ANOTHER Jane Austen Film Adaptation

[ParisPossum]

Just seen that there is a new adaptation of Emma available to watch. While I do appreciate Jane Austen's work, it gets tedious seeing adaptations of the same novels; Pride and Prejudice has been done to death over the decades. If you could nominate your favourite fabulous classic (or two), what would it be? My vote would go to A Tale Of Two Cities and Barnaby Rudge.

agree. the gulf between the book and the film was vast.

Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (TV Movie 1985) - IMDb

Love the Robert Donat version of The 39 Steps. Also adore The Lady Vanishes, another Hitchcck film from the same time period. I know his later stuff is more revered but I just love his pre Hollywood stuff.

Not exactly classics, but I would love a series based on Anya Seton's books, Kathryn and/or Avalon. I read Avalon, aged 13 on a really cold and tedious caravan holiday and it enthralled me and broke my heart at the same time.
I think Dragonwyk was made into a film decades ago, but I haven't seen it.

I'd like to see more Daphne Du Maurier, beyond Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel or The Birds. The Kings General, Frenchman's Creek, The House on the Strand, or Julius. I'd even settle for another version of Jamaica Inn...

@endofthelinefinally Yes, absolutely to Katherine - one of my favourite books ever!

I was going to say this. There was a version about 20 years ago but they only did the first two books. I’d love a version that covers all the books.

I would not like to see any adaptations right now. I am sick and tired of the attempts of trying to modernize these stories. The latest piece of trash being Persuasion with Dakota Johnson. Good grief, I could not even manage to watch 5 minutes of it. I also hate the Pride and Prejudice adaptation from 2005. The constant giggling of Mrs Bennet and the younger sisters made it unwatchable for me.

I hope they will not attempt any more adaptations for another 10 years and then not touch the ones that already have good, beloved adaptations, such as:

• Pride and Prejudice (1995)
• Sense and Sensibility (1995)
• Persuasion (1995)
• North and South (2004)
• Wives and Daughters (1999)
• Mansfield Park (1999)
• Little Woman (1994)
• Washington Square (1997)
• Anne of Green Gables (1985)
• Vanity Fair (2004)
• Hornblower (2003)

I want them to leave the above alone.

I would eventually love to see some Charlotte Perkins Gilman adaptations, especially 'What Diantha Did'.

I think there's a version of The Other Bennett Sister on the way.

'I would not like to see any adaptations right now. I am sick and tired of the attempts of trying to modernize these stories.'

Wholeheartedly agree.

Can't remember who mentioned The Scarlet Pimpernel upthread but I quite liked the Richard E Grant version.

"I hope they will not attempt any more adaptations for another 10 years and then not touch the ones that already have good, beloved adaptations, such as:

• Pride and Prejudice (1995)
• Sense and Sensibility (1995)
• Persuasion (1995)
• North and South (2004)
• Wives and Daughters (1999)
• Mansfield Park (1999)
• Little Woman (1994)
• Washington Square (1997)
• Anne of Green Gables (1985)
• Vanity Fair (2004)
• Hornblower (2003)"

The 2008 S&S with Charity Wakefield and Hattie Morahan is superior to the 1995 version IMO.

I have only seen the trailer for the 2008 version, but it did not give me much hope. I will watch it, however, to see for myself

My brother says he hopes someone will film the Bernard Cornwell stories of the American Civil War, he thinks they are better than the Sharpe books.
Probably many here would like the Arthurian series on film.

Exactly @FrostFlowers2025 .

I was going to put some suggestions forward then something inside me curled up and died at the thought of how they would in all probability be massacred.

This seems like a good thread to post this on

I only saw the 2008 adaptation last year so I'm very out of date. But I thought that was excellent.

I've wondered why they've not done Hard Times as well.

Also The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan is well overdue a revival.

There's never been a film or tv version of The 39 Steps that was faithful to the book. If I had to pick one, I'd have the original b&w Hitchcock version, with Robert Donat. The Kenneth More one was more or less a remake of that.

It is strange that it was published in 1915 but does not mention the war specifically. It is as if it is set in 1913.

Er - it is quite clearly set in the summer of 1914, immediately before the outbreak of war. Richard Hannay says at the end "three weeks later, as all the world knows, we went to war.... But I had done my best service, I think, before I put on khaki".

Personally, I prefer Greenmantle. I loved it in my early teens, and have re-read it many times. But doing it well would require a lot of location filming, and the reasons why it's particularly relevant today are also the reasons why it will probably never be done. And who would play Sandy Arbuthnot?

*Trollope's Barchester Chronicles and The Pallisers are due a remake. There've been some excellent radio dramas recently but the TV series are quite old now.

But the Barchester Chronicles had Alan Rickman in his first big tv role! Who else could play Mr Slope?

The worry with there being so many adaptations of Jane Austen is that the writers/producers/directors etc increasingly see her perfect novels as just a starting point, something that is the basis for their own little riff.

That is how Agatha Christie works. There have been lots of great and creative adaptations for which she provides fairly minimal raw material. But Austen is no Agatha Christie. She is too good. Too jewel-like and clever. No one should adapt her work who isn't brilliantly attuned to her genius. But if they were that brilliantly attuned, they would probably realise that (unless they are geniuses too) it would be better to leave well alone.

The best film version of Emma is Clueless.

It doesn’t bother me hugely if adaptations are “faithful” to the source material, because everyone gets something different from books and has different ideas about characters and themes.

As long as the film or TV series works well on its own terms as good storytelling, that’s really what matters. So often they don’t though. Greta Gerwig’s Little Women would be impossible to follow if you weren’t very familiar with the books, as would the most recent Tinker Tailor. Both films were beautiful to look at and had great performances, but they relied on the audience filling in all the gaps.

Agree with another poster that it would be good to see an adaptation of Villette. Both the central character of that novel and Charlotte Bronte herself are too fuck-off unreasonable to be smoothed easily into the righteous saccharine blandness that most of today's adaptations fall into.

I'd also like to see a really high-quality adaptation of Middlemarch. In a very long series. A whole community of deeply interesting characters. High-intellect soap.

I remember that one, loved it ❤️

I’d love to see a Barbara Pym film or TV adaptation!

Although I agree that Wilkie Collins would be brilliant fodder for adaptations, I would also dread them slightly. Reading the Women in White and The Moonstone I kind of lost the will to live a bit.
They reminded me so much of all those multi-series Netflix dramas that start off having a story to tell but then just try to spin their characters out and out and out to ... just one more series.
So you keep on thinking you are about to get a satisfying resolution, and keep on and on giving your loyalty to the many digressions ... and you eventually realise that the journey was meant to be everything and the destination is incidental - an anticlimax for the reader and an end-to-monetisation for the author.

Wilkie Collins was the box set of his time. Bloody little time waster.

Wilkie Collins was the box set of his time. Bloody little time waster.

Much of Collins' work, like Dickens', was originally published in serial form. Spinning it out and out to fill up the pages - just one more episode, and another, and another - was exactly what they were doing.

My jaw still hasn't fully closed since seeing the Netflix adaptation of Persuasion. Anne was a lipstick wearing sassy little miss and Wentworth was a rugby himbo.

I love the Woman in White. I remember sitting up in bed until the wee hours turning page after page to see what Sir Percival Glyde's dirty secret was.