Given the numerous adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, can we really handle yet another? Yet Lost in Austen offers a completely different take on the classic novel. In 2008, Amanda Price, perhaps the biggest fan of P+P (who else would want that theme music from the 1995 version as their mobile phone ringtone?), is living a typical young woman’s life in Hammersmith: flat, boyfriend, and Elizabeth Bennett in her bathroom. Alright, maybe not quite so typical.
Amanda steps through the same portal that Elizabeth did to find herself in Longbourne, and promptly gets stuck there, with Elizabeth trapped in 2008. At first, all seems to go well. She is accepted as one of Lizzie’s friends, meets Mr Bingley, and even dances with Elliot Cowan’s Darcy on their first meeting, something not even Elizabeth could achieve.
Yet from there it all goes awry. Despite Amanda’s best efforts, Bingley notices her more than Jane, and while he is still busy agonising over her rejection and working out his feelings for Jane, Jane has married the slimiest Mr Collins ever seen, played with slippery aplomb by Guy Henry.
From here on in, it seems that very few of the characters are as we know them. Be prepared for some revelations that, as Amanda puts it, would have “Jane Austen spinning in her grave”. Meanwhile, Darcy too has added himself to the growing list of Amanda’s admirers, despite her comparative coarseness and lack of accomplishments. Although she is flattered - and let’s face it, who wouldn’t be? - she is adamant that he should meet Elizabeth, but she is still stuck in Amanda’s world.
Many twists and turns later, Amanda finds herself back in her Hammersmith, and Darcy follows her. There was something startling and yet wonderfully artistic on seeing Darcy in all his Georgian finery, standing in the main street of Hammersmith, looking at his surroundings in awe, disgust, and yet with his usual gentlemanly composure.
Article comments
1 - Leigh Oats
It's a diverting read, Catherine, but "Austen purists" (your phrase, apparently referring to some other people) have noticed that the archipelago of errors in your essay headed "TV Review: Lost in Austen" includes two attempts to persuade the world that Jane Austen's novel _Pride and Prejudice_ has a character whose name is precisely "Elizabeth Bennett".
Anyway, what sort of entity is "the Bingley"? And "the Bingley's" what?
Ah, well---it's only the innernets . . .
:-)
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Leigh Oats