Then and now

The new Netflix adaptation of Pride and Prejudice seems to be coming along nicely: Press outlets in the UK have breathlessly reported on filming occurring in at least three different locations over the past month or so.

In mid-August, residents of Derbyshire, the northern English county where Jane Austen placed Mr. Darcy’s Pemberley estate, spotted telltale evidence that period film production was taking place on local moorland: horses and carriages, plus actors in bonnets and top hats.

A few weeks later, in early September, it was the turn of Rye, a town in the southeastern county of East Sussex, where local shops and streets were transformed into what I would guess will be a simulacrum of Meryton. And later that week, the horses and bonnets popped up in Deal, a seaside town even farther east, in Kent--perhaps a stand-in for Brighton, the South Coast town where Wickham seduces Lydia.

Apparently anticipating inconvenient levels of interest in the production, the filmmakers seem to have gone out of their way not to publicize their work: The Rye shooting was described as involving “a Regency drama with working title January Nights,” a local news website reported. (When Olivia Colman, aka Mrs. Bennet, turned out to be involved, however, the jig was up.)

The jury is still out on whether this adaptation, with its buzzy screenwriter and starry cast, will prove a brilliant reimagining or a dreadful mistake. But at least we can now feel pretty sure that something is going to make it to our screens.

Perhaps, though, you’d prefer to spend your time thinking about the last TV adaptation of P&P, the iconic 1995 BBC version starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle? Then you’re in luck: Screenwriter Andrew Davies and several of the stars (though not Firth and Ehle) dished some gossipy reminiscences to the London Times to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the UK broadcast.

In truth, most of this tea has been spilled before (as Davies archly notes, “Everybody seems to know now that Colin was helping Jennifer Ehle with her lines on a daily basis”), but we can never have too much of that kind of thing--just as we can apparently never have too many P&Ps.