Bleak Expectations

Bleak Expectations is a Radio 4 comedy series, first broadcast at 11.30am on Wednesdays from 15 August 2007, with the first series repeated on Radio 4 from 9 January 2008. It is a pastiche of the works of Charles Dickens, like Bleak House and Great Expectations from which it derives its name, and costume dramas set in the same period, and parodies several of their plot devices (such as cruel guardians, idyllic childhoods interrupted, lifelong friendships, earnest young people). It is written by Mark Evans, who also plays any extra minor characters in most episodes (or is credited as “several Trappist monks” if there are no such characters). Its opening and closing theme is the main theme from the Mazurka from Three Characteristic Pieces by Edward Elgar.

The plot of the first series revolves around Philip “Pip” Bin and his two sisters, Poppy and Pippa, whose seemingly ideal life is disrupted by the death of their father and the madness of their mother. They are then locked away by their guardian, Mr. Gently Benevolent (the name is a spoof on Dickens’ habit of often naming characters after their most obvious traits – Gently Benevolent is actually the enduring villain of the piece), in St. Bastard’s, the most vicious boarding school in England, and St. Bitch’s, a nearby convent. Pip and his sisters attempt to free themselves of their guardian with the help of Harry Biscuit, whose father invented the biscuit. It is narrated by Pip as an old man.