Review: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries
I’ve loved Jane Austen ever since watching the 1995 BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice with my mother when I was 14. I studied her in school, read her for pleasure, even joined the local chapter of the Jane Austen Society for a while. So when I heard about “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries,” I knew I’d end up watching the show and having a bunch of nitpicky opinions about it.
Falling in deep daydreamy love and then getting into big arguments and losing sleep over the show – that was unexpected.
Short version: It was worth the effort and I had a lot of fun.
Ridiculously long version, aka The Good, The Bad and the Awesome:
The Good
- Building the story around careers, the economic crisis and the housing bubble was extremely clever. It got right to the heart of Jane Austen’s commentary on marriage and entailment of property – particularly Charlotte taking a job with Mr Collins instead of marrying him.
- The initial concepts for the modernised characters were great. They either translated smoothly from the original (sweet Jane, old-fashioned Darcy, party girl Lydia) or contrasted in a way that was interesting or funny (snarky Lizzie, career-minded Charlotte, emo chick Mary, Kitty the cat).
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/46525132562.
