4.0
Bleak Expectations
ByPublisher Description
MARK EVANS has written four series of Bleak Expectations for Radio 4. He is an experienced comedy and entertainment writer for TV and radio; credits include That Mitchell and Webb Look, The Late Edition, Popetown and Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesBleak Expectations Reviews
4.0
“A genuinely hilarious play.
I actually laughed out loud couple of times.
It was too on the nose, but that felt appropriate (and probably necessary) for a satirical parody of the 1800s.”
“Philip “Pip” Bin, son of a successful businessman working in the North Indies, lives happily with sisters Pippa and Poppy and their mother Agnes. Then, one woeful day, tragedy strikes the family, and the Bin siblings find themselves under the guardianship of the deceptively named fiend, Mr. Gently Benevolent. Thus begins a series of outlandish escapades in which Pip, his family and his friends have to foil Mr. Benevolent’s wicked plans to destroy them - going from riches to rags to riches and so on along the way.
I have learned that “Bleak Expectations” began as a radio comedy broadcast by the BBC, and the novel summarises the first series. You can somewhat tell: the book feels very episodic, but in fairness, that only serves to heighten the Dickensian feel of it, which, given that this a hilarious spoof of the renowned author’s canon and the Victorian melodrama, massively works in its favour. Character names are either brilliantly ironic – see the villain – or deliberately straightforward, such as Lady Flora [surname redacted to avoid spoilers]. Both the evil schemes and heroic counter-schemes have a funny cartoony feel, there are metafictional and anachronistic pop culture references a plenty, and there are some truly brilliant metaphors and wordplay – e.g. as slow as “treacle handcuffed to a rock”.
As a Victoriana, Steampunk and British comedy enthusiast, I loved every moment – in places, it literally had me doubling over suppressing my laughter on the train during my morning commute. I am now determined to get my mitts on the radio series and see how the story continues!”
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