Four weddings and the funeral of common sense

Rating: Null/10 (21 September 2005)

P&P is often compared to a Swiss watch and very few novels are this intricately woven together. There are numerous love stories, successful and unsuccessful fortune hunters of both sexes, embarrassing and wilful parents each impinging one on another, each bringing the two principle lovers, Elizabeth and Darcy closer together or driving them further apart. At the beginning characters are grouped according to their fortunes and status. By the end of the novel, they have rearranged themselves according to sense, ability and intelligence.
If you take the screws out of a mechanism this complex, you will never get it back together again. Andrew Davies, in the 1995 version, had six hours of screen time and left them where they were. He was neither required to cut essential characters, or miss out essential plot items. The downside of putting so much of Austen's dialogue on screen is that his own attempts, such as the scenes at the inn at Lambton and Pemberley stick out unattractively from Austen's crisp satirical work and sometimes, especially when he trying for irony, his script work can look positively crude.
Attempting to be true to the principle character, however, in two hours has here entailed throwing away vital bits of the Swiss watch. Wickham is there, briefly, and so is Lydia. The Gardiners are almost out, the Hursts are gone completely. There isn't time for Darcy's letter, the express from London and Mrs Gardiner's letter explaining Darcy's discovery of Lydia isn't necessary because it's not clear what Darcy has done to help.
And why would he need to do anything? What could scandal mean to a family living as the Bennets do in this version? I appreciate the need for a different look to the 1995 version but putting the Bennett's into a house that looks like a pigsty from a much earlier age is the real problem with this version for me.
The comedy of class and manners is destroyed by degrading the life of the Bennets to the sort of sub-gentility that might have been appropriate to an adaptation of Tom Jones or even Moll Flanders but is ridiculous for the family of a wealthy country attorney. In the novel, Elizabeth Bennet, daughter of a middle class gentleman marries someone from the upper middle class with dubiously aristocratic connections. In this version, the daughter of a family about to fall into extreme poverty marries a belted Earl (Pemberley is Chatsworth here - one of the largest stately homes in England - definitely NOT where the Darcy's would be living). The Bennett's home would have been large, clean, genteel, separated from the farm and well run. The Gardiners, would have had half a floor to themselves in the Inn at Lambton and would never have dreamt of dining with the drunken regulars. The pantomime with the letter in the inn is inexcusable. The characters pop in and out of shot like Bill and Ben.
Since the the comedy of class and manners is tossed away, you're left with the performances. These are patchy and condemn the whole to disintegration.
Elizabeth is justabout OK but the other characters don't take off. Brenda Blethyn, excellent as usual but criminally underused and playing someone other than Mrs Bennet. Matthew McFadyen got the message and didn't try to be Colin Firth but forget to be Darcy. Donald Sutherland, accent all over the place and where was the sardonic cynicism? Judi Dench didn't have enough time. Jena Malone as Lydia couldn't be outrageous enough for who would look unusual or out of place in that household?
On the whole, a version that might not go down as the worst ever, even if it can't possibly be used by students.
Belongs on the shelf next to the Patricia Rozema Mansfield Park. Complete and utter failure as an adaptation but watchable on a Sunday afternoon if you can put the original aside.