FX Teams Up With The BBC For 'Great Expectations'

As those who read our roundups every month will have noted, most streaming services are investing in the British imports and co-productions game as part of filling out their coffers. But there's one glaring exception: The Walt Disney Company. Though the monolithic entertainment company has a far reach, there's little on Disney+ for anglophiles other than the occasional Royal Shakespeare company member playing superhero. Hulu is a different matter, but the Hulu Originals division's shows like Harlots predate the still underway Disney takeover. Its ongoing work with BBC Three is also a vestigial leftover from pre-merger times.

That makes FX's baby steps into the co-production game all the more interesting. The brand was a Hulu vertical for a little bit, but that ended quickly, and now it is an overarching brand under the Disney umbrella, like Lucasfilm or Marvel, whose shows will stream across all platforms and air on linear. More importantly, as part of its careful expansion, it's bringing quite a few shows in the next year or two to Hulu that will be of interest to anglophiles, much like 2020's Black Narcissus. The biggest is a new adaptation of the famous Charles Dickens novel, Great Expectations, which recently set its cast and began filming in the U.K.

The project comes from Steven Knight, best known for Peaky Blinders. This isn't his first Dickens adaptation either; he recently was behind a new version of A Christmas Carol starring Tom Hardy that was aired over here on FX's linear channel. (Hardy was also an executive producer, along with Ridley Scott.) The adaptation was somewhat controversial, with implications of child molestation, forced prostitution, and a depiction of a child drowning, among other choices. It's not clear if the plan is to do the same for Great Expectations, but with Hardy and Scott both on board to executive produce again along with Knight, it seems likely this won't be your mother's version of the story.