Here we go again

The first still-extant screen adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, the MGM movie starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier as Elizabeth and Darcy, came our way in 1940, just two years after a never-recorded BBC TV version with Curigwen Lewis and Andrew Osborn.

Over the next twenty-nine years, the BBC made three more TV P&Ps--now-unavailable versions in 1952 (Daphne Slater and Peter Cushing) and 1958 (Jane Downs and Alan Badel), and an available-on-YouTube edition in 1967 (Celia Bannerman and Lewis Fiander). Then thirteen years passed before the next one, the 1980 BBC TV miniseries with Elizabeth Garvie and David Rintoul.

Fifteen years separated that version from the BBC’s next P&P, the beloved 1995 edition featuring Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth, Colin Firth as Darcy, and a white shirt (wet) in a crucial supporting role. A mere decade passed before we got yet another P&P, the swoony 2005 feature film with Keira Knightley, Matthew Macfadyen, and yet another revealing white shirt (dry).

By this metric--a new screen adaptation of Pride and Prejudice every nine and a half years, on average, between 1938 and 2005--we’re well overdue for the next one, which may explain why earlier this month Netflix unveiled plans for a six-part adaptation of Jane Austen’s most popular novel.

Netflix clearly has high hopes for this project. It has hired a buzzy young screenwriter, Dolly Alderton, a British novelist and journalist whose 2018 memoir was a National Book Award finalist. It has chosen a director, Euros Lyn, who headed up the much-loved romance series Heartstopper. It has cast prominent actors: Emma Corrin, best known for playing Princess Diana in The Crown, as Elizabeth; Jack Lowden, a star of the spy thriller Slow Horses, as Darcy; and the great Olivia Colman--an Oscar winner, no less--as Mrs. Bennet.

Netflix's press release is replete with references to the allegedly epochal nature of the project, imagined as "introducing a new generation to Austen." (Umm. . . can't the new generation just read the book?) "Once in a generation, a group of people get to retell this wonderful story," says Alderton. "I can’t wait for a new generation to fall in love with this story all over again," agrees Corrin. 

I’m always up for another Austen adaptation, but I can’t help remembering back to the last time Netflix mapped a hot director, a buzzy screenwriting team, and a starry cast onto a beloved Jane Austen novel. Yes, I’m thinking of the 2022 Dakota Johnson Persuasion—something I try not to do more often than I must.

That anachronistic mess came in the wake of a Netflix press release heralding a “modern, witty approach to a beloved story.” Perhaps that’s why this time around the press release promises “a period-faithful adaptation” that “will hew closely to the original text.”

How closely? We’ll have to wait and see: Production starts later this year, meaning the series likely won't air until 2026.

Meanwhile, with tongue planted firmly in cheek, Deadline is awaiting further developments: “Sources close to production reveal that casting is underway for the perfect flowy white button-down shirt that looks great both wet and dry.”