As Mr. Knightly would say, "Badly done... badly done!"

Rating: 2/10 (23 March 2008)

To understand the world of Jane Austin, is to understand the subtle layers of upper-class society in Georgian England. Austin doesn't write about common farmers, she doesn't bother with the lower classes at all. Her novels deal with upper-class society...more often that not, with a gentleman's family that faces hard times due to the death of a relative, or possibly a financial reversal, but these are all upper class people who don't work for a living.
The Bennett family are wealthy, upper-class people. They have many servants, they have tenants, they have an estate that is valuable. This production makes them look like pig farmers, poor, worn, torn, and desperate farmers....which is not the family that Austin wrote about.
Mr. Bennett has a private fortune of 5,000 pounds...that's over $1,000,000 in today's money...which he's leaving to his daughters. This private fortune is completely separate from his very valuable estate ...perhaps bringing in another million a year....which is keeping them very comfortably...but the point of the story is that this estate legally can only pass to male heirs. They are not poor, Mr. Bennett does not work...the daughters are refined , well educated, and perhaps a little silly.....but they are the daughters of a gentleman...which is very important to the story.
This production places the Bennetts in a common farmer's house with furniture that is 150 years old...how many people do you know who are millionaires who have broken old out-of-date furniture in a muddy old run down house? Badly done!
In Georgian society, a gentleman was someone who did not work...who might pursue hobbies, and entertainments, but they didn't work. Their estates included tenants who paid rent, who managed the farms, who produced the income on which the gentleman's family lived. A gentleman did not have pigs running through his house, nor a muddy stock yard by their front door. A gentleman's estate included his fine home surrounded by gardens and parkland, with nasty pig pens off somewhere on the tenant farms...not near the house. This production completely misses the point of the status of the Bennett family.
By the same token...while Mr. Darcy is rich...his 10,000 pounds a year equals about $2,000,000 a year in today's money. His grandfather is an Earl....he too is a gentleman, but of a much higher class than the Bennetts. Still, to use the Duke of Devonshire's palatial home, "Chatsworth," to represent 'Pemberly' is really going over the top in the opposite direction. This production makes the Bennetts look like dirt farmers, and Mr.Darcy look like royalty....exaggeration would be the best term for the entire production. Badly done!
The costumes have the same problem...people dressed in widely different time periods...some looking like the 1780s, others dressing in the 1810s...when in reality, the gentlemanly class of society had new frocks made annually, and in the latest fashion...not from 30 year old patterns....everyone would pretty much be wearing the same style of clothing...unless they were gypsys and found their clothes in a dust bin or bought them from the rag man. No one in Austin's novels was so badly out of fashion as they are portrayed in this poor, poor rendition of this wonderful novel. Badly done!