Masterpiece Classic: Great Expectations [Blu-ray]

Nothing is quite as it seems in this lush retelling of Dickens’ classic coming-of-age story with colorful characters – conspirators, rogues, rakes, and wretches – and stunning performances by Gillian Anderson, David Suchet, Ray Winstone, Douglas Booth, and Vanessa Kirby. Young orphan Pip wants no more from life than to one day join his brother-in-law Joe at the blacksmith’s forge. Until, that is, fate intervenes – twice. First, an escaped convict (Winstone) ambushes Pip in the marshes; and not long after, a wealthy, reclusive neighbor at the macabre Satis House – Miss Havisham (Andersen) – seeks Pip out as a playmate for her adopted daughter, Estella. Pip falls almost instantly in love with Estella, and realizes that he needs to be more than a simple blacksmith’s apprentice if he ever hopes to win her. But Miss Havisham – a bride-to-be who was jilted at the altar years ago and still wears her wedding dress amidst the fossilized ruins of her wedding feast – has gone to great lengths to ensure that Estella will never so much as risk heartbreak, raising her more as a tool for vengeance than a child. But when Pip is mysteriously plucked from obscurity and lured to London by an anonymous benefactor hoping to make a gentleman out of him, he suddenly has unlimited wealth at his disposal – and true love in his future. Or so he thinks.

Features

• Factory sealed DVD