Source : PERTHNOW NEWS
If you were a Jane Austen fan in 1995, that was really your year.
That was the year the BBC forever stamped the image of a lake-drenched Colin Firth, his transparent undershirt lightly clinging to his body in the hugely beloved miniseries adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
It was also the year of Emma Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility, beautifully directed by Ang Lee, which won Thompson an Oscar for her screenplay. Then there was Ciaran Hinds and Amanda Root’s version of Persuasion. To top it off, Clueless stormed onto the scene, a snappy and clever modern update of Emma.
What a year of riches that was.
Ten years later, Joe Wright cast Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen as his Lizzie and Darcy, and that version of Austen’s classic served as the defining adaptation for younger generations, especially those who lack the patience to sit through the BBC’s five hours.
Every brood will get its own version of Pride And Prejudice, and that’s certainly the belief of British writer Dolly Alderton, who is adapting Austen for this year’s Netflix miniseries.
She even told the streamer’s marketing website, Tudum, “Once in a generation, a group of people get to retell this wonderful story and I feel very lucky that I get to be a part of it.”
The release is still a while off — not until the (southern hemisphere) spring, apparently — but Netflix has released the first teaser trailer for it, complete with dashing Darcy riding onto the screen (and into our hearts) on a horse.
The 30-second clip mostly features Lizzie sat on a roof with the sound of birdsong disrupted by the distinct patter of hooves coming over the top.
It’s interlaced with quick shots of things that will make any Anglophile or literary lover’s heart aflutter — a letter with beautiful handwriting in ink, a finger on the spine of a leather-bound book, a hand grazing wildflowers, the capped shoulder of an empire-waist dress and, perhaps the most tickling thing of all, eye contact between Lizzie and Darcy.
It may have been a short tease, but this Pride & Prejudice has just declared it’s going to be leaning into all those tropes that have characterised Austen adaptations for decades.
Emma Corrin (The Crown, Lady Chatterley’s Lover) will play Lizzie with Jack Lowden as Darcy. Earlier, Lowden had joked that he looked forward to “breaking down barriers” by playing a ginger Mr. Darcy, but at least from the short glimpses in this trailer, it looks like they have darkened his natural colour to a soft brown.
The rest of the cast includes Olivia Colman and Rufus Sewell as Mrs and Mr Bennet, Daryl McCormack as Mr Bingley, Louis Partridge as Mr Wickham, Jamie Demetriou as Mr Collins, and Fiona Shaw as Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
The other four Bennet sisters will be played by Freya Mavor, Rhea Norwood, Hopey Parish and Hollie Avery.
Alderton is an interesting choice to adapt Austen’s novel because she is a well-established writer and podcaster with a huge fanbase of women in the UK and Australia. She’s the author of books including Everything I Know About Love And Ghosts, has written agony aunt and dating columns for The Sunday Times, and co-hosted the podcast The High Low.
But she does speak more to Gen Y-ers than Gen Z-ers, which will probably be a relief to Austen devotees who wouldn’t want Pride & Prejudice to be an extended TikTok video or created for virality, which you could argue Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights might have been even though, yes, Fennell is also Gen Y.
The announcement of this new version of Pride & Prejudice was timed to the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, which passed in December last year, although it won’t be released for another at least six months.
But that anniversary has triggered a wave of new adaptations, which included a condensed audiobook version of Pride & Prejudice that, rather than narrated, was performed like a radio play. That too had a noteworthy cast led by Marisa Abela as Lizzie and Harris Dickinson as Darcy, with an ensemble that included Jessie Buckley, Will Poulter, Glenn Close, Bill Nighy and Marianne Jean-Baptiste.
Next month will be the premiere of a BBC series called The Other Bennet Sister, which reframes overlooked middle sister Mary as the protagonist. The 10-part show, adapted from the book by Janice Hadlow, will follow Mary to London and the Lake District. It stars Call the Midwife’s Ella Bruccoleri as well as Richard E. Grant, Indira Varma, Richard Coyle and Ruth Jones.
There’s also a new version of Sense and Sensibility coming, which will hit the big screens in September, around the same time as Netflix’s Pride and Prejudice. This time, it’s Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People, Twisters) who will pull on Elinor Dashwood’s bonnet with George MacKay (1917) in Edward’s breeches.
Young Australian author Diana Reid (Love & Virtue, Seeing Other People) wrote the script for that one with Georgia Oakley directing.
There is a cycle of Austen projects that spike every 10 or 20 years, for each new generation as well as long-time fans to discover, and we are overdue for a new wave. The Keira Knightley Pride & Prejudice hit 20 years old last year, and in the time since, there have been few faithful Austen adaptations.
There have been films that draw from Austen, including Bridget Jones Diary and Fire Island, or ones that are adjacent to the works, such as Becoming Jane or Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.
There was a 2020 version of Emma with Anya Taylor-Joy and a dreadful iteration of Persuasion with Dakota Johnson, but otherwise, there has been pent-up demand.
More significantly, since 2020, regency romances are very much back thanks to the success of Bridgerton, which owes a great deal of debt to Austen.
The endurance of Austen’s books has meant that women’s experiences, especially those of love, courtship and marriage, remain relevant in literature, despite centuries of undermining their significance and economic power by male-dominated cultural establishments.
With Bridgerton cementing itself as a phenomenon, it’s only correct that Austen’s stories are restored to the screen as the foundational regency romances with biting social insight into the era.
While the Bronte sisters and Austen didn’t cross over – the Brontes wrote during the Victorian era decades later – their works are in for a screen resurgence too.
Fennell’s Wuthering Heights captured social media in the weeks up and following its release, and today, it was revealed Aimee Lou Wood (The White Lotus, Sex Education) has been cast in a series based on Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.
The details are scant so far, but it is expected to follow the character’s story from her childhood to her gothic romance with Edward Rochester.
The most recent major adaptation of Jane Eyre was the 2011 film version by American director Cary Fukunaga, which starred Australian actor Mia Wasikowska opposite Michael Fassbender as Rochester.
The Brontes were not as individually prolific as Austen (they wrote seven novels between them to Austen’s six), with Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall their best known works.
They’re also darker than Austen’s works, but depending on the ultimate commercial success of Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, don’t be surprised if that unleashes an appetite for costume romances that have a different shade.
We’ll have to wait until the end of 2026 to see if it will be as generous as 1995 was to Austen fans, but at least it looks promising.
