OK, I'm not saying the Masterpiece "Great Expectations" is necessarily worth watching, but if you enjoy the sight of a pillowy-lipped young man being taught to dance by another young man, you might might watch the beginning of the second hour. IJS.

And if the pillowy-lipped young man has INCREDIBLE bone structure and the young man teaching him was in a Dr.Who 2-parter that you quite enjoyed? Even better.

t /cleared some backed-up Masterpiece from my DVR this weekend.

Also playing Miss Havisham: Helena Bonham Carter. Maybe between the two performances, the common impression of the character will shift from the very elderly old-movie versions back toward Dickens's 50-ish?

Wait, Gillian Anderson is old enough to play Miss Havisham?

I saw her talk about this on Graham Norton, and she made it very logical that Miss Havisham doesn't have to be THAT old. (Disclaimer, still haven't read the source material). But, depending on how old she was when she was engaged and how long after she was...disappointed she decided to adopt Estella, she could be late thirties/early forties at the start of the story pretty easily, I think.

OK in terms working Moms thing - I just feel like I was misread. Stephanie Cutter one of Arom's defenders said something along the lines of "no one works harder than a stay at home Mom" which is insulting to woman who work outside the home AND take care of kids, and is part of housewife romanticization, something that has zero to do with proper respect for stay-at-home mothers or housework. Amanda Marcotte has more on this.

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the young man teaching him was in a Dr.Who 2-parter that you quite enjoyed?

Said young man was also Viserys in Game of Thrones. He's much more likable in Great Expectations.

I see your point amych, but I don't think of Anderson as 50ish. I think of her as around 40, and imdb has her in her early 40s.

Huh, I always assumed she was older than me. It's that aura of FBI authority, I suppose.

"no one works harder than a stay at home Mom" which is insulting to woman who work outside the home AND take care of kids

I don't understand what the point is in even trying to compare SAHMs and mothers who work outside the home. Trying to compare who works "harder" only creates a division that, I have no doubt, politicians will exploit.

I think BOTH groups work their asses off. That's as much of a judgment as I'm willing to make.

I think many people work their asses off. However, a women with a couple of Cadillacs and an indeterminate number of horses doesn't have to.

I think of her as around 40

Yeah, I getcha (although I think of GA as, I dunno, 28. Cursed X-files, burning yourselves into my visual memory!!)

I definitely have a mental Hollywood-Havisham who's about 80, which doesn't come from the text at all.