![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Pride-and-Prejudice-TV-miniseries.jpg\" "\\"Pride-and-Prejudice-TV-miniseries\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nI\u2019ve loved Austen\u2019s books ever since I studied Emma <\/em>in a course on the English Novel that I took during my second year of university some 50 years ago. Over the next while I read all of her books, and it\u2019s always been a toss-up for me whether Emma<\/em> is her best \u2013 or Pride and Prejudice.<\/em> Of the many film versions of Pride and Prejudice,<\/em> this BBC production comes closest, I believe, to finding cinematic terms for Austen\u2019s narrative. As a miniseries, it had the luxury of pace that took us not only from one manor house to the next but into the countryside of Staffordshire and Derbyshire. Such close attention was paid to details of costume and make-up and the furnishings of interiors that the viewer can\u2019t help but feel he is stepping into those early years of the 1800s. I suspect designers must enjoy creating the trimmings \u2013 it\u2019s an adventure in researching clothing and scrounging for antiques since Austen herself seldom went beyond describing a house or a hero as \u201chandsome.\u201d<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s the cast. While Colin Firth can play the buffoon in pictures such as Bridget Jones\u2019 Diary,<\/em> he inhabits the role of Darcy here with a steady intensity and charm (as good, I believe, as Olivier in the MGM version of the 1940s). Firth, apparently, was reluctant to take on the role \u2013 feeling he wasn\u2019t \u201cromantic\u201d enough for Darcy, but director Andrew Davies was able to convince him not only to be in the series but to submit to Davies\u2019 ploys to make him pretty sexy (as we see him not only in Regency attire but soaking in a tub, and in his fencing duds, and swimming in the lake outside Pemberly). I can\u2019t imagine a better Elizabeth Bennett than Jennifer Ehle, and Alison Steadman provides us with a portrait of Mrs. Bennett that makes us wonder why all of the Bennett girls didn\u2019t run away from home \u2013 not just Lydia. David Bamber\u2019s Mr. Collins, the prissy parson, is also a bit of perfect casting.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/a>March has been coming in like a lion here in Vancouver \u2013 and checking my schedule, I see I have nothing else on for this evening\u2026so I think I may just need to sink into this re-creation of Austen\u2019s world with its summery strolls through English country gardens, the candle-lit rooms of cotillions, and the lavish halls of Rosings and Pemberly.<\/p>\nMy Book Pick<\/h2>\n
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