Great Expectations is a three-part BBC television drama adaptation by Sarah Phelps of the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations.

Starring Ray Winstone as Magwitch, Gillian Anderson as Miss Havisham,Douglas Booth as Pip, Vanessa Kirby as Estella and David Suchet as Jaggers. The adaptation was first broadcast on British television over the Christmas period in 2011.Based on Charles Dickens' timeless tale, this is a story of the love of a man for an unreachable woman. Updated to modern day New York City, the story concerns a man of modest background who falls in love with a rich girl. But when a mysterious benefactor greenlights the man to make his dreams come true, everything done has the ultimate goal of making Estella fall in love with him.There have been so many previous adaptations that any new production has to offer something different, particularly in the scenes meant to grab the viewer's attention, like Pip's first meeting with Magwich and his first visit to Miss Havisham's mausoleum of a house. Both are done very well. On Christmas Eve, around 1812, Pip, an orphan who is about six years old, encounters an escaped convict in the village churchyard while visiting the graves of his mother, father, and siblings. The convict scares Pip into stealing food and a file to grind away his shackles, from the home he shares with his abusive older sister and her kind, passive husband Joe Gargery, a blacksmith. The next day, soldiers recapture the convict while he is engaged in a fight with another convict; the two are returned to the prison ships from which they escaped. Miss Havisham, a wealthy spinster who wears an old wedding dress and lives in the dilapidated Satis House, asks Pip's "Uncle Pumblechook" (who is actually Joe's uncle) to find a boy to play with her adopted daughter Estella. Pip begins to visit Miss Havisham and Estella, with whom he falls in love, with Miss Havisham's encouragement. Pip visits Miss Havisham multiple times, and during one of these visits, he brings Joe along. During their absence, Joe's wife is attacked by a mysterious individual and lives out the rest of her life as a mute invalid. Later, when Pip is a young apprentice at Joe's blacksmith shop, a lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, approaches him and tells him he is to receive a large sum of money from an anonymous benefactor and must immediately leave for London, where he is to become a gentleman. Assuming that Miss Havisham is his benefactress, he visits her and Estella, who has returned from studying on the Continent. Years later, Abel Magwitch, the convict he helped, who was transported to New South Wales where he eventually became wealthy, reveals himself to Pip as his benefactor. Pip also discovers that Estella is the daughter of Magwitch and Mr. Jaggers' housemaid, Molly, whom Jaggers defended in a murder charge and who gave up her daughter to be adopted by Miss Havisham. In a fit of depression and remorse, Miss Havisham accidentally sets her dress on fire. Pip asks Joe for forgiveness, and Joe forgives him. As Pip has lost his fortune upon Magwitch's death, he is no longer a gentleman. Pip promises to repay Joe and goes to Egypt, where he shares lodgings with Herbert and Clara and works diligently as a clerk. Eleven years later, Pip visits the ruins of Satis House and meets Estella, whom her dead husband, Bentley Drummle, had abused. She asks Pip to forgive her, assuring him that misfortune has opened her heart and that she now empathises with Pip.

Above all, this handsomely designed, unobtrusively edited and thoughtfully acted film moves at quite a clip, reminding us what a fantastic, morally complex, eternally relevant story the book tells us of good and evil, decency and generosity, snobbery and love, of dealing with forces beyond our control, of accepting life and understanding the world. If you only see one film this year,this should be Great Expectations and I hope that if you see it, youll come out feeling blessed that God has given you a purpose and that you might see that as much greater than any amount of money or status.