Second springs

The inexhaustible well of creative inspiration that is Pride and Prejudice looks to be bubbling over once again. Whether you prefer to consume your P&P via video or audio, faithful adaptation or slantwise interpretation, the past couple of months have brought news for you:

--Months ago, we learned who would star in Netflix’s new six-part adaptation of the novel: Emma Corrin as Elizabeth, Jack Lowden as Darcy, and Olivia Colman as Mrs. Bennet. But a few weeks ago, the streamer announced the full cast of this latest version, which is currently in production but has no announced air date.

The cast features the usual combination of famous names and up-and-comers, and the choices continue Netflix’ Bridgerton-era commitment to multiracial casting in period drama: Charles and Caroline Bingley will be played by Black actors (Daryl McCormack and Siena Kelly) and Mrs. Gardiner by an actor of Indian descent (Anjana Vasan).

But for me, the top news is the casting of Rufus Sewell as Mr. Bennet. I’ve carried a torch for him ever since he played Will Ladislaw in Andrew Davies’ 1994 adaptation of Middlemarch, and while I admit that Sewell is grayer and less chiseled than he was back then, he’s still . . . well, let’s just say that this could be the first P&P in which Mr. Bennet is the hottest guy at the Netherfield ball.

--Need to fold laundry while experiencing your favorite novel? In that case, you may welcome a new audio version of P&P, coming from Audible on September 9.

It’s another dream cast: Harris Dickinson, who played Nicole Kidman’s oh-so-helpful intern in Baby Girl, is Darcy; Marisa Abela, who played singer Amy Winehouse in the biopic Back to Black, is Elizabeth; the great British actors Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Bill Nighy are the Bennet parents; and Glenn Close is Lady Catherine.

Alas, we won’t get quite as much of these people as we might wish: This version, which clocks in at four and a half hours, is a radio play, not an unabridged reading of the novel. If you want the total P&P experience, you’ll need roughly eleven to fourteen hours, depending on whose audio version you choose. Among the alternatives: a P&P read by Rosamund Pike, the ethereally beautiful Jane Bennet in the 2005 movie.

--And speaking of ethereally beautiful Jane Bennets. . . . Susannah Harker, who played Jane ten years before Pike, in the BBC’s 1995 adaptation, is raising money via Kickstarter for a film project called Jane Bennet's Second Spring.

Although the title suggests P&P fanfic, the movie sounds more like a semi-autobiographical dramatization of Harker’s post-Jane Bennet life, with a main character named Susie who is navigating career and romantic troubles while fielding unsolicited advice from Jane Austen.

Yes, we’ve been here before, but usually with protagonists young enough to identify with Austen’s heroines. Jane Bennet's Second Spring, by contrast, is specifically pitched to women of a certain age. “It will explore mid-life reinvention featuring a character whose golden age is just beginning,” the Kickstarter explains. “It will focus on resilience and what it takes to reinvent yourself.”

To complete this reinvention, Harker needs to raise just over $20,000 by tomorrow, and as of late last week, she was still a couple thousand dollars short.* And that despite marrying a man with four or five thousand a year! Apparently, Mr. Bennet was right to worry that the Bingleys’ spending would routinely exceed their income.

*But in the days since I wrote this, she's surpassed her goal. So it sounds as if we'll be hearing more about this project going forward.