S&M Scene in ‘Great Expectations’ Defended by BBC Content Chief, Writer Steven Knight Was ‘Reading Between the Lines’ of Dickens’ Novel
variety.comLeo Barraclough International Features Editor Charlotte Moore, chief content officer at the BBC, has defended the decision of screenwriter Steven Knight, best known for “Peaky Blinders,” to spice up Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations” in his television adaptation, now airing on the broadcaster.
Referring to an S&M scene in the show, in which a naked Mr. Pumblechook (played by Matt Berry) is seen being whipped by housewife-turned-dominatrix Mrs.
Gargery (played by Hayley Squires), Moore said that Knight “believes absolutely everything [in the show] comes from what was alluded to” by Dickens in the novel.
Moore, speaking Thursday to the Broadcasting Press Guild in London, added that “you have to really understanding what [Dickens] would have felt able to write about [in the Victorian era] and read between the lines.” Another of Knight’s embellishments in the show is that Miss Havisham, played by Olivia Colman, is portrayed as a sadistic opium addict.
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