There is a new adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma airing on BBC this weekend. As this is one of my favourite Jane books I am certainly not complaining and the Beeb have not done it for a while, but I do wonder how many more versions of the Divine Jane can be shown without customer resistance setting in.
No resistance will be forthcoming from me, however, even though I have on my shelves the DVD of Emma with Kate Beckinsale in the title role and then the film with the rather droopy Gwyneth Paltrow, but the divine Jeremy Northam which makes up for a lot. I also have three versions of Sense and Sensibility, two of Persuasion (yes even the ghastly one with Rupert Penry-Jones, spotted it in a sale for £2 so could not resist) and two of Mansfield Park - the excellent one made in the 1980s and also another ghastly Austen version, this time with Billie Piper as Fanny (this was a freebie in the Daily Mail as nothing would induce me to buy this one); there is also a film of Mansfield Park which is so dire I would not have it even if it was free.
The casting for this new version is pretty good, but here we go again with the familiar faces who seem to crop up all the time in the Bonnets and Breeches dramas. You may remember when Cranford and Lark Rise to Candleford followed each other on the BBC, I spent a happy hour or two spotting familiar faces and decided the BBC must have a Crinoline Rep cast book which they haul out each time they do a new costume series. I posted about it here.
And so was pleased to see that nothing has changed. Emma is played by Romola Garai who played Gwendolyn Harleth in Daniel Deronda some ten years ago; Mr Knightley is played by Jonny Lee Miller (looking far too young) who played Edmund in the appalling Mansfield Park I have mentioned above (the unbuyable one); Mrs Weston is Jodhi May who was also in the earlier Daniel Deronda as well as the film of The House of Mirth; Mr Elton is played by Blake Ritson who played Edmund in Mansfield Park (the Billie Piper one), Mrs Elton Christine Cole (Jane Eyre and Lost in Austen) - all well and good but the best piece of casting of all is Sir Michael Gambon (Wives and Daughters, Cranford et al) as Mr Woodhouse. I adore Sir M and this piece of casting is a stroke of genius and will make the show as far as I am concerned.
I gather the director is responsible for North and South (Richard Armitage oh be still my beating heart) and Jane Eyre of a year or so ago, so the credentials are good and the trailer I saw tonight also looked promising and am looking forward to it very much. Am away this weekend so the recorder will be set. Sadly, it is on at the same time as Kevin McLoud's Grand Tour, a wonderful series on C4 in which this presenter and architect traces the steps of the tour which was taken by young society gentlemen in the 18th and 19th centuries and tracing the influence of the architecture seen abroad on English buildings. He is concentrating on Italy and so far we have had Venice, Genoa and Rome and it has been stunningly beautiful. Always the same, nothing you want to watch for a while and then two progs at the same time.
Sadly, I noticed in this week's Radio Times an interview with Andrew Davies - yes he of Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Pride and Prejudice fame and many others in which it seems that the BBC are now cutting back on costume drama. The Pallisers, which Andrew Davies was supposed to do and which I was awaiting with bated breath, has been axed and there are no plans to show it at all. Let us hope that ITV might pick it up. Hint hint. The BBC thus continues in its pursuit of young audiences so of course The Pallisers had to go. They are assuming that anyone under 25 would probably find it far too difficult to understand....
