The Daily Mail

Can it really be 20 years since Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle gripped the nation as on-off lovers Elizabeth Bennet and Fitz-william Darcy in BBC1’s mega mini-series Pride And Prejudice? 

The critically acclaimed six-parter was a huge success that made a sex symbol out of Colin, earned a Best Actress BAFTA for his co-star Jennifer and is credited with bringing period drama to a fresh generation of younger viewers. But when it first went out on BBC1 on 24 September 1995 no one guessed it would change the TV landscape.

It was the year of The Spice Girls and Robbie Williams. The battle of Britpop between Blur and Oasis even featured on News At Ten. 

And yet an average of 10 million viewers sat on their sofas to watch a classic bonnet drama. ‘The streets were empty on a Sunday night,’ recalls David Bamber, who played creepy clergyman Mr Collins.

Jane Austen’s 1813 book centres on Lizzy Bennet, her four sisters, and their mother’s attempts to marry them off to well-to-do gentlemen, including Charles Bingley, who’s just moved into the local Netherfield estate, and his friend Mr Darcy. 

It will always be best remembered for the famous scene in which Mr Darcy emerges from the lake at Pemberley, his Derbyshire estate, in a wet shirt.

 It's 20 years since the BBC screened its popular take on the Jane Austen classic  

 

 

'Jane Austen’s world is very female, but Andrew wanted to put men at the heart of the drama. Thus the series opened with horseback scenes. Later Darcy was seen fencing with Bingley and, of course, swimming in the lake at Pemberley. Andrew still regrets that Darcy didn’t dive in naked. 

‘It was about Nature with a capital N. Darcy had been spending too much time being polite in London with a group of stuffy people. But at the centre of his essence he was just a man, almost like a wild creature, who saw his lake there and thought, “Let’s get into this different element where I don’t have to be polite or worry about my tenants. I can just be a man.”’

Much to the writer’s disappointment, a white shirt was produced to preserve Darcy’s modesty as he emerged from the lake to encounter Elizabeth Bennet. But actually this just made the scene hotter for many female viewers. Even Andrew was astonished. 

‘What was intended to be a comic scene of social embarrassment – having to have a polite conversation while ignoring the fact that one of them was soaking wet – became something quite different.’

But Colin, then 33, brought something very special to the role. On set his fellow actors were mesmerised by the way he could convey so much by apparently doing so little. In fact the first scene Colin and Jennifer had to shoot was the proposal scene where Lizzy turns him down. They barely knew each other but Colin nailed it, says Adrian Lukis, who played dastardly Army officer Mr Wickham. 

‘Even as a young man, Colin had a real strength to his personality, whereas most people in their youth are flying around like headless chickens trying to find out who they are, particularly actors.’

Colin himself later explained that the stress of shooting the proposal scene brought an unexpected chemistry between himself and Jennifer Ehle. 

‘Because it’s so inappropriate to do that early and it’s so nerve-racking, we gave it a tremendous amount of attention and got a degree of adrenaline working up to it, so it was invested with something it would never have had if we’d done it later, when everyone had settled in. It was jumping in at the deep end,’ he said. Their subsequent real-life romance is testimony to that.

With five Bennet girls to cast, director Simon Langton ended up seeing just about every actress between 15 and 28. It was quite a challenge to find people who had the wit and charisma to do the script justice, as well as the right period air. 

‘Elizabeth Bennet had to have sex appeal because we’d be watching her for a total of six hours,’ says Simon. ‘It doesn’t mean she had to look like a goddess, quite the opposite sometimes, but I knew Jennifer definitely had it. Though I had to convince the producer, casting director and script editor, who were all women!’ 

Jennifer was only 24 but, says David Bamber, she was already ‘a miraculous actress’. ‘She was so composed. She hit the bull’s eye every time. I don’t mean she was complacent. She was just fully formed. I was mesmerised by her, everybody was. And Colin was a hoot, very funny and adorable.’

The drama enhanced the careers of a generation of young actresses, including Susannah Harker as Jane Bennet (her mother Polly Adams had played Jane in the 1967 BBC version), Julia Sawalha as Lydia, Jasper Carrott’s daughter Lucy Davis as Maria Lucas (she went on to star in The Office), Richard Briers’ daughter Lucy as Mary, and Emilia Fox as Georgiana Darcy in her first TV role at the age of 19. 

‘One of my great pleasures is that most of the 19th-century novels have really young heroines so it’s a chance to get people at an early stage of their careers and watch them develop after that,’ says Andrew Davies.

Today he has a soft spot for Julia’s fun-loving, officer-mad Lydia but he wasn’t sure the actress known for playing straight-laced Saffy in Ab Fab could pull it off. ‘I said to Sue, “Isn’t she a bit low-key and sweet and demure for Lydia?” And Sue said, “You haven’t met her, have you?” And Julia was absolutely brilliant.’ In fact she was actually 25 playing 15. 

'I do have quite a childish nature though,’ says Julia, ‘so I simply tapped into that; and Simon Langton’s enthusiasm for Lydia’s joie de vivre helped me enormously. Like most teenagers, their actions can seem selfish but really it stems from naivety. It’s hard to dislike a character when everything they do is because it seems fun, valid, exciting, fresh and joyful.’

Simon says David Bamber, with his obsequious manner and dire hairstyle as Mr Collins, had him in hysterics throughout. Though he confides the other strong candidate for the role was then-jobbing actor Julian Fellowes (who knows if Downton Abbey, which Julian went on to create, would ever have happened had he won it?). 

Known for her work in Mike Leigh films, Alison Steadman played Mrs Bennet – a performance that divided critics. But Simon is full of admiration for her bravery in tackling the part ‘like a bolting chariot’ he says. ‘At the first read-through she went where few people dare to tread and infected everyone else in the best possible sense, especially the younger actors who became much bolder.’

Make-up was banned for the sake of accuracy except for a lick of rouge for the ball scenes. The men had their hair curled every day. Adrian Lukis recalls fighting with his whiskers as Wickham. The soldiers’ outfits were hand-made in Italy, and the tight breeches made female hearts flutter (Colin was worried about his thin calves, working out for months for a more manly physique).

Jennifer Ehle, who’s now married and lives in New York (we last saw her play the mother in Fifty Shades Of Grey), still has a soft spot for Lizzy. Andrew Davies has said that Natasha Rostova from War And Peace just beats Lizzy Bennet as the most lovable heroine in literature, but Jennifer said earlier this year, ‘I can’t think of any character from literature I’d rather have people associate me with. How great to be a part of something that people find comforting. It’s nice.’

Ten years later, Joe Wright’s big-screen version of Pride And Prejudice with Keira Knightley was Oscar-nominated, but it’s still the BBC mini-series people grow misty-eyed about. ‘I’m just thrilled and proud it’s stood up 20 years,’ says Andrew Davies. 

All along the producers thought they were making a niche show, but, as David Bamber recalls, ‘it got into the lingo, it was even referred to in the House of Commons’. Even the actors themselves seem dazzled by the sexual chemistry of the series. 

‘I was working, so I didn’t watch it the first time it was broadcast, though I was aware of a big hoo-ha regarding Colin Firth,’ admits Julia Sawalha. ‘Eventually when I did see it, I said to my mother, “Wow, isn’t Colin’s Darcy gorgeous!” She replied, “Oh? Have you only just noticed why half the nation have been swooning over him for the past year?”’ 

Pride And Prejudice will be shown on the Drama channel on 22 November as part of its Jane Austen season and is available on DVD for £5.99.