Book review: Bleak Expectations

One of my favourite Radio 4 comedies is Mark Evans' Bleak Expectations, a spoof of Victorian novels, particularly Dickens', that see their heroes go through endless hardships, surrounded by grotesquely evil characters. So what with needing a bit of cheering up after The Casual Vacancy, Evans' novelisation of the first series was the way forward. Sir Philip Bin, inventor of the bin, looks back on his happy childhood, cut short when his father disappears, his mother goes mad and his new evil guardian Gently Benevolent sends him to St Bastard's, a boarding school with a 100% pupil death rate.

I wouldn't call this a must-read for fans of the radio show, especially if they've listened to it more than once, because not just the story but also the jokes are pretty much exactly the same as in Series 1, and the narrator's voice in my head kept alternating between Richard Johnson and Tom Allen as Pip Bin. The main addition, replacing the radio series' framing device, is a series of footnotes from Evans providing a modern-day explanation of the novel's Victorian "facts." Even if I did know all the best lines in advance I still enjoyed the ludicrous story again as Pip and his best friend Harry Biscuit go round accidentally (ish) killing every member of the Hardthrasher family. I'd recommend this to people with a silly sense of humour who aren't necessarily familiar with the original radio series - this might inspire them to seek it out.