Dolly Alderton's six-episode Austen lands Dec. 3, with Emma Corrin, Jack Lowden and Olivia Colman leading a cast pulled from the best-dressed corners of recent television.
Count the credits in Netflix’s new Pride and Prejudice series and you get a greatest-hits list of recent prestige television: The Crown, Slow Horses, Industry, The Diplomat, Killing Eve, Black Mirror. The six-part adaptation arrives Dec. 3, and the trailer and first-look photos are already out.
Emma Corrin plays Elizabeth Bennet and Jack Lowden is Mr. Darcy. Corrin, whose credits include The Crown and Black Mirror, also takes a first executive producer credit. Lowden arrives from Slow Horses and The Rings of Power. Olivia Colman, another Crown veteran, is Mrs. Bennet, and Rufus Sewell, of The Diplomat and Scoop, is her husband.
A Longbourn built for the long game
Casting directors like to say there are no small parts. This production seems to have taken it literally. Fiona Shaw, of Killing Eve, is Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Anjana Vasan (We Are Lady Parts) and Sebastian Armesto (Gangs of London) are the Gardiners. Jamie Demetriou, from Stath Lets Flats, takes on the ridiculous Mr. Collins. Louis Partridge is Wickham, and Siena Kelly plays Caroline Bingley. Justin Edwards, who spent time in The Thick of It, is Sir William Lucas.
The younger Bennets are a mix of known and new. Freya Mavor of Industry is Jane, with Daryl McCormack as the amiable Bingley. Rhea Norwood, of Heartstopper, is Lydia. Hopey Parish (Mary) and Hollie Avery (Kitty) are both making their screen debuts, which is a decent way to start a career: a Netflix Austen, a cast of heavyweights to learn from.
Still a story about money
For all the romance, the premise has always been a financial one. Wealthy bachelors move into the neighborhood, and five sisters have futures to secure. Jane falls for Bingley. Elizabeth clashes with his proud friend. Family scandals and unexpected encounters force her to rethink what she feels and what love actually is. It is a drawing-room drama in which every proposal comes with a balance sheet, and that is part of why it keeps getting remade.
Netflix’s case for another round is that Pride and Prejudice is the most widely read of Austen’s novels, and that it has helped define the romance genre. Netflix executive Mona Qureshi called it “the ultimate romantic comedy” when the project was announced.
The people holding the pen
The writer is Dolly Alderton, a bestselling author and screenwriter who won the National Book Award in 2018 for her debut, Everything I Know About Love. Euros Lyn, who directed Heartstopper, directs. Alderton chose the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, England, to show the characters for the first time and to announce the date. It’s hard to think of a more fitting room.
Lookout Point produces. Alderton and Lyn executive produce with Laura Lankester, Will Johnston and Louise Mutter, and Corrin joins that list. Lisa Osborne, whose credits include Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, is the producer. A period piece lives or dies on its craft, and that is a solid bench of people to run it.
Alderton’s pitch is modest. “Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is the blueprint for romantic comedy,” she says, and she wants to find “both familiar and fresh ways” of telling it, while “aspiring to Austen’s delightfully observational voice.” Her audience is split in two: readers who count it as their favorite book, and people “yet to meet their Lizzy and Mr. Darcy.”
Corrin calls the role “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” and says they “can’t wait for a new generation to fall in love with this story all over again.” That generation has a date to keep: Dec. 3, all six episodes’ worth of it.
Via Netflix Tudum
