This is TV for the late seventies - faithful to source, stagey, studio-bound, with the odd bit of outdoor filming, so don't go looking for flashy film technique and 'modern' soap-like characterisation with a driving narrative. This is supposed to be Jane Austen on screen, not another ever so modern, emotionally over the top, easily delineated character put into period for modern audiences with the attention span of twenty five minutes.
So the pace is leisurely, life revolves around sowing, being gentile, with the odd highlight of dinner with neighbours or a small ball with four and twenty families! This adaptation presents this lifestyle excellently, which means that characters do not rev up for the audience. The acting is a little patchy - for instance, Elizabeth Garvie (of whom we saw too little afterwards) starts hesitantly but improves remarkably, while David Rintoul is left too stiff and starchy throughout (Fay Weldon's feminist revenge?). But the support is good, and not overplayed, except in the case of Natalie Ogle (Lydia). certainly Wickham and Mr Bennet are seen for what they are - the former a lying cheat but smooth, while the latter is totally disdainful of his simpleton wife.
Let's face it - those critics of this version do not seem to criticise Ms Austen for ignoring the life and death struggle of Britain facing Napoleonic France, but say that the characters are too passive to be interested in. The words of Ms Austen are there, and she was not writing Barbara Cartland!
So the pace is leisurely, life revolves around sowing, being gentile, with the odd highlight of dinner with neighbours or a small ball with four and twenty families! This adaptation presents this lifestyle excellently, which means that characters do not rev up for the audience. The acting is a little patchy - for instance, Elizabeth Garvie (of whom we saw too little afterwards) starts hesitantly but improves remarkably, while David Rintoul is left too stiff and starchy throughout (Fay Weldon's feminist revenge?). But the support is good, and not overplayed, except in the case of Natalie Ogle (Lydia). certainly Wickham and Mr Bennet are seen for what they are - the former a lying cheat but smooth, while the latter is totally disdainful of his simpleton wife.
Let's face it - those critics of this version do not seem to criticise Ms Austen for ignoring the life and death struggle of Britain facing Napoleonic France, but say that the characters are too passive to be interested in. The words of Ms Austen are there, and she was not writing Barbara Cartland!