I was born in the wrong century – or so my mother says, while I protest from my writing bureau, wax seal in hand, ready to dispatch an Austen-style letter to a friend. But as I put out the candle flame with my antique snuffer, I wonder if she might be right. For me, the past has always felt like home – I grew up on a literary diet of classic fiction, seasoned with a love of my Regency hero, Jane Austen.
So when the BBC dramatisation of her most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice, first aired in 1995, it was manna from heaven for me, especially as an A-level English literature student. My pre-binge-era classmates and I delighted in the weekly suspense. We chattered of Mr Darcy’s intense looks, so sizzling they could fry an egg; laughed over the unfiltered comments of a dramatic Mrs Bennet; hummed that glorious title music on repeat. It played in my head whenever I sauntered around the open fields of my local Kent countryside. I felt like – nay – I was Elizabeth Bennet.
There was nothing quite like this cultural offering back then. American dramas tended to dominate: My So-Called Life, Friends, The X-Files. I dipped in and out, but the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice dug deeper. With its sparkling cast, sharp direction, comic precision and seamless production, it not only breathed spirited life into one of my favourite books of all time, it electrified it. The new adaptation spoke to my old soul sensibilities.
I was not alone in my euphoria. The mid-90s BBC adaptation has become something of a cultural touchstone. It features in Greta Gerwig’s 2023 Barbie movie, when a depressed Barbie binge-watches the series seven times. Lena Dunham’s recent Netflix series Too Much, whose main character moves to London, is also enamoured with the adaptation.
There is even a Facebook fan page solely devoted to the 1995 series. It was created by 29-year-old bartender Shelby Elise, whose tattoos include a quote from the novel that runs across her collarbone: “She only smiles, I laugh”.
Elise, from Kansas, set up the fan group during the Covid pandemic as a “safe haven”. Within 24 hours, it attracted 300 members; today, that figure is nearing 10,000. She says: “My moderators are all around the world – Greece, Germany, Portugal, the US. It’s definitely brought in friendships for me. Our love of the series has built a solidarity.”
For one moderator, Persefoni, based in Greece, the series not only connected her to a global fan network but directed the course of her career. “It had such a tremendous impact that I decided to become an English teacher and try to immerse Greek students into the Jane Austen universe. It was a decision I have never regretted! The series will forever hold a very special place in my heart.”
Modern-day pilgrimages are also popular with Pride and Prejudice devotees, and Adge Secker is something of a seasoned guide on the sacred Austen trail. A retired police officer based in Bath, he has been running a successful tour business for several years. “I love rugby, cider and Jane Austen,” he says in a cheerful Somerset accent.
The BBC classic inspired him to create the Carriages to Meryton tour, taking fans to locations made famous by the TV drama – such as the Red Lion pub in the village of Lacock, Wiltshire, used as the ballroom where Elizabeth meets Darcy for the first time; and the Bennets’ fictional family home, AKA Luckington Court in Wiltshire; and the nearby medieval church, which served as the scene for the double wedding. Adge tells me he is always fully booked, almost entirely thanks to US clients.
Bath’s immersive Regency Balls are annual events that recreate early 19th-century public dances, with punters turning up in full costume. I went to one 16 years ago, having stitched a gown skirt to a hand-tailored top to create a DIY Regency empire line, and tied a blue ribbon around my hijab in an attempt to feel less out of place. As a Muslim of Indian heritage, I was apprehensive that I wouldn’t quite fit with the majority white, mock-period English setting. However, barely an eyelid was batted: we were all united as Austenites. More recently, the Jane Austen festival team say they have “noticed a particular upswing of diversity” as Pride and Prejudice continues to draw international audiences.
In fact, Austen’s world of family honour, chaperones and matrimonial pressures always resonated with my traditional Asian Muslim paradigm – as it did for the British Pakistani author Ayisha Malik. The BBC adaptation influenced Malik’s first novel, Sofia Khan Is Not Obliged, which was pitched as the Muslim Bridget Jones by Malik, and marketed as such. Of course, Bridget Jones’s Diary itself owes a great deal to Pride and Prejudice – the novel and the BBC series. Author Helen Fielding admitted she “stole” the plot from Jane Austen and that, while writing Bridget Jones’s first incarnation in a newspaper column for the Independent 30 years ago, she was “infatuated” with the BBC drama that was airing the same year. From this, she developed the idea for the book.
While the Bridget Jones franchise has been criticised for its lack of diversity, Malik made sure her protagonist leaned in to her difference. “She’s navigating all the same things that any other woman might in contemporary dating, except she wears a hijab, doesn’t drink. She is also family-oriented, doesn’t have sex before marriage and, if she doesn’t marry a rich man, her mother will possibly implode – a bit like Elizabeth Bennet,” she says. “I remember going on a date where I had a chaperone and I was like, wait, am I in an Austen novel?”
Damianne Scott, a professor at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, US, is also on a mission to bring about more diversity to the Janeite fandom. Scott founded her Facebook and Instagram handle, This Black Girl Loves Jane, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, creating a space where fans of colour could see themselves in Austen’s world. In 2021 she joined the Jane Austen Society of North America – the world’s largest literary society devoted to Austen – and presented a panel at their AGM titled Do You Dream of Austen in Color?
Scott was 19 when the BBC drama first aired, and believes its strength lies in its humanity. “We all have these families,” she says. “Black families have a mother or aunt like Mrs Bennet who’s a little crazy and trying to get you married. We all know a sister or friend who is like Jane. We all have what we term in the African American community ‘the fast one’, which is Lydia – trying to be adult when you’re really only a kid; we all know a bad boy like Wickham. You can find yourself with one of those sisters, and you can find your aunts, uncles, moms and dads in the Bennets – whatever your colour, race, ethnicity or age – they are all portrayed so well, and that’s why I’m a 1995 girl.”
It’s these recognisable quirks and family dynamics that have given the series its staying power – from Lydia’s irrepressible eye-rolls to Mr Collins’ embarrassing dancing at the Netherfield ball. These are the moments that lift the series beyond the script – capturing not just Austen’s wit, but the very essence and messiness of being human.
The writer, comedian, podcaster and improv actor Cariad Lloyd revealed her love affair with Pride and Prejudice at a OneTrackMinds event last year, where speakers shared the music track that defined a moment in their lives. While others opted for adrenaline-charged tracks such as the Prodigy’s Firestarter or Foo Fighters’ The Best of You, Lloyd chose the charming title theme to the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice. “It was love, just absolute pure love,” sighs Lloyd. She was 13 when she first watched the series with her parents, describing it as an “out-of-body experience”.
It was Lloyd’s first brush with Austen – she had never read the book – and she was bereft when the series ended. It also led to her love of improvisation. “I would just talk to myself as if I were in Pride and Prejudice. I was ‘Cariad Bennet’, the Bennet sister they forgot. I would go to my room and pretend to be all the characters for hours and hours.”
Lloyd has since turned her childhood passion into a career: she is one of the eight-strong cast of Austentatious, a brilliantly chaotic stage show that fuses improvised comedy with the world of Jane Austen. The award-winning production is now in its 14th year, with a residency in the West End and a national tour under way.
The BBC dramatisation, Lloyd says, changed her life. “My 13-year-old self was right – it’s still the best thing I’ve ever seen. The dialogue, the clothes, the characters, the romance – there wasn’t a single thing I didn’t love. And to think we were watching live chemistry as Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle actually got together during the filming. What could be more exciting than that?”
The tantalising attraction was perhaps key to the drama’s enduring success. Many a pulse was raised when Firth rose from the murky lake, making TV history with the wet shirt scene, despite screenwriter Andrew Davies claiming he never intended it to be sexy, and that it was “a puzzle and a surprise” when Firth became a pinup. The shirt set off a ripple effect of soaked tributes, from Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy to Bridgerton. Darcy’s shirt even fetched a tidy £25,000 at auction with proceeds going to charity.
“People still think the wet shirt scene is in the novel,” says Prof Janet Todd, an academic, author and Austen expert. I first met Todd chairing a panel tantalisingly titled Disrobing Mr Darcy at the Bradford literature festival in 2017. She admits she used to be a bit “priggish” about classic novel adaptations, but describes the 1995 outing as “a piece of art in its own right, independent of the original book”. Firth, she says, made Darcy a bit like “a brooding Romantic hero”. “He hardly smiles, unlike Darcy in the book, and he looks moody: this hit the spot at the time, hence Darcymania.”
Todd edited The Cambridge Companion to Pride and Prejudice in 2013, as well as penning her own tribute in this anniversary year, Living with Jane Austen. “Following the BBC drama, I was asked to teach entire classes solely on the works of Austen in the universities of East Anglia, Glasgow and Aberdeen, which I’d never done before,” she says. “I had always taught her alongside other early 19th-century male authors, but not on her own.”
From seminar rooms to spoofs and spin-offs such as Austenland, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and the Bollywood-themed Bride and Prejudice, the BBC series certainly left its mark. And there is another to anticipate: Netflix is planning a new take on the Austen classic, a six-part series starring Olivia Colman as Mrs Bennet and Emma Corrin and Jack Lowden as the leading couple, set for release in late 2026.
I look forward to it – yet my favourite iteration thus far is not a lavish multimillion-dollar interpretation but rather the self-filmed Budget Pride and Prejudice by the actor and writer Ben Fensome. His outrageously funny 65-part video series went viral on TikTok last year, piling up hundreds of thousands of views, and racking up more than 3m likes for his page. Shot on a shoestring at his parents’ house in Devon, the series sees Fensome lip-syncing dialogue from every character in the 1995 series. Highlights include Wickham astride an exercise bike standing in for a horse, Darcy sporting socks stuffed into his collar in place of a neckerchief, Mrs Bennet with a doily in place of a Regency lace cap and Lady Catherine de Bourgh in a voluminous lampshade for a hat.
Fensome grew up with the drama – he was nine when it first aired – and was close to breaking his VHS cassette by the time he knew many of the scenes by heart. Almost three decades later, Budget Pride and Prejudice has catapulted his own acting career. “For years, I was struggling,” he says. “It’s definitely opened loads of doors.” Fensome’s viral hit earned him his first time narrating an audiobook, Mr Bingley: Just as a Gentleman Ought to Be, by Brandon Dragan, as well as landing him a part (two parts, really – he plays Wickham and Mr Collins) in a new multi-theatre production play of Pride and Prejudice, touring the UK until the end of October.
To me, the drama has always felt close and personal. Mrs Bennet is just like an aunt I know whose sole concern was to get her daughters married; Mr Collins reminds me of a cringeworthy date; Elizabeth is still the woman of strong self-worth that I want to be. This anniversary year, I made my third pilgrimage to Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, Hampshire, where I got goosebumps, again, standing before Polaroids of Firth and Crispin Bonham-Carter (Mr Bingley) trying on top hats during a research visit. My next stop is Bath, for the big anniversary festival – and, for nostalgia’s sake, I’ll certainly binge all six glorious episodes, probably on the original air date, definitely with tea and cake.
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