Do we really need another Great Expectations adaptation?

Coronavirus might have brought the television and film industries to a total standstill, but not even a catastrophic global pandemic can change some things. How faithful they are to the source material, how much they reflect the times in which they were made, the new lens through which the audience can see characters who riskeddevolving into archetype. Which would be great, except this new version is going to be made by the creative team behind Tom Hardy’s voodoo- and incest-tinged gothic drama Taboo. The new miniseries – a co-production between BBC One and FX – counts Steven Knight as a writer and Hardy and Ridley Scott as producers. And that was very muchScrooge Goes Grimdark, in which our brooding, dirt-spackled hero found himself weighed down with grief over a factory fire. There was gratuitous gravestoneurination.There was – and this is the greatest crime that an adaptation of A Christmas Carol can commit in the 21st century – not a single Muppet to be found.