On the Box: ‘Pride and Prejudice' at 30 – does the BBC's beloved 1995 series still sparkle?

Irish Independent

2 days ago

The two most famous big-screen versions are the 1940 film with Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennet and Laurence Olivier as Fitzwilliam Darcy, and the 2005 one with Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen.
But when it comes to bringing Austen's most popular novel to television, the BBC just can't keep its hands off it. It was first adapted in 1938, and again in 1949, 1952 and 1958. These four versions are considered lost productions. The BBC had another shot at it in 1967, and yet another in 1980.
But the best-remembered, most critically acclaimed and most enduringly popular BBC adaptation of all is the six-part 1995 one with Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth and Colin Firth as Darcy.
To mark the series' 30th anniversary, and the 250th anniversary of Austen's birth, BBC4 is reshowing it this week with three episodes on Wednesday, June 4, at 10.15pm and the remaining three at 11.15pm the following night.
STUFFY
Up to that point, British TV's period literary dramas tended to be staid, stuffy, stagey productions, heavy on reverence for the source material and light on visual flair or innovation.
They were shot mainly on videotape in a studio, with a clunky transition to film inserts for the outdoor scenes. Pride and Prejudice changed all that – and indeed changed the way period dramas were made from then on.
Producer Sue Birtwistle insisted the series be shot on 16mm film – an expensive undertaking that pushed the budget, shouldered between the BBC and America's A&E Network, up to a million pounds an episode.
Screenwriter Andrew Davies, who shared Birtwistle's love of the novel, wanted this version to be a more modern interpretation and to have something the previous ones lacked: a real sense of the attraction/tension between the smart, free-spirited Elizabeth and the seemingly haughty, emotionally reserved Darcy.
In other words, he wanted to make it sexy as well as romantic. He certainly succeeded in his aim.
A famous scene in episode 5, when Elizabeth comes upon Darcy as he emerges from a swim in a lake, his soaking wet shirt clinging to his torso, became Pride and Prejudice's most iconic moment, despite being an addition by Davies that had no equivalent in the novel.
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To say the series was a success is a chronic understatement. It was a cultural phenomenon. Between 10 and 11 million viewers in the UK watched it on Sunday nights, with a further 3.7 million tuning in in the US, where it was shown on A&E in double-episodes over three consecutive nights.
Even before the final episode had aired, the double-cassette video of the series had sold 100,000 copies, unprecedented at the time.
There were hundreds of articles about it and a shower of awards nominations on both sides of the Atlantic, including a best actress Bafta win for Ehle. The American-born actress chose not to capitalise on her newfound fame and instead returned to the theatre with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Firth, who was nominated for a Bafta, but lost to Robbie Coltrane in Cracker, became an international star almost overnight, as well as a reluctant sex symbol (due to that wet shirt).
Thirty years on, how does Pride and Prejudice measure up against today's TV dramas? The answer is extremely favourably. It's briskly paced and the satire of money and class distinction has a nice, sharp edge to it. The chemistry between Ehle and Firth still jumps off the screen (the pair were a real-life couple for a year) and is the main reason it remains so watchable.
Not everything stands up to 21st-century scrutiny, though. Alison Steadman, as Elizabeth's status-obsessed mother, is so gratingly far over the top, she appears to have wandered in from a film called Carry on Jane Austen.
As the bitchy, snobby Caroline Bingley, Anna Chancellor goes full-on panto villain, alternating between sneering and wearing the sour expression of someone who's accidentally taken a bite out of a lemon.
The series should probably be TV's last word on the novel. It isn't, of course. Netflix is making a new version with Emma Corrin and Jack Lowden.