Filming gets underway this week in London on a new adaptation of Great Expectations, the second Dickens classic to be adapted by Steven Knight and Tom Hardy.

The 6 x 60 BBC One drama is from Hardy Son & Baker, FX Productions, Scott Free and the BBC, and is exec produced by Knight, Hardy, Ridley Scott, Dean Baker, David W. Zucker, Kate Crowe and Mona Qureshi for the BBC – the team behind the previous adaptation of A Christmas Carol – with Marina Brackenbury as co-executive producer.

Great Expectations is the coming-of-age story of an orphan nicknamed Pip. Dickens first released it in a series of weekly chapters, beginning in December 1860, before it was published as a novel.

Knight said: “Adapting Dickens” work is a delight. I chose Great Expectations as the next work to bring to the screen not just because of the timeless characters, but also because of the very timely story.

“A story of class mobility and class intransigence, told through an intensely emotional and personal first-person narrative. As the son of a blacksmith myself, Pip”s journey from the forge into society is a very special one to me.”

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