I firmly believe that, like Little Women and Wuthering Heights, every generation gets the Pride & Prejudice they deserve. For those who came of age in the mid ’90s, that was the glorious BBC adaptation starring a note-perfect Jennifer Ehle and a wet-white-shirt-wearing Colin Firth. For those, like me, who grew up in the noughties, it was Joe Wright’s ravishing, Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen-led effort. (This is still, in my humble opinion, the best take on this literary classic.) And now, Gen Z are about to have their own: a new six-part limited series reimagining of Jane Austen’s scintillating romp is coming to Netflix, and the cast is to die for.
On 10 April, it was announced by the streamer that Golden Globe-winning period drama regular Emma Corrin (The Crown, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Nosferatu) would be taking the hotly-contested part of Elizabeth Bennet, while Jack Lowden, Saoirse Ronan’s husband and star of War & Peace, Mary Queen of Scots, Benediction and Slow Horses, would be the inscrutable Mr Darcy. And as for the role of the wonderfully silly (and increasingly desperate) Mrs Bennet? None other than Oscar winner Olivia Colman, Corrin’s fellow Crown alumni, will slip into her frilly bonnet.
To top it all off, behind the camera will be another British Vogue favourite: Dolly Alderton, the author of Everything I Know About Love, Ghosts and Good Material, who adapted that former memoir into the fictionalised BBC show of the same name, and will be penning this retelling and executive producing, too. “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,” she said in a statement, released via Netflix. “Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice is the blueprint for romantic comedy – it has been a joy to delve back into its pages to find both familiar and fresh ways of bringing this beloved book to life.”
But exactly how fresh will this adaptation be? Well, if you’re still up in arms about Margot Robbie’s period-inaccurate wedding dress from Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming Wuthering Heights, take comfort in the fact that this Pride & Prejudice has been described as “a faithful, classic adaptation of the novel” which will “hew closely to the original text” – quite different, then, from Netflix’s last foray into the Austenian universe with Carrie Cracknell’s Persuasion, starring Henry Golding, Cosmo Jarvis and a Fleabag-esque Dakota Johnson.
Taking the helm as director this time will be Heartstopper’s Euros Lyn, with production due to kick off in the UK later this year. Which begs the question: who will play the luminous Jane Bennet? The flighty Lydia? The giggly Kitty? The sombre Mary? The wisecracking Mr Bennet? The humourless Mr Collins? The terrifying Lady Catherine de Bourgh, so memorably embodied by Dame Judi Dench? The dastardly Mr Wickham? The glamorous Caroline Bingley and her kindly brother, Charles? Let the fan casting commence.
