Best Jane Austen adaptations?

[verdantverdure]

What are your favourite Jane Austen adaptations?

Mine are the BBC Emma series and the BBC Pride and Prejudice.

I am not very well at the moment and just watching the 1940 Pride and Prejudice on iplayer.

I'm very happy to get the opportunity to see it, but can't say it's going to knock my favourite version off its perch.

Any other gemsI may have missed?

Persuasion with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds. Best ever.

Difficult to get hold of but the Persuasion version with Amanda Root. <swoon>

Snap!

BBC P&P
Watch it once a year at least. Love it.
I really like the BBC sense and sensibility too.
I do quite like the Emma with Romola Garai and Jonny Lee Miller

Mine are the BBC Emma series and the BBC Pride and Prejudice.

Love those two the best.

I like the Emma Thompson version of Sense and Sensibility too.

Oh gosh how could I forget

Emma.

too! With Anya Taylor-Joy. It’s so laugh out loud funny, very witty. Even the full stops in the title and the seasons through the film make me chuckle. And the pastel colours and costumes gorgeous.

My favourite Pride and and Prejudice is BBC but not the Colin Firth one. I like the previous one which has a screenplay by Fay Weldon.

I also really like the film version of Sense and Sensibility (Emma Thompson) and the 1981 BBC version.

Oh btw the Anya Taylor-Joy Emma is on iplayer until Monday.

BBC Pride and Prejudice was my absolute favourite. I can't believe they have taken it off iPlayer 😢. You can get it on Amazon for an additional fee on top of Prime

Dakota Johnson in Persuasion
am just on the wind-up

My best P&P version would be a mash up of the 1980 BBC series( Fay Weldon) and the 1995 version. Elizabeth Garvie is my favourite Elizabeth Bennet, but I'd probably choose Colin Firth over David Rintoul (although David Rintoul has the natural height and the imposing manner down to a tee). I'm not a fan of Alison Steadman's Mrs Bennet (she's a great actress but I didn't care for her portrayal) the 1980 Mrs Bennet is more subtle but still as cringeworthy. The 1995 version is a much better overall production because it's not hampered by studio sets, so if I had to choose a production it would be the latter one. (I can't stand the Keira Knightley film version and I don't watch the 1940 version either).

This will be unpopular, but I really like the Rupert Penry-Jones and Sally Hawkins version of Persuasion - haven't watched the Ciaran Hinds and Amanda Root version for years but I do remember liking it when I saw it.

I've enjoyed all the versions of Emma I've seen (had to study it for A Level English Lit many moons ago, so it's a bit of a favourite), but I quite like the Gywnneth Paltrow film version. I think most of the productions have been pretty good. The costumes in the most recent Emma film were gorgeous!

Mansfield Park is the one that I've never enjoyed. I think it's generally the least liked Austen novel and there are some difficult themes for modern audiences, not to mention a heroine who is often thought to be rather boring and falls in love with her cousin.

Sense & Sensibility - Emma Thompson

Emma - the latest one with Anna Taylor-Joy

Definitely the film Emma with Anya Taylor Joy and Johnny Flynn. I never thought Jane Austen could be so funny. Miranda Hart is a joy to watch.

I do prefer the RPJ and Sally Hawkins Persuasion, but it’s a travesty that the bungled the letter scene.

Not Austen, but if you’ve read Frenchman’s Creek (or if not, it might be just what you need when sick) then the Joan Fontaine version is brilliant. The dialogue and wit in this story is on a par, or perhaps at times surpasses that in P&P.

Totally agree with the P and P analysis, especially the comments about Alison Steadman. Her portrayal of Mrs Bennett was too much of a caricature.

Although, Austen is quite dismissive of her, she did have valid reasons to worry about what would happen to herself and her daughters when Mr Bennett died. No wonder she wanted to see them safely married.

Mr Bennett had clearly been captivated by her looks when she was young but I don't see him proposing if she was the complete foolish idiot that Steadman made her out to be.

Love the 1999 film of Mansfield Park. Amazing cast. Less sappy than the book. The first screen antihero (Alessandro Nivola as Henry Crawford) that I would seriously contemplate running away with.

I don't think you're alone in contemplating running away with Henry Crawford...I think most people prefer naughty Henry over good old safe Edmund

Northanger Abbey with Felicity Jones is quite good.

The Laurence Olivier P&P is a shocker. Crinolines! And in particular Darcy colluding with Lady CdB to test whether Lizzy would still marry him if he were poor is a horrendous assassination of his character. I don't care whether Aldous Huxley was a giant of 20th Century literature, his grasp of the essentials of rom com was very faulty.

My personal fave is the Emma Thompson S&S. Obviously she's a decade too old for Elinor but if I were her you'd have to tear that role from my cold dead hands as well.

When DD was doing P&P for GCSE I spent a merry afternoon binging the BBC version with her and my late DM, and I read along with it out of curiosity - it's an interesting exercise because you really can read through scene by scene and 6 hours is plenty of time to read it. Davies put in all sorts of tiny little details which even the keenest Austen fan never remembers.

BBC Pride and Prejudice (1995) and Emma Thompson Sense and Sensibility. I really want to see the Persuasion version everyone keeps recommending (Amanda Root) but can't find it on a streaming service.

Ahhh I love the Thompson/Winslet/Rickman/Grant S&S! So good.

In a similar vein, I watched Daniel D-L and Michelle Pfeiffer in The Age of Innocence this afternoon - what a film! I'm in the market for any other good Wharton adaptations (or similar) if any has any recs.

I don't think you're alone in contemplating running away with Henry Crawford...I think most people prefer naughty Henry over good old safe Edmund

I also agree, as in fact did Jane Austen's sister, Cassandra. She also thought Fanny should have ended up with Henry instead of Edmund.

Clueless is by far my favourite, I don't think any other version of Emma properly caught the character in the way that Emma/Cher is so confident and well-adapted to her immediate environment but so unable to properly understand the wider world. Or the way that she is warm and well-meaning but fails to anticipate the problems that her interference can cause. Gwyneth Paltrow was too cold and Romola Garai was too exuberant and annoying. I haven't seen the 2020 Emma yet, but I will when I get a chance.

I like both BBC versions of Pride and Prejudice, bloody hated the film with Keira Knightly.

I also really liked a recent-ish version of Persuasion, even though it's not one of my favourite stories. But I can't find the version that I saw, so I can't tell you which one. Not the Dakota Johnson version.

Clueless (Emma).

I don't think you're alone in contemplating running away with Henry Crawford...I think most people prefer naughty Henry over good old safe Edmund

Well, yes, humourless preachy Edmund is almost a fate worse than death😂

That's not what I meant tho. Usually the antiheroes (Wickham, et al) are such obvious non-starters that I can never quite see why the heroine is drawn to them. Henry Crawford tho <oh yes>