Ray McAnally

Episode Two begins as young Pip?s future ? despite his desire for an education and change in his status ? is being drawn up: he will become Joe?s apprentice at the forgery. As Pip (Ioan Gruffudd) grows from a boy to a young man, there seems little hope that his dreams will ever be fulfilled until he is visited one day by a lawyer, Jaggers (Ian McDiarmid). Jaggers informs Pip that he has an anonymous benefactor: Pip may accept the chance offered to him to travel to London and live and be educated as a gentleman, but it is a condition of acceptance that the benefactor?s identity remain concealed. Pip mistakenly assumes that Miss Havisham is responsible for this change in his fortune. He still believes that he is in love with Estella (Justine Waddell), and now considers that he has a real chance of marrying her one day.

Young Pip (Gabriel Thomson) lives with his tyrranical sister (Lesley Sharp) and her blacksmith husband, Joe. Joe will always care for Pip, but his wife's exacting criticism and harsh tongue forge an extra bond between the kindly blacksmith and the young boy. A nightmarish encounter with an escaped convict, Magwitch, (Bernard Hill) is a monumental event in Pip's childhood, as is his enforced visit to the stately Satis House.There he meets rich, eccentric Miss Havisham (Charlotte Rampling) who lives alone with her adopted daughter, Estella (Gemma Gregory). Pip is lured and repelled by the young Estella, who seems to him proud and rude, but is, unarguably, exceptionally beautiful. Estella mocks Pip for his humble status so that he longs even more to be rich and educated - as she is. Episode One draws to a close as a confused and unhappy Pip is informed by Miss Havisham that his company at Satis House will no longer be required, as Estella is soon to go to school. Challenged to a fight by a spirited but unidentified young man in the grounds of the house, Pip and returns home more dismayed than ever.