Adaptations

Pride and Prejudice (1995) by BBC

The six-episode British TV series adapted by Andrew Davies for BBC was a huge success. It stars Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet and Colin Firth as Mr Darcy, and the series brought Ehle a BAFTA Award for best actress. Because it was a mini-series, and not a film, the directors and producers could include most of the characters and events from the novel, allowing for extensive character development and featuring much of Austen’s original dialogue. It is still considered one of the best adaptations and one that stays closely to the original.

The popularity of the series later resulted in Colin Firth being recast as Darcy in the 2001 film adaptation of Bridget Jones’s Diary, which borrows much of its plot and characters from Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Interestingly, this adaptation portrays the Bennet household as fairly well-off and picturesque. This is a clear contrast to the way the 2005 film has chosen to do it, which we outline below.

Pride and Prejudice (2005) directed by Joe Wright

One of the latest Pride and Prejudice adaptations is the 2005 film which starts Keira Knightley as Elizabeth and Matthew Macfadyen as Darcy. Being a two-hour film and not a series, it is obviously much more contracted. The director and producers have removed some of the characters and various scenes from the original novel. Fo...