was highlighted by the extraordinarily annoying Sue Perkins.

Oh and Sceptic 101? I only agree with you about the book always being available, I can’t agree with you about Jane Austen, mostly because you're so very wrong.

After the cock they made of Oliver Twist, I never want to watch a BBC adaptation of Dickens again; so I missed Great Expecs .... however, I've read the books; there may be something to be said even for these over-fidded-with versions if they lead others to do the same.

Well said Mr Jacobson, I thought it was just me who thought that the BBC had butchered the book & turned a classic into a 3 hour TV soap.

Late Review's thirty second preview of "the BBC's latest apadtation of Great Expectations" showed me as much I wanted to see. The BBC's unofficial (or is it official?) policy of drenching anything and everything in "sweeping strings" background music (or is actually supposed to be foreground music?) renders most of their output unwatchable (to me, at least).
Background music is supposed to heighten a sense that the viewer is currently experiencing . If it isn't, it's just manipulation.

So that was all I watched of it. And, yes, Mrs Haversham was far too young.

When watching the BBC's 2007 adaptation of "Oliver Twist" - with Timothy Spall as Fagin - I was disappointed at how all of the humour was removed (unlike the Alan Bleasdale's enjoyable 1999 ITV version - with Robert Lindsay as Fagin).

For an adaptaion with the humour, wit, charm and levity intact, the 1952 version of "The Pickwick Papers" is unbeatable even though it dispences with at least 90 percent of the story (and I mean that literally - only 10 percent of what Dicken wrote is up on screen).

Better still: read the books.

Avoided the BBC adaptation cos I like the Lean film so much and the trailers didn't look appealing. I did enjoy Iannucci's programme though and agree it was nice to see him being enthusiastic about something as opposed to his usual satire (which occasionally is a little smug - but who wouldn't be when you're that funny/clever).

Also agree with your analysis, especially this bit;

Back, back we go in time and convolution, only to discover that the taint of crime and prison which Pip is desperate to escape is inescapable: not only is the idea of a "gentleman" built on sand, so is that idealisation of woman that was at the heart of Victorian romantic love.

Always thought the story was about various controls and denials be they self-denial, social, cultural, interpersonal, sexual, economical etc and the build up of pressure that leads to venting frustration, which isn't always shown but implied.

This is a snobbish article, and like most snobbery it is flecked with hypocrisy. Howard Jacobson criticises Armando Iannucci for using 'read' as a noun (a perfectly legitimate usage) yet is happy to describe Iannucci's commentary as 'brave' -- a critical platitude of such awfulness it makes my balls twitch.

Oh how I agree with you Howard - you have put my very concerns
into perfect prose! Here's to Charles Dickens - my favourite author!

Thanks Howard for that.

Trouble with Dickens is the omission of Ipads, Iphones and smartphones, trainers, sports gear, etc.

It doesn't exactly reflect modern society very well and Merlin and Robin Hood haven't suffered from having any of these elements included in the recent remakes.

Oliver Twist - Booyakah Mr Pickwick!

Mr Pickwick - Wassup Oli?

OT - We just went out shopping for some new stuff in Central London, me, Dodge and the Fagin Massive. Got some radical new trainers, plasma screen and Iphone, all for the price of a brick for the windows.

MP - Bitchin. Sorry, just voting for X Factor.

Now tell me that doesn't work.

And just a note - Scrooge colourised on C5 was unwatchable. Not the film, the colourisation.

I loved the BBC interpretation of Great Expectations. My only criticism was that Pip was more "beautiful" than Estella.

I probably would have enjoyed this adaption more if I had not read the book. As it stands, my main problems with it were:

1) Gillian Anderson doing a stupid voice is not Miss Havisham
2) Estella wasn't sufficiently good-looking
3) Why did they cast Pip as a pouting, milquetoast shitbird?

The criticisms Howard Jacobson levels at the BBC's latest version of Great Expectations are a little unfair. It was, after all, a populist adaptation designed to tap into the nation's reinvigorated love of the costume/period drama. In other words, television designed to draw a strong rating over Christmas, rather than to faithfully bring to life Dickens' work. It didn't miss the point of his novel, it simply presented the most palatable, simplistic version of it. Given its three hour run time, that route was no doubt the only one available to the programme makers.

That said, this is an excellent piece, a passionate ode to a wonderful novel that is more likely to convert neophytes to Dickens than anything the BBC has produced. Exactly the type of article we should hope for from the Culture section!

The recent BBC Great Expectation was simply dire.

Drained of all photographic colour,so unrealistic,why didn't they film it in black and white. Red had been invented in the 19th century,so had green. Perhaps it was meant to be Gothic. But Gothic is usually very colourful.

It was college boy realistic,you know self consciously ''gritty.'' To ''get away'' from the chocolate box Dickens because most of us think it was a chocolate box world don't we? So we need pampered media people to show us or rather rub our noses in the fact that it was not.To show us what it was really like ie no colour.

Worst of all drained of all Dickensien colour,speech and humour. Instead we got a try hard trendy,po -faced, Guardian saturday supplement view of the world.

Then there was the speech of the young actors with their low flat delivery almost estury English. that was meant to be realism or ''gritty '' too I expect.

Miss Havisham was so miscast and Pip was improbably like a male model.

The whole thing was embarrising unconvincing tosh.

Dickens fans may be interested to know that the BFI has a Dickens season beginning today.

Dickens on Screen

I knew it was crap without even watching it.

Polly Toynbee gushed about it in the usual way she gushes about things she's enthusiastic about.

So I stayed well away from it.

Thank you so much for that, Howard Jacobson. I thought I was alone.

Great article Howard. don't agree with all of it, but, like the BBC's adaptation of Great Expectations, I enjoyed it. But what the BBC put on wasn't Dickens. It missed out not only some key scenes , but some key characters, and with that, a lot of what he wanted to say about how people behave. Entirely agree about the brothel scene, though.

Wemmick is seen in an entirely different light when with his Aged P than when he is in Jaggers' chambers. And what about his fiancee? (Miss Skiffins? May not be remembering that right...). And Biddy? Joe isn't left alone and palely loitering for want of Pip's company (though I wouldn't have said no to it myself...) but marries again - the young woman who has also been in love with Pip.

And, yes, the poor girl who played Estella - I'm sure she's pretty, but up against that model of male pulchritude and pouting lips that was Pip, she had no chance, did she?

Great article, Howard! I love it!

But I'm going to risk damning myself now because I didn't see the TV adaptation. I stopped watching BBC versions of Dickens a long time ago. Yes, they leave out the humour. They have no gusto. The characters are flat and the language is lifeless.

Thank goodness we still have the books and a few enthusiasts who remind us of them from time to time!

I think we have to accept that the TV adaptations are a completely different product, made for a different audience in a different time, and let them be.

By the way, I saw a very pretty girl with a handsome boy on the bus this morning. The girl was holding a copy of The Finkler Question. She was smiling and flirting and bursting with life and laughter. I wondered if it was the book or the boy that made her so happy.

In any case, some people were moved that way by the TV adaptation, including some dear friends of mine, so let's not dismiss it out of hand.