Get your own Free HomepageThe BBC adaptation of ``Pride and Prejudice'' turned Britain into a TV encampment on six Sunday nights this past fall, as tens of millions of viewers feasted on Jane Austen's classic novel of slow-boil romance and provincial manners in the early 19th century.
It was surely an oxygenated experience for readers familiar with Austen's cerebral style. Scriptwriter Andrew Davies faithfully kept Austen's character nuances, but the BBC delighted in opening ``Pride and Prejudice'' to the senses.
The rustle of fabric in the drawing room was now joined by the natural greenery of the English countryside, scrumptiously captured on film.
Your turn has come, and you'd make a mistake to pass it up.
Beginning Sunday, ``Pride and Prejudice'' will unwind on the A&E cable network. The six hours are bunched into three nights, with same-day repeats of each two-hour installment. The first is at 5 p.m. Sunday , repeated at 9 p.m. The Monday and Tuesday segments are at 6 and 10 p.m. each night.
Austen launched her story with one of the most famous first lines in literature: ``It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.''
That man is Fitzwilliam Darcy (Colin Firth), whose fortune seems exceeded only by his pride and sour disposition when he accompanies his friend Charles Bingley (Crispin Bonham-Carter) on a visit to Bingley's newly leased estate in the Hertfordshire countryside.
The prospective wife is Austen's heroine Elizabeth Bennet (Jennifer Ehle), the second of five daughters in the strapped Bennet family. Because Mr. Bennet (Benjamin Whitrow) has no male heir, his Longbourn estate has been entailed to a distant male relative after Mr. Bennet's death. So Elizabeth's mother (Alison Steadman), a shallow, hysterical woman given to ``tremblings and flutterings,'' is obsessed with securing favorable marriages for her daughters.
While Elizabeth's placid older sister Jane (Susannah Harker) catches Bingley's eye, the sensible and otherwise perceptive Elizabeth is blinded by her early prejudice against Darcy.
Austen, unlike many of her literary contemporaries, wasn't one for love at first sight. ``Pride and Prejudice'' is a story of obstacles, comic and otherwise, thrown in the path of Lizzy and Darcy as they gradually shed their objections to each other.
Two of those obstacles are, along with Mrs. Bennet, the broadest and most comically delicious characters in the miniseries. David Bamber is Mr. Collins, the unctuous clergyman who stands to inherit Longbourn from his cousin Mr. Bennet. His own condescending marriage proposal to Elizabeth is a hoot. Barbara Leigh-Hunt is Collins' patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, a tyrannical snob and bore. Austen probably would have approved of Ehle's portrayal of Elizabeth, under Simon Langton's direction. Lizzy's air is dismissed by one of her critics in the miniseries as ``self-sufficiency without fashion.'' But in her countless close-ups, with and without words -- Lizzy is a careful listener -- Ehle conveys the character's strength. Elizabeth's bonnet may be plain, but she has wit, bearing and dignity.
If Firth seems little more than a smoldering sourpuss, it probably reflects less on him than on Austen herself. Male characters weren't her forte. Though the TV production tries to take some of the pinch out of Darcy as he progresses in the audience's eyes from arrogant ogre to noble-minded hero, Firth frequently appears awkward in the tightly compressed role.
You'll have to make do with dozens of meaningful glances in lieu of overt passion as true love forges a serpentine path through foes and misunderstandings, but the miniseries never feels tedious.
For one thing, it almost seems you could dip a spoon into a visual production so rich and meticulously detailed that it can honestly be called enchanting.
``Pride and Prejudice'' is packed with lively country balls, verdant landscapes, grand manors and, for the ear, the exquisite refinement of Austen's dialogue.
I suspect that part of Austen's current popularity is her elaborate depiction of an orderly world that, while narrow, often venal and fraught with desperation, is still powerfully alluring to all of us caught in these crowded and more chaotic times.
``Pride and Prejudice'' struck that chord for me. It's at least an agreeable side trip, and this production of ``Pride and Prejudice'' erects no barriers to the fantasy.
For some viewers, though, there's an external barrier in the form of TV scheduling. Sunday's repeat of the first installment, at 9 p.m., is intended for West Coast viewers. That conflicts with the conclusion of ``The Politician's Wife'' on PBS' ``Masterpiece Theatre,'' another fine British program that's likely to appeal to much of the same audience.
A&E MINISERIES `Pride and Prejudice' runs on A&E Sunday at 5 and 9 p.m., Monday and Tuesday at 6 and 10 p.m.
"IT IS A truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a fortune must be in want of a wife."
It is a truth also universally acknowledged that when the British bring a Jane Austen novel to the screen it is a joy to behold.
The latest adaptation of an Austen novel, A&E / BBC-TV's "Pride and Prejudice," is very handsome indeed. The gauzy muslins of lovely period costumes and the grandeur of stately homes and their matchless gardens are a visual feast. But the real treat lies in a timeless story faithfully preserved in all its original intelligence and lively wit.
Austenmania has erupted with a cinematic vengeance in the past few months. Moviegoers have been treated to excellent productions of "Persuasion" and "Sense and Sensibility."
"Pride and Prejudice" has visited the screen before and even survived Hollywood. A lively 1940 MGM production starring Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennet and Laurence Olivier as Fitzwilliam Darcy could not dull the luminous wit or cutting class commentary of Austen's story despite contrived buffoonery and a completely convoluted but inspired comic turn by the marvelous Edna May Oliver as Lady Catherine de Bourgh. A four-hour, 1985 BBC-TV production starring Elizabeth Garvie and David Rintoul did Austen proud right down to its lace tuckers.
So why do it again?
A&E's miniseries, which unfurls its six sumptuous hours Sunday night through Tuesday, proves that there can never be too much of a good thing.
The appeal? A clever story of true love forged by antagonistic first impressions. Priceless dialogue that teasingly trips the fine line between genteel manners and dagger-sharp sarcasm. A keen satire of a society in which money speaks louder than breeding.
A&E's "Pride and Prejudice" is the most faithful rendering yet of Austen's 1813 classic and will delight both Austen novitiates and hardcore Janeites.
Any production that remains this faithful to Austen's delicious dialogue can boast pedigree enough, but this "Pride and Prejudice" ices the cake with a vigorous screenplay by Andrew Davies (who adapted the marvelously wicked "The House of Cards" - which somewhat cancels his plodding mishmash of George Eliot's "Middlemarch" ), lively direction by Simon Langton ("Mother Love," "Jeeves and Wooster" and "Smiley's People" ), and a superb cast. Carl Davis' bubbly score is the perfect chaser.
Davies' adaptation takes few liberties with Austen's text. (Minor changes in wording help viewers absorb the rapid wordplay.)
And so the screenplay plunges headlong into the story of the Bennet family of five unmarried daughters - Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty and Lydia - who face the unenviable fate of having to make good (read: monied) marriages or face penniless spinsterhood because their father's modest estate is entailed to only male heirs, of which there are none except a parson cousin. When Charles Bingley, a man of good fortune, rents a country estate in the neighborhood and brings his retinue of friends and relatives with him, including the even richer Darcy, the interaction between landed aristocracy and country gentlefolk stirs up instant romance and animosity.
Langton's direction breaks Austen's story out of the drawing room and takes it for a refreshing romp over hill and dale, punctuated by lots of clattering horses' hooves and carriage wheels. The overall result is anything but static, a too-frequent complaint of novels of this period. In a splendid ballroom scene in Part 1, Darcy and Elizabeth spar verbally with the same delicacy with which they dance.
A scene not found in the book has the excruciatingly proper Darcy doffing coat and boots and diving into the lake upon his homecoming at his Pemberley estate. It seems out of character, but it succeeds in setting up the next scene, where Elizabeth and Darcy accidentally come face to face. Dripping wet and disheveled, the starchy Darcy's discomfiture is delicious to behold.
Our first impressions of Austen's cast of characters are swift and memorable. Played by the vivacious Jennifer Ehle, Elizabeth, or Lizzy, is the perfect embodiment of the rosy-cheeked English beauty and quick-witted gentleman's daughter. Ehle, whose credits include the movie "Backbeat" and several turns with the Royal Shakespeare Company, casts a warm, youthful glow in all her scenes, especially when she does a slow burn under the barbed slights of the arrogant Darcy.
Colin Firth ( "Valmont," "Circle of Friends" ) is well cast as Darcy, who, after disparaging Elizabeth as "tolerable enough," agonizes over the realization that he has fallen in love with her. Elizabeth's prejudicial first impression shuts him out as he repeatedly tries to soften his cold, proud image. Their mutual passion explodes in a heated exchange of stinging words and agonized looks when Elizabeth rejects his "ungentlemanlike" proposal of marriage in which he congratulates himself for overcoming his repugnance to her social inferiority. The scene is classic Austen.
Central to the success of this "Pride and Prejudice" is the casting of Alison Steadman as Mrs. Bennet and Julia Sawalha as her 15-year-old daughter Lydia. Both are perfectly, insufferably brainless, and therein lies the main impediment to Darcy's love for Elizabeth and his friend Bingley's attraction to her sister Jane.
Steadman's portrayal is shrill and more than a little vulgar as the baldly opportunistic mother desperate to marry off her dowryless daughters. And Sawalha, who plays Saffron in the popular British comedy "Absolutely Fabulous," is all giggles, whines and empty-headed selfishness as the brat who disgraces her family with her elopement with the infamous seducer George Wickham. Truly, you just want to slap her.
Rounding out an impeccable cast are Susannah Harker as serene sister Jane, who with Lizzy would prefer quiet spinsterhood to a loveless marriage. Crispin Bonham-Carter bubbles boyish infatuation as Bingley, her love match.
Neither Polly Maberly, as the immature Kitty, nor Lucy Briers, as the dour, bookish Mary, get much screen time. With Benjamin Whitrow as the benevolent but imprudent Mr. Bennet, they round out the Bennet family portrait.
David Bamber strikes just the right comic note as the unctuous, slow-witted parson, Mr. Collins. His bumbling officiousness plays well off the shrewish Lady Catherine de Bourgh, played with icy fire by Barbara Leigh-Hunt. Adrian Lukis plays the dashing but deceptive Wickham with amiable restraint, which makes Lizzy's initial attraction to him easier to swallow.
A&E's "Pride and Prejudice" has a wealth of small vignettes and rich details to recommend it. Suffice to say, Jane Austen would be tickled.
from the Radio Times, 7/5/97
Pride and Prejudice changed people's lives. Even the normally conservative British male, inspired by the collective swooning over Colin Firth, was inspired to dress up in order to emulate Mr. Darcy. No matter that the tight breeches are a little outre at the end of the 20th century - that was the kind of effect the series had when it was first shown in 1995. Firth became an international sex symbol and suddenly, sideburns became complulsory. Even The Forsyte Saga never managed that.
I have seen the results of Darcymania firsthand, organising a Pride and Prejudice ball in York's Grand Assembly Rooms. People came from as far away as Scotland, London, and the West Country. Almost all the men turned up in long-tailed coasts, breeches, and buckled shoes. Sadly, few were a patch on Mr. Firth, apart from a photographer from a Sunday supplement who turned up in full Regency dress and spent most of his time smoldering darkly and forgetting to take pictures.
Even my husband could be seen surveying the room, quoting snootily, "She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me." Which was just as well as there was a vast acreage of bosom on display.
The ball proved so popular that it's being put on again this September: in time for the revival sure to be sparked by the repeats of Pride and Prejudice starting this Sunday on BBC1. Almost ten million tuned in when it was first shown - it topped the RT readers' chart for six weeks - but if you didn't catch it then it's being shown again, in three double episodes.
Of course, you may have seen it on video by now, or bought it for someone else. The twin-cassette pack sold out almost as soon as it was released and UK sales to date number almost half a million. The series has been shown in 42 countries - it's been particularly popular in Sweden - and made more than L2.5 million for BBC Worldwide.
"It has been phenomenal. I could never have imagined just how much it would take over the nation," says producer Sue Birtwistle. "Obviously I hoped that with it being the most-read book in the English language it would be popular, but I didn't think it would take over in the way that it did. I've had letters from America, New Zealand, Australia - even the absolute outback. One woman sent me a photograph of this deserted place - nothing for miles - saying, 'This is where I live, but my heart is now in the English countryside with Darcy.'"
Birtwistle, who has since gone on to make ITV's Emma, recalls, "We did a screening at the National Film Theatre last year and I thought, 'Well, if anyone does come it will be ladies of a certain age.' But dozens and dozens of young men went past looking as if they were going to a football match. I said, 'That can't be our audience' but it was.
One of the reasons for Pride's success is that it appealed across the ages. Tom Carpenter, trustee and administrator of Jane Austen's house in Chawton, Hampshire (which has seen visitor numbers double), says: "We see children walking around the house mimicking the Bennet sisters. It's been responsible for a younger-than-usual audience, who have discovered that Jane Austen is very funny. And the other group who were never interested before is their husbands.
"With Jane Austen you get in one package a safe family story told with comedy, romance, irony, and drama. There's no bad language, no sex, but there is action and no one loses their life unnecessarily."
Most people would agree with that, although the "no sex" part became controversial when writer Andrew Davies, who adapted the screenplay, rashly mentioned the words "sex and money" in an interview, prompting "Sex romp Jane Austen" headlines and whipping the Janeites into a lather. "Tell me," demanded a scandalised lady of a rather uncertain age when I attended a meeting of members of the Jane Austen Society, "is it true that Andrew Davies is going to show Darcy in the buff ?"
He didn't, of course - well, not entirely; you do see him in the bath, but it's impossible to tell whether make-up did a good job of Firth's chest hair, which was reputedly tinted for the shot, let along anything else. (I made a point of checking carefully.) A party of Janeites who were invited to the preview were also monitoring very closely what they described as the "erection scene" - they had heard Davies's script instructions had described Darcy as being particularly pleased to see Elizabeth when she turns up at Netherfield all flushed and muddy from her hike over the fields.
"I am notorious for this, but I think it's one of the nice things in life to write about," admits Davies. He doesn't think Darcy - or indeed Knightley, the hero in Emma - would have been a virgin; indeed, had Davies had his wicked way he would have put a bedroom scene in ITV's Emma, which he also adapted for Birtwistle. She smartly vetoed it, however, with the result that in both productions the sex is implied rather than explicit.
"No doubt we made a mistake when we described the novel as sexy," admits Birtwistle in The Making of Pride and Prejudice. "What we meant, of course, was that Darcy staring across the room at Elizabeth is exciting and Darcy and Elizabeth touching hands the first time they dance is erotic."
Whatever titillating storeis preceeded Pride and Prejudice, it was Austen's story that captivated audiences. Davies, who also adapted the BBC's Middlemarch, Moll Flanders for ITV and is currently working on Thackeray's Vanity Fair, says that the success of period dramas such as Pride and Prejudice owes a debt to the qualities of 19th-century and earlier fiction. "The writers - the great ones and even the good ones - seemed to recognise their obligation to the public to creat an exciting story."
But has it gone too far ? Since Pride and Prejudice, it seems that anything "period" is fair game, but they haven't all adapted well to TV. Rhodes was poorly received (although it sold well abroad), while Nostromono (starring Firth again) and Ivanhoe did not live up to expectations either. There is even a suggestion that a backlash has stated: Jimmy McGovern's new serial, The Lakes, due to be shown in September, is being marketed on the basis that it is not a costume drama: "The aim is to cast aside politely repressed passions of the Austen era in favour of more explicit contemporary expressions of love and lust," says Charles Pattinson, producer. McGovern versus Austen ? As clashes go, it should be a cracker.
The Jane Austen band wagon barrels along. Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion are in movie theaters. Versions of Emma, which was given a contemporary spin in Clueless are in the making (and an audiotape edition, produced for BBC Radio, can be found in bookshops). And tomorrow, after setting ratings records in England, the best Austen of all, Pride and Prejudice, begins a three-night, six-hour run on A&E.
This splendid adaptation, with a remarkably faithful and sensitively nuanced script by Andrew Davies, is a co-production of the BBC and A&E. One word of warning: this is not, as might be expected, a presentation of public television's "Masterpiece Theater." There will be commerical breaks.
Opening with what Austen considered a universally acknowledged truth, "that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife," Pride and Prejudice is a witty mix of love stories and social conniving, cleverly wrapped in the ambitions and illusions of a provincial gentry. The surface forth is deceptive. W.H. Auden claimed he was made most uncomfortable by seeing an English spinster of the middle class "reveal so frankly and with such sobriety the economic basis of society." Love was one thing; financial security through marriage was another, and perhaps even more important.
And so we find Elizabeth Bennet (Jennifer Ehle), the practical and decidely virtuous narrator of this tale, casting a keenly sharp eye on anyone venturing into her vicinity. She realizes that Mrs. Bennet (Alison Steadman) is one of the silliest and most exasperating mothers in England, and that Mr. Bennet (Benjamin Whitrow) verges on being irresponsible with his protective cyncism. Of her four sisters, Elizabeth, or Lizzy, confides only in sweet-natured Jane (Susannah Harker). The others are empty-headed twits, especially Lydia (Julia Sawalha) who will drag the family into scandal.
But for all her special insight, Lizzy is not beyond being duped herself, at least in first impressions. She is only too willing to sympathize with the rotter Wickham (Adrian Lukis) when he bad-mouths Mr. Darcy (Colin Firth), whose seeming arrogance greatly irritates Lizzy. But will the dashing Mr. Darcy, who does a lot of riding around on a white horse, turn out to be the true love of Lizzy's life, especially since he has a substantial annual income and a grand home that looks like something out of a fairy tale. The ending is never in doubt, but Austen is positively ingenious in getting us there.
Scattered portions of this hadnsome production might seems a bit slow for American viewers (British imports are often snipped and speeded up for consumption here). There are perhaps too many languorous walks across meadows, and one of two ornately choreographed dances seem to go on forever. But like the novel, the production overflows with memorable set pieces.
There is, for instance, Mr. Collins (David Bamber), the fawning vicar whose marriage proposal is quickly rejected by a horrified Lizzy. Mr. Collins' scenes with his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, are hilarious as he obsequiously sings the praises of her condenscension. And Barbara Leigh-Hunt turns Lady Catherine into a marvelously imperious witch.
But the story never ventures far from Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. Miss Ehle, the daughter of the fine actress Rosemary Harris, manages to make Lizzy strikingly intelligent and authoritative without being overbearing. And Mr. Firth brilliantly captures Mr. Darcy's snobbish pride while conveying largely through intense stares, that he is falling in love despite himself. There is an element of wishful fantasy in Pride and Prejudice. Austen died in 1817 at age 41. She never married.
Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle have moved on in the three years since they filmed Pride and Prejudice. But will they ever shake off the roles of Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet ?
There can be few sex symbols in the world called Colin - not that Colin Firth would ever describe himself so extravagantly. But as Mr. Darcy in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice he was lusted after by millions of otherwise sensible women. All it took was for him to smoulder on a staircase, or rise, dripping and fully clothed, from an impromptu dip in a lake, and women across the nation - and later the world - melted like toasted brie.
How fervently these same women wished in unison that they were Jennifer Ehle, the object of Firth's affection both on and off the screen. How they longed to be cantilevered into one of Elizabeth Bennet's fabulously uplifting bras, so their newly voluminous bosoms could heave in his general direction.
Ah, how long ago it all seems now. Well, it was a long time ago. And the actors have moved on, both personally and professionally. Ehle is now so well know that she enjoys the luxury of ignoring requests to do interviews about the role that made her famous. Firth is now so well known that his private life has become public property. Both have done other things seens those heady days of P&P, as it became known.
Firth starred as an obsessed Arsenal fan in the feature film Fever Pitch, and had a small role in the Oscar-lauded The English Patient. He also had a big role, unrecognisable in a beard, in the turgid BBC2 drama Nostromo. Ehle has done lots of theatre work and played the title role in Alan Bleasdale's baffling Channel 4 marathon, Melissa. She has two feature films coming up, Paradise Road, about a women's choir in a Japanese concentration camp, and Wilde, in which she plays Oscar's wife opposite Stephen Fry.
But, whether they like it or not, nothing either of them has done since has had the impact of Pride and Prejudice. The amiable Firth feels detatched from the fuss of Darcymania, mainly because he was in Columbia and Tunisia filiming Nostromo and The English Patient when the dam broke.
"I was away all the time. I thought my mum was having me on. She would ring me up every so often and say, 'This is popular. People like it.' Then she'd ring me again and say, 'Actually, they're going a bit mad about it.' Then, 'This seems to be getting out of control.' My initial reaction was, 'Yeah, right, Mum.'
As it turned out, Mrs. Firth was being a little understated with her lad Colin. More than ten million viewers tuned in every week, and the BBC video leapt off the shelves, its initial run an instant sell-out. Firth became RT's first pin-up and our offices were inundated with requests from women who had been unable to buy a copy. One distraught lady explained she was in her supposedly sensible forties, but claimed she had never felt about any man the way she felt about Mr. Darcy.
And there's the rub. It was Mr. Darcy they were swooning over, not necessarily Colin Firth, who is the first to admit this with characteristic good humour. His millions of smitten admirers did not, after all, feel quite the same way about him as he cavorted in a pair of Arsenal boxer shorts in Fever Pitch.
"Being Mr. Darcy was nice, but it's over - it was three years ago, and I'm not doing him anymore. I'm not Mr. Darcy, though I sometimes wish I were. Certain tabloid newspapers have suggested that I'm sick of the image and loathed all the publicity. Nonsense, I never said that. The great thing about Darcymania was that it had no down side; it was great even though it all seemed so unreal, as if it were happnening to someone else.
"But it wasn't really me that everyone went crazy about - it was the character, who'd been around for a couple of centuries and who I played a few years ago, before I went on to do a load of other things. And that's just a simple fact of life."
Darcymania brought unwelcom intrusion into Firth's personal life. (He has a young son by the American actress Meg Tilly, his co-star in Valmont.) "There were lots of fictional accounts of my personal life in the tabloids, really quite flamboyantly untrue things. At one point they invented a crush I was supposed to have on an actress. They ran a huge picture of her. I don't even know her, yet I was supposed to have suffered for years. You can only laugh."
Firth and Ehle had a well publicised off-screen liaison while they were making Pride and Prejudice, but this did not last. In fact, Firth recently married his Italian girlfriend Livia Guiggioli, while Ehle's pirvate life remains a mystery, although she told a magazine last year that she had all but renounced thespian boyfriends. Before Firth there was Toby Stephens, her co-star in Channel 4's adaptation of Mary Wesley's The Camomile Lawn. "It's so hard to have a relationship in this business," she is reported as saying. "I don't want to do it again unless it's unavoidable. It's just not worth it." (Incidentally, Ehle is, according to her agent, doing little publicity at the moment. This apparently includes talking to RT.)
And, of course, both Ehle and Firth look quite unlike their former characters. Firth would be the first to admit that he doesn't turn heads when he walks into the pub. And even at the height of Darcymania, he was rarely stopped on the street.
You have to wonder whether some of those darkly brooding Darcy looks owed more to the teeniest touch of lower-lash mascara than to the erotic signals of the repressed sex-bomb underneath. And Ehle lost the girly curls of Elizabeth Bennet to look sleekly sophisticated in Melissa. That woman knows how to wear a pair of shades. Like it or not, Firth and Ehle have moved on. Pride and Prejudice was another country.
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