My wife likes to drift off to sleep to the murmur of well-bred British voices, but this isn't that kind of series. I guess you could call it fan fic, since it's a Jane Austen sequel-murder mystery mashup based on a novel by P.D. James. The storyline's very involving, the cast is just about perfect, and the way the murder plot dovetails with the backstory (i.e. "Pride and Prejudice") is especially ingenious--though you may find that several of JA's original characters, like Lady Catherine de Bourgh, have undergone a startling personality change, and Mrs. Bennett has evolved from a fluttering fusspot to a full-blown hysteric. There are no trench-coated DCIs or cops of any kind in Regency Yorkshire, so it's all up to a whiskery magistrate and his constables to arrest the obvious suspect and to Mrs. Darcy to find the real killer.
Fine performances by costume-drama veteran Anna Maxwell Martin and Matthew Rhys (the sardonic gay brother on "Brothers and Sisters") as the Darcys; Matthew Goode ("Stoker") is always convincing as the charming ne'er-do-well (in this case, Mr. Wickham). Janeites will surely object to the anachronisms in the dialogue ("even as we speak"); Jenna Coleman, as Lydia, seems more like a Kardashian at times than an Austen ingenue, and I'm not sure that even Mr. Darcy with his £10,000 a year ($1.2 million in today's money, they say) could afford the upkeep on Castle Howard...Still, if you're not too serious about period authenticity and the Austen legacy, it's all pretty entertaining. Available on streaming Netflix.
Fine performances by costume-drama veteran Anna Maxwell Martin and Matthew Rhys (the sardonic gay brother on "Brothers and Sisters") as the Darcys; Matthew Goode ("Stoker") is always convincing as the charming ne'er-do-well (in this case, Mr. Wickham). Janeites will surely object to the anachronisms in the dialogue ("even as we speak"); Jenna Coleman, as Lydia, seems more like a Kardashian at times than an Austen ingenue, and I'm not sure that even Mr. Darcy with his £10,000 a year ($1.2 million in today's money, they say) could afford the upkeep on Castle Howard...Still, if you're not too serious about period authenticity and the Austen legacy, it's all pretty entertaining. Available on streaming Netflix.