Tom Hardy’s 'Great Expectations' is richer than its Rotten Tomatoes score

In 2023, FX and the BBC brought writer Steven Knight and executive producer Tom Hardy together for a six‑part adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Critics met the modernized take with a 42% Rotten Tomatoes score. Knight’s trademark brooding aesthetic sometimes hampers the series, yet that same grim brutality pushes Dickens’ themes into sharper relief.

The plot follows Pip Gargery (Fionn Whitehead), a blacksmith's apprentice who longs for more than his modest life, and his encounters with Miss Havisham (Olivia Colman) and her adopted daughter Estella (Shalom Brune‑Franklin). Determined to become a gentleman and win Estella, Pip is drawn into Kent’s fogged marshes and London’s corrupt streets under the tutelage of the lawyer Mr.

Jaggers (Ashley Thomas), turning his coming‑of‑age story into a brutal fight for his soul. The production doubles down on the novel’s darkest elements, replacing much of Dickens’ satirical reprieve with a Gothic atmosphere: frigid locations, decaying costumes and an unrelenting sense of moral rot.

United Kingdom, Kent, London

tom hardy, great expectations, steven knight, rotten tomatoes, fionn whitehead, olivia colman, shalom brune-franklin, estella, kent marshes, gothic atmosphere